Link Popularity & PageRank

(Off-Page Optimization)

Search Engine Optimization is the first step to increasing the search engine ranking of your Web pages.  The second step is to increase the Popularity of your Web Pages by getting lots of quality inbound links.  This is called Off-Page Optimization.

Search Engine Algorithms have become increasingly complex over the past few years.  Now there is much more to getting good search engine listings than simply optimizing your pages using structured HTML and good keyword placement. 

Now search engines take into account many other factors, including PageRank and Link Popularity.

PageRank

PageRank was developed at Stanford University by Larry Page and Sergey Brin as part of a research project about a new kind of search engine.  The project started in 1995, and in 1998 it became a working prototype that they called Google.  Shortly afterwards, Page and Brin founded Google Inc.  Google still uses PageRank as a key element in their search engine.

Contrary to popular belief, PageRank is not based simply on the number of inbound links to a page.  Rather, it is based on a complex mathematical formula, which is solved recursively, and it takes into account the number and PageRank metric of all the pages that point to it.

Various PageRank formulas have been used in the past.  Here's one of the more recent ones and as you can see, it is quite complex:

For a more detailed explanation of PR, you can check out these two sites:
Whitelines -   A short explanation of Page Rank with some graphic examples.
Wikipedia - Page Rank  -  A very in-depth analysis of Page Rank

An easy way to know the PageRank of any Web page is to use the Google Toolbar.  It's a FREE download and it will integrate with your Web browser and display the PageRank of each Web page that you visit. 

Another tool is Page Rank Checker - fill in a page URL and see what the PR is.
See my Helpful Links page for more FREE tools.

Let's skip the formulas and just cover the basics:. 

1. It has no inbound or outbound links.
2. It has only outbound links.
3. It has only inbound links.
4. It has both inbound and outbound links.

What matters most to your Website pages (in addition to a good internal linking structure) are the inbound links from other Websites.  The more inbound links you have to your Website pages and the better the Quality of those links, the higher will be the PageRank of your pages, and the higher the search engines will rank your pages in search results.

PageRank (PR) is a numeric value from 0 to 10, which is assigned to a Web page, and it represents how popular that page is on the Web.  The PageRank value is defined recursively and is based on the number and PageRank values of all the pages that link (point) to it. 

In general, the more websites that link to your Web pages, the higher your PageRank will be.
A page that has many incoming links from pages that have a high PageRank, will be given a high PageRank.

A link to your page from another Website page is like a "vote" for your page.  A vote from a page that has a high PageRank is a more valuable vote than a link from a low PR page.  A link from a high PR page can be worth many times more than a link from low PR page.
A high PageRank would be 6 or above.

The ONLY way to increase your Website's PageRank is by getting more Websites to link to it.

PageRank is an important element in establishing Link Popularity.

Link Popularity

In the past, search engines used to rank a Website based mainly on page content and keywords.  Now that many Websites have similar content and use the same keywords, the engines need other factors to help them determine rankings.  In the last few years, links have become increasingly important because the search engine developers see links as an endorsement of one Website by other Websites.

Link popularity helps differentiate the more popular Websites from the not so popular sites.

Link Popularity has become a key factor in many of the search engine ranking algorithms.  Google uses it as a very important factor.  Other engines like HotBot, AltaVista and MSN also use link popularity in their formulas.

Link Popularity is a measurement of the QUANTITY (number of links) and the QUALITY (popularity) of other Web sites that point to a Webpage.

Recently, a widely used formula for calculating the popularity of a link coming from a page external to your Website has been to take the PageRank for that page, divide it by the number of outgoing links on the page, and then multiply the result by a factor of 0.85.

So you can see that, based on this particular formula, the Popularity value of a Link pointing to your site is going to be proportional to the PageRank of the page it comes from and inversely proportional to the number of outgoing links on that page.

Links are Important

Not only will your Web pages get a higher search engine ranking if they have links pointing to them that have a high Link Popularity value, but the Number of external links pointing to your pages, as well as the Quality of each of those links will contribute to a higher ranking for your pages.

A Quality Link is an inbound link to your site from another site that has many inbound links.  The more inbound links that other site has, the higher will be the Quality of the inbound Link to your site.

An inbound link from the Yahoo! directory is a much higher quality link than one from, say your uncle Bill's home page about cat fishing.

Ways to Check Inbound Links to Your Website

• Yahoo Site Explorer:   This is a special Yahoo site that allows you to find the Web pages that have links pointing to a particular Web Page.  Using the search box, type in link:http://URL.  Where URL is the page address, like www.mywebsite.com.   The search results will show you the web pages that have links back to the URL.
  
• Here is a Website that has a free link checking tool that is really nice.  You enter your URL and can also enter up to three URLs of your competitors and it will generate a report telling you how many links you have pointing to your site and how many to your competitors sites, as well as listing other sites that you can compare to.
  Link Popularity Check by Marketleap
  

In the next topic on Link Building for Search Engine Optimization, I'll give you some suggestions for creating "Likeable, Linkable Content" and give you several ways to get Quality Links to your Website.

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