A brief history of Google PageRank

You’ve created a fantastic article or product page for your website. You’ve deliberated over the copy, spent time sourcing stunning images, and have tested it on every single device known to humankind.

However, when you publish it, it struggles to get off the second page of Google. What’s all that about?

If you’re creating content for SEO purposes, you need to know what factors the search engines use to present the right results to potential customers.

One of these factors is PageRank. PageRank is now a bit of a mystery to digital marketers, but it’s still essential to know how it works. Here’s everything you need to know about Google PageRank and how to increase it.

What is Google PageRank?

PageRank is a Google algorithm that determines the importance of web pages based on the quality and number of backlinks they have.

Think of backlinks like a ‘voting system’ – a link from another website is essentially a vote of confidence in your web page. The more votes, the more trusted your page is as a source of information.

This means the higher the odds of your page getting the number-one spot in the search engine results.

The complicated history of Google PageRank[KI1] 

Google PageRank was created by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1999. It was a mathematical formula that determined the strength of a web page depending on the number of other pages that linked to it.

(As an aside, was PageRank named for web pages or after Larry Page? Nobody knows!)

If you want to get deep into the mathematical equations that make up PageRank, this page is a great start.

People used to be able to see the PageRank for individual web pages through the Google Toolbar, which Google launched in the year 2000. Each page on the internet received a PageRank score between 0 and 10.

This made it easy for SEO specialists to find out their PageRank and take steps to improve it.

However, as people could see their scores, they tried to game the system by getting as many backlinks for their pages as possible. Unfortunately this led to people paying for backlinks, getting links from dodgy websites, and the obligatory keyword stuffing.

To stop people from manipulating their scores, Google stopped showing PageRank scores in 2016.

So, does this mean PageRank is no longer a factor? Not at all. Even though you can no longer see the scores, and it’s not the only factor that determines page rankings, it’s still highly important.

Trust is a massive part of the search engine rankings. People want to know that the results they see are credible and reliable, especially in sectors like health, finance, and education. If other websites hold your page in high regard, the search engines will too.

Discover how to increase trust in your website with E-E-A-T.

How to determine Google PageRank

While PageRank is no longer public, there are still ways you can identify how your page is doing.

Moz’s Page Authority and Ahrefs URL Rating let you see how authoritative your page is. While nobody knows how PageRank is calculated these days apart from Google, these two metrics indicate how likely your pages are to rank in pole position.

How to increase your Google PageRank

So, how can you boost your PageRank to increase the chances of ranking on the first page of the search engine results? Here are some tips to get you started:

·       Focus on quality rather than quantity. One high-quality, relevant backlink is far better than 100 low-quality, spammy ones

·       Regularly audit your backlinks and redirect broken ones so you don’t lose out on valuable opportunities. You can see your backlinks for free by signing up for Google Search Console

·       Don’t forget your internal link structure. You can give your least popular pages a little SEO boost by linking to them from your most important pages

·       Create high-quality, innovative content that other websites want to link to – long-form guides, infographics and videos all work well

In conclusion

While PageRank isn’t openly available to everyone anymore, the concept is still critical to success in the search engine results. Many search engine optimisation experts advise that backlinks are the number one ranking factor in Google.

So while ensuring a high-quality user experience and content that provides value to users is important, getting authoritative backlinks is still vital.

Let me leave you with a final statistic. Over 65% of web pages have no backlinks at all. So, if you can get just one high-quality backlink to your page, you’re off to a great start!

SEO can be a mystery, but it doesn’t have to be. If you’d like to know more about SEO and how to use it to get an advantage in the search engines, check out my latest articles.

 [KI1]Image below from https://googlepress.blogspot.com/2000/12/google-launches-google-toolbar.html