Home | Online Business | Site Promotion
Many webmasters were up in arms back in October as Google seemingly reduced their Pagerank. This affected many millions of websites. Panic resulted as many webmasters were greatly concerned as to why this had happened and how they could restore their precious Pagerank back to their website. So why did this happen? Lets look first at Pagerank and how it is predetermined. Pagerank is widely speculated to be calculated in accordance with the number and quality of incoming links to a website. It's a complex formula that only Google knows, also noticing the importance of the page that the link originates from. Pagerank is measured on a scale of 1 to 10 but it is not a linear scale ie getting from 8 to 9 is a lot, lot harder than getting from 7 to 8. Also it is believed to include other factors such as the authority and trust of a website. It is wrongly believed by many webmasters that Pagerank is the main critical factor that determines their search engine ranking positions ( SERPS). Realistically, there are a huge amount of factors that Google looks at to determine the SERPS, Pagerank is just one of them, however, it can be a deciding factor if all other things are equal. The result over the last few years has turned many webmasters into Pagerank junkies. They obsess about their Pagerank, about getting links from other sites with higher Pagerank, they decline to link to sites with lower Pagerank etc etc. This has led to a whole industry of websites buying and selling links according to the Pagerank of the link page. And this is what has infuriated sleeping dragon over at Google. It has widely been reported that this readjustment of the Pagerank scores is due to Google penalising websites that are involved in the buying and selling of text links, with the sole aim of passing on Pagerank and hence improving their better SERPS. It is also an opinion that sites have had Pagerank reduced due to bad linking, broken linking and other general errors. The rationale behind concerns Trust and Authority - the powers that may be in the Googleplex consider that a site with broken links and links to "bad neighbourhoods" is not a site that should be highly trusted. So was this the sole reason for the Pagerank readjustment? Unlikely, as it is not believed that this was the sole underlying reason, as various sites were affected that had no involvement in buying or selling links. It is more probable that this was a complete overhaul or readjustments of Google's Pagerank scoring systems, which has led to a complete broad reassessment. The fact that so many experts point to the trading of links as a reason, is a theory that Google are probably pleased to let us believe. Basically, they do not like the buying and selling of links for the purposes of increasing SERPS, so they're happy for us to believe that they've applied penalties to this which they hope will then deter webmasters from doing this in future. The true reasons will probably never be known. So how can you increase your site's pagerank? - Initially you should continue to engage in an ongoing link building campaign, getting links from websites of a similar nature to yours. Do not worry about pagerank. - Avoid dubious practices that Google frown upon such as buying and selling of text links. If you do buy text links for any other reason than to improve Pagerank, make sure the no follow tag is inserted in the link. However, it is much safer to avoid them totally. - Check to make sure that your site has no broken links - including links to other sites, and does not link to sites that may be considered bad , such as spammy sites and those involved in accepting payments for text links. There are too many urban myths concerning Pagerank and the reality is it is not the "be all and end all". Just concentrate on optimising your site and building incoming links, getting good content and applying a good relevant theme to your website and let everyone else stress about Pagerank. At the end of the day, it just isn't that important.
Article Source: http://www.a1-articledirectory.com
Robin Porter is CEO of Arpey Internet, a Kent web design company that provides corporate web design services
Please Rate this Article
5 out of 54 out of 53 out of 52 out of 51 out of 5
Not yet Rated
