Recently, many have forgotten about such a term as PageRank, which was used by the Google search engine a few years ago and even allowed to see the value of this indicator for an individual site.
Despite the fact that the above-mentioned parameter is no longer displayed by the search engine, it has not lost its importance and plays an important role in the promotion of electronic resources . That is why this topic should be considered more carefully.
Why do you need PageRank?
First of all, let’s deal with the definition.
A page’s PageRank is a link ranking algorithm that shows its importance, particularly to search engines. Importance is determined by a number from 0 to 10. At the same time, if the difference between 0 and 1 is small, then between 8 and 9 it will be huge, because the points are calculated on a logarithmic scale.
The importance of the page and the analyzed indicator depend on the number and quality of links leading to it. The more often resources refer to a particular source, the more authoritative it is considered. Accordingly, PageRank will be higher.
Until 2014, the PR for the desired page could be easily found in the Google Toolbar. Then it stopped being updated, so the feature generated little interest. Since 2016, the system does not show this parameter at all.
Many owners of Internet resources believe that PageRank, as an indicator of the authority of electronic pages, has simply ceased to exist. But this opinion was denied by Google representatives. They said they hid the values to prevent score manipulation. However, PageRank, as before, plays an important role in evaluating the quality and importance of pages, it is necessarily taken into account by the search engine when determining the position of the resource in the search results.
Understanding the importance of the indicator, most owners of electronic resources ask themselves how to find it out and is it even possible to do it? When you know the current number of points, you can assess the site’s attractiveness for the search engine, and take effective measures to improve it.
How PageRank is formed
Having learned what Google’s PageRank is, it makes sense to understand how it is formed. I will immediately point out that there is not much information on this topic, but it is still possible to highlight certain principles and formulas.
PageRank is formed by the number of internal and external links, as well as by the degree of their importance. It is defined for each page separately, and not for the site as a whole. When calculating points, the following factors are taken into account:
- number and quality of external links;
- number of outgoing links;
- PR of each referring page.
The calculation formula looks like this:
PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1) / C(T1) + … + PR(Tn) / C(Tn)).
The decoding of the designations is as follows:
- PR(A) is the PageRank weight of the page;
- d — damping coefficient (most often used is 0.85);
- PR(T1) is the PageRank weight of the page referring to page A;
- C(T1) is the number of links from this page;
- PR(Tn) / C(Tn) are calculations of each page pointing to A.
The maximum possible PR is 10, the minimum is 0.
Calculations take a lot of time, but it is possible to get an indicator of interest and assess the authority of the resource, the degree of trust in it. The only thing that cannot be calculated is whether there have been any changes in the field recently, how accurate the parameter is.
How to increase PageRank
There are a number of ways to increase PR.
Start with internal links, which also affect the indicators and are available to the owner of the site, accordingly, working with them is the easiest.
It is necessary to evaluate the peculiarities of relinking. If all pages of the resource link to each other, the PR is distributed evenly, but the links lose some of their weight due to the number. Such a structure should not be used for large portals with a large number of pages.
Regarding sites that have a hierarchical structure, the main page is given the most weight. If there are a lot of transitions from it, the authority of the pages decreases. Therefore, it is necessary to control the level of nesting. Each landing page should open no more than three clicks away from the main page. This is the optimal solution.
As for external links, you need to make sure that they are located on different domains. If they are placed on one site, on a single page, it will have no effect on the indicator we are interested in, the work will be done in vain.
It is necessary to take into account the number of transitions on the back link. The more interesting and useful the content of the page, the better. In this case, it will be possible to increase the weight of the backlink.
Do not forget about the location of the link text. The closer it is to the beginning of the material, the more efficiently it works. Even when the user does not read the article to the end, he will definitely see the link and go to it if he is interested.
I will dwell on this moment in more detail. This is the text located near the link. It should be clear and attractive, and explain what the person will find on the page you are suggesting to go to .
Note that links with the “nofollow” tag are not taken into account by the search engine. Therefore, the content of comments on other people’s blogs will not affect this indicator in any way.
When selecting sites and pages for placing backlinks, consider the following criteria:
- Correspondence to the topic . Preference should be given to resources that are interesting to your target audience. Then the posted links will increase PR, attract target users.
- Authority of the page . Even if sites are not considered authoritative, but materials from certain pages are actively cited, links from such resources will be very valuable.
- Number of outgoing links . If there are too many of them from one page, the value will drop accordingly.
- Attendance . The higher it is, the more profitable it is to work with such a platform. Links will carry a lot of weight.
These are the main points to learn about when studying the issue of increasing PageRank.
How to check the PageRank of a website page
Given that Google no longer has the ability to check this indicator, the solution to this task has caused a number of questions for the owners of Internet resources. In fact, getting an actual figure by knowing the weight of a page is real today. Special systems help with this, for example: Free Link Checker, Screaming Frog.
There are a lot of similar projects and you need to choose among them the one that will be the most convenient, informative and accurate.
Above I gave an example of PR calculation. But I would like to note that Google probably systematically changes the principles of determining the indicator, adds new criteria. So, the numbers obtained on specialized sites cannot be 100% accurate, but in general, they help to orientate in the evaluation of pages, to understand whether it is necessary to carry out revisions for the promotion of the resource.
Calculations also allow you to determine the hanging knot. These are pages that have no outbound links. They do not transfer weight, but lose it, disrupt the even distribution of weight on the site.
to remember
- The PageRank of a page is an important indicator that allows you to assess the significance of a resource for search engines, its authority. It allows you to understand whether the site requires finishing, correcting shortcomings.
- Despite the fact that the toolbar PR in Google is no longer freely available, the indicator itself continues to be significant and is taken into account by the search engine when evaluating a specific site. That is why it makes sense to calculate PageRank and increase it in case of low values.
