Writers and Bloggers are obsessed with Google PageRank, are you?
You may have had someone tell you that Google PageRank was important in bringing traffic to your writing. That is the name of the game, getting more eyeballs reading our work.
Google PageRank
What is Google PageRank?
Practically, PageRank is where your article, blog, etc., fall in a Google search when relevant search terms are entered into Google. First page, second page, tenth page…
Think of your article or blog as a politician. Someone meets your politician (reads your article) and invites him to speak at a party he’s throwing (posts a link back to your article from their article or website). The more places your politician gets invited to speak, the higher his PageRank becomes.
A politician who speaks at a lot of places will show up earlier in a Google search, then the one who isn’t invited to speak as often.
Google checks to see how important the parties are that your politician is invited to. The more important the party your politician is invited to speak to, the more important he becomes (or the higher your PageRank becomes).
My Google PageRank
If you would like to know the PageRank of one of your articles or blogs you can use The PageRank Look-Up Tool. Enter the address of your article and click the button.
Image via Wikipedia
Growing PageRank
Ok, so I need PageRank, how do I get people to link to me?
The easiest and the hardest way to get people to link to you is to start reading other people’s articles and blogs. Leave a good comment. Include a link to your relevant article.
The only problem is that too many people started spamming blogs and forums, so a piece of code was created so that links posted in comments are “no follow”. What that means is that when a Google-bot searches the site and see those links, it won’t follow them and record them for PageRank purposes. Certainly seems unfair doesn’t it?
But you should still do it. Not spam people, but include the link as it may garner readers, and get the attention of the owner of the blog or article. Get their attention, maybe they’ll link you in the content where it will count.
Backlinks
Is there any way to find out how many people have created a link to my article or blog? Yes there is. Go to Google and type in link:www.yourwebaddress.com. Of course replace the “yourwebaddress” with the address of your article or blog. You can also check it at Yahoo or MSN by typing linkdomain:www.yourwebaddress.com.
You should also link to your own articles in articles that you write. For example here is a link to my article Using Hubpages and Squidoo to Drive Traffic to Articles. There, I have just created a backlink to my other article. If this article becomes popular, it will also increase the popularity of the other article by increasing it’s PageRank.
PageRank Isn’t Everything
So while PageRank is important, it isn’t everything. It changes and varies, and Google changes the parameters from time to time as well. The best thing to do is to continue to create quality and relevant content, and participate in the online community at large.
Keep plugging away. Most people quit just before they get their big break.
October 27th, 2009 at 1:51 am
Nice information…
October 27th, 2009 at 3:33 am
Nice one…
October 27th, 2009 at 4:51 am
Do you know? It’s the first time I think I really understood how it works … (the crux is: I think)
October 27th, 2009 at 5:08 am
Useful article but a hard thing to do.
October 27th, 2009 at 7:47 am
Really helpful article. Keep on the good work.
http://www.WorkFromHomeJobs.webnode.com
October 27th, 2009 at 7:52 am
Though Google has removed pagerank (it is no longer available in their toolbar) and has reiterated it doesn’t count, I appreciate your article for the clarity of exposition.
October 27th, 2009 at 8:01 am
Interesting and well put together.
October 27th, 2009 at 8:13 am
Page Rank is a strange thing. One of my blogs had a page rank of 4, I added a domain name and now it is not ranked at all. I thought it would come back once everything in the system caught up with the change on name, but it didn’t.
Another block jumperd from 3 to 6 then to 2 and finally down to 0.
I have no idea why as the content is good and I work at adding links. Puzzles me!
October 27th, 2009 at 9:33 am
Sorry about the typos!!!
October 27th, 2009 at 9:54 am
Good and informative. Thanks.
October 27th, 2009 at 11:30 am
Google is making some changes on how automated search results are handled, and it is causing some of our tools to not operate correctly. We apologize for any inconviences this has caused, and we are working on ways to make our tools functional again.
I do appreciate this information though thank you, but hope the tool to it is fixed soon
October 27th, 2009 at 11:40 am
Great info! Thanks for sharing!
October 27th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
Great Article!
I have written an article on backlinks as well, please take a look if you have time.
thanks
http://www.webupon.com/Marketing/Five-Ways-to-Increase-Backlinks-Traffic-and-Pagerank.144867
October 27th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
I knew everything about pagerank, seo, etc. You can’t tell me news
October 27th, 2009 at 6:57 pm
jeez i was like the first person to read this yesterday. I had a feeling this would make it to the top.
October 27th, 2009 at 8:05 pm
Some really useful information. Thank you. That PageRank page is cool. Also, page rank info is available on the Google Toolbar. I just downloaded the toolbar today.
October 27th, 2009 at 8:20 pm
Thank you, this really helped me. I had no idea what pagerank meant till now. Makes a lot more sense, and now I know how to improve it.
October 27th, 2009 at 9:00 pm
Excellent information. I will use the Google tools you just recommended.
October 27th, 2009 at 9:38 pm
Excellent artticle, Thanks for sharing the great tips.
October 28th, 2009 at 4:46 am
Thanks for letting us know your thoughts
October 28th, 2009 at 9:41 am
Very informative article. Thanks for sharing.
October 28th, 2009 at 10:34 am
nice cereal commercial
October 28th, 2009 at 6:06 pm
Is backlink the same as hyperlink?
October 28th, 2009 at 6:55 pm
hell yea thast what i needed to know! thanks
October 29th, 2009 at 11:27 pm
Thanks for the information!
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October 30th, 2009 at 9:43 am
Does anyone know a pagerank tool that still works? The one listed in this article is another one that currently doesn’t work.
November 1st, 2009 at 7:17 am
Google Pagerank is not important. It is only 1 of about 200 factors to get high search engine position. Many websites with pagerank 0 have also good google position.
November 10th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
my web professor, John Blandly, told me that he posted YouTube films under the name johnblandly and was very pleased by the result–he said he hopes to one day get a Nobel Prize for this–I have my doubts–
I do think you are on to something, however–thanks
November 10th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
my web professor, John Blandly, told me that he posted YouTube films under the name johnblandly and was very pleased by the result–he said he hopes to one day get a Nobel Prize for this–I have my doubts–