In this article I'll try to demystify Link Popularity and PageRank,
or PR, clarify some common misconceptions and tell you how
things work, in plain English, with facts and examples.
Link Popularity is based on the premise that people link
to good sites, and if a lot of people link to your site,
then it must be good. In plain English, if other sites are
linking to your site, your site is popular, therefore it
is useful and deserves a boost in rankings, so people can
find it faster and easier.
Link Popularity is not specific to Google only, but was
adopted by the vast majority of Search Engines.
Link Popularity is only one of the many factors (good content,
number of pages, text, anchors, internal links, static URLs,
keywords, meta tags, and many, many others) that are used
in calculating your place in a search result page (ultimately,
this is what all of it is about - how findable you are in
a search).
PageRank (PR) is specific to Google and is a trademarked
proprietary algorithm. There are many variables in the formulas
used by Google, but PageRank is primarily affected by the
number of links pointing to the page, the number of internal
links pointing to the page within the site and the number
of pages in the site.
PageRank focuses strictly on the quantity of links and is
directly influenced by the PageRank of the pages that are
linked.
In Google, Link Popularity puts more emphasis on the quality
of links (ex. links from sites related to yours by topic
or by industry rank much higher than links from non-related
sites).
PageRank - as the name suggests - is specific to a web page,
not to a web site. Every page on your site has a PageRank
and every one is different, based mostly on your linking
system. Generally - but not always - the goal is to achieve
maximum PageRank on your main page, the one people hit when
first entering your site.
You can check the PR of a page by installing the Google
toolbar in Internet Explorer (the "official" way), a PR checker
extension in Firefox, or by using one of the many online
utilities, such as the one at http://www.bsleek.com/tools/link_popularity.php
(which also checks Link Popularity and presence in DMOZ).
In Google only, PageRank is one of the factors that influence
Link Popularity.
PageRank (PR), developed by Google founders Larry Page and
Sergey Brin at Stanford University is considered to be the
heart of Google's software. PageRank solves an equation of
more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Instead
of counting direct links, PageRank interprets a link from
Page A to Page B as a vote for Page B by Page A. PageRank
then assesses a page's importance by the number of votes
it receives and by the PR of the page which casts the vote.
There are two types of incoming links that can effectively
contribute to increasing your Link Popularity:
1. Links from other sites that focus on the same keyword
phrases you do. In other words, if a site that can be found
in search engines by using a search phrase like "corporate
cd-rom presentations" links to your site, and your site actually
specializes in designing interactive media, like CDs or DVDs,
then that link will help your Link Popularity. But if your
site is about selling onions, then the mentioned link will
be useless.
2. Links from relevant categories in major directories industry-specific
directories and portals. The most important major directory
is DMOZ (who feeds data to many others) and is the toughest
to get in. Submission is free and there are actually people
reviewing your site. The waiting times are in the months
order, so my advice is submit and forget. The industry-specific
directories are very important. For example, if you make
interactive media, and list your site in a directory dedicated
to graphic design or media under the appropriate category,
then search engines like Google will pick that up as an incoming
link and will increase your Link Popularity. Listing your
site in such a directory is very useful to your potential
visitors, and this is what Google is trying to emulate with
its software. Remember, with Google and many others, there
are no humans reviewing your pages, but software acting under
very specific and strict rules (algorithms).
Both types of links I described above can be unilateral
or reciprocal ("you link to me and I link to you").
Reciprocal links are subject of controversy and misconception
today. Many people think that exchanging links with sites
is the easiest way to get them, new people learning about
link popularity are under the mistaken belief that they must
have links that are reciprocated on their site. Still many
others are saying that reciprocal links are dead and that
not only you won't gain any benefit from them, but your PR
(Page Rank) will decrease (your page will "leak PR", as it
is said in the SEO circles).
Both camps are not entirely correct. You certainly don't
need to get reciprocal links, but you can if you want to.
Remember, it is links pointing to your site that are the
helpful ones. Links pointing from your site to other sites
are wonderful to have because they help your visitors find
related stuff, but if your site doesn't lend itself to linking
to other sites, then by all means, don't do it. You need
to do what's right for your company or hobby and your site
visitors, first and foremost.
Links from sites that have nothing to do with yours will
definitely not help you gain Link Popularity, but might produce
a temporary boost in PR (PageRank).
If the PR (PageRank) boost is only temporary, why bother?
You should try to boost your PR (PageRank) even if temporary,
because when Google sends Googlebot, its indexing robot,
to spider your website, the bot is instructed not to crawl
your site too deep unless it has a reasonable amount of PR
(PageRank). But in order to increase your overall PR (PageRank)
and, in order to have all your keywords from all your pages
available for searches, you need Google to look at all of
your pages, because the number of pages and the internal
links affect PR (PageRank). But Google will not see your
internal links and your keywords if only few pages are indexed,
so you see, it's catch 22 and the best way to win this is
to start working on your incoming links as early in the game
as possible.
To see which pages from your website are actually indexed
by the search engines, you can use the following search with
the major three (Google, MSN and Yahoo!): site:www.yourdomain.com,
where www.yourdomain.com is the full address of your site.
There is no space between site: and the address, otherwise
you are actually searching for the words site: and www.yourdomain.com.
To get a glimpse of your site's Link Popularity, use the
following search with Google and MSN: link:www.yourdomain.com.
Again, there is no space between link: and the address. There
is a common misconception regarding this. People think that
the correct format is with the space, as it might produce
a lot more results. It is incorrect, as the format with the
space merely looks for www.yourdomain.com and the word link:,
but will not actually show you who really links to you.
Please note that Google might not display all the links
to your site that are stored into its database. Don't panic.
It has been reported that this is reminiscence from Google's
paranoia days, when the search engine's execs did not want
competitors to figure out the way they track Link Popularity.
As a word of caution, please do not waste your money on
submitting your sites to "hundreds of FAA sites". Free-For-All
sites are not considered quality links today. This approach
might have worked years ago, but search engines are constantly
trying to stop any activity they consider as spamming, designed
to artificially inflate numbers. This is actually a great
thing, as it keeps the internet a fair and happy place.
Two more words of caution:
1. If you read SEO (Search Engine Optimization) related
articles, please make sure you read stuff as recent as possible,
as things change.
2. Major search engines, especially Google, keep their algorithms
(rules) in deep secret. Therefore, you'll probably wonder
why you are reading so many different opinions, sometimes
conflicting. The answer is simple, because little is actually
known to the public about the deep inner workings of a search
engine.
In general, there's no need for the average site to obsess
over link popularity. Contrary to popular belief, link popularity
constitutes only a portion of most search engines' ranking
algorithms. Arguably, Google places more emphasis than most
other engines on incoming links at this point in time. How
much these actually boost a site's ranking is debatable and
truly depends on the site. It also depends on the words that
are placed in the anchor text (the clickable portion of a
text link). From my personal experience, just a few highly
relevant links with strong anchor text can go a long way
towards link popularity for many sites.
Andrei co-owns bsleek (
http://www.bsleek.com) – a
site that specializes in web hosting, design, promotional
items, printing, CD Presentations and more. Andrei is on
the Board of Consultants for Daterade.com and has amassed
an extensive technical knowledge and experience through his
career as the CIO for a major travel management company and
through his past careers in military research, data acquisition
and aerospace engineering.
