How To Increase Google Pagerank (PR)
There seems to be a Google Toolbar Pagerank update underway. Instead of the normal announcement, I thought I’d list what I think Google PR is actually good for because for most, it’s totally useless information. Oh, and of course, how to increase your PR if you won’t be persuaded otherwise.
For the purposes of this quick article I’m very much muddying the line between Toolbar and REAL PR – two different, unsynchronised mechanisms as I understand them.
What follows is obviously my opinion based on observations I’ve made. Years ago I used to manipulate PR quite effectively, now I don’t even bother.
First - I think you only need a high Google PR if you have a LOT of pages. Otherwise, a high PR alone is quite useless. I still think PR may be a defining entry level requirement for pages to get into Google’s main, competitive results, but that’s it. For me PR is akin to having a ticket to a party. If you have one, you’re in – if not, your out, and in the supplemental results (a sort of alternate version of Google where not all filters /requirements are turned on because they are uncompetitive terms).
A PR 5 page will not necessarily outrank a PR 0 page because in the wild, other metrics matter more. I’m basing these opinions on the notion Google is still using Pagerank in some way – just not as an important ranking measure.
- If you have a lot of pages, a lot of PR is good if you are spreading about properly
- Getting a link from a high PR domain is cool, but only of real use in a PR donation sense if the actual page your link is on has a decent PR (ie is well linked to itself) and doesn’t have a hundred other links on there.
- Pages on your site which have a grey bar *might* be an indication of a potential issue or indeed G might have a problem with OR
- It can also be a simple sign you’re not linking to pages often enough in the site structure. Then again…. it might be just a bug with the toolbar.
- A high PR might be an indication of the popularity and reputation of a site, but then again, it might be a hijacked PR sourced by a crafty SEO who’s spotted a conduit that can be exploited.
- A page’s high PR might be a good indication of the popularity of that page, and a 2 second test to determine the canditure of that page to get a link from, and I still use it as such
I do think Google has gone a long way over the last 18 months to radically change the way either PR is donated, or radically reduce from which pages PR is donated.
I think a lot of it is to do with click / crawl depth. For instance, forums don’t pass a lot of Pagerank these days compared to what they used to, but maybe that’s because they’re just bigger. Most low quality directories don’t seem to pass a lot of PR. Social media sites seem to suffer the same problems as forums. I don’t think blog comments pass a lot of PR either.
The fact is nobody knows how it works these days, it’s probably far removed from the original pagerank paper, and while it may still be a defining entry level requirement for competitive SERPS, it’s not an important element AT ALL when it comes to ranking pages that are already in the SERPS – there are other, much more important influences.
How To Improve Your Pagerank Score
First, if you want a particular page on your site to have PR, make sure it’s original content, and unique enough that Google would want to keep it in it’s index. For instance, a list of links often goes Grey. Pages with duplicate content, and those not linked to often enough in the site structure is also a surefire way of going grey.
- Get links from real sites
- Get links from pages than in turn have links to them
- Links from articles with a few links that You are the main focus of are excellent
- Getting a link in the Yahoo directory for instance, still looks like a great way of getting an instant PR boost, great for new sites, but it costs £199 for a year
- Getting a link on a trusted domain’s resource page (ie for jobs, events etc) like a university or government site
- Buy an old or expired domain, or comandeer an old domain network that has PR, and transfer PR in by way of links or 301s.
In the end, you should not be thinking about improving your Pagerank. Pagerank is an after effect.
Just get links from real sites and forget about Pagerank.
If you’re Toolbar Pagerank score is reduced this PR update, it just means the links you have are passing less PR or the links you had have been removed. That’s nothing to be worried about if you’re actively promoting your site, and it won’t have an impact on your traffic or rankings, if you have a smidgeon of PR left.
Written by Shaun Anderson
I’m building a site for my client and he’s been hounding me about speeding up my progress to get a decent PR ranking. Thanks a lot for the tips
“it might be a hijacked PR sourced by a crafty SEO who’s spotted a conduit that can be exploited.”
Google is too smart to allow PR to be highjacked anymore. High jacked PR is a thinng of the past. They learned from their mistakes
““it might be a hijacked PR sourced by a crafty SEO who’s spotted a conduit that can be exploited.â€
Google is too smart to allow PR to be highjacked anymore. High jacked PR is a thinng of the past. They learned from their mistakes”
You think? lol – I am looking at such a network one of my competitors is milking right now (although I don’t agree with outing anybody else’s strategy. I used to do this all the time.
It is said that a single higher PR links from a page that doesn’t have any other link is enough to get a PR equal or 1 less than the linking page.
I often manage to get PR3 on my sites after 2-3 PR updates but breaking into PR4 league always takes much more effort.
I think it’s easier to get links from ‘personal blogs’.
Content sites that have a niche focus seem to be what is fairing the best IMO.
Another good tip: get Firefox, and install one of the ‘no-follow/do-follow’ add-ons which shows you on first sight on which website you can leave a do-follow link.
hi,
thanks for that informative post.very useful since we are dealing with a lot of sites.
A lot of people live by the rule that links from higher PR sites is more important than anything, and yes to some degree the higher the PR the better.
In my opinion you should really be trying to get links from sites that rank high naturally, no matter what the PR of that site is
I believe that backlink from related site would give you more PR soon.
Internal linking also plays a factor in the Page Rank of the pages within a site. It is most common to see the homepage, index.htm, to have the highest PR of the website.
I’m finding your concept of PR not being that important seems to have some merrit to it. I just started a site about 3 1/2 weeks ago and according to Google Toolbar none of my site pages have any page rank yet but yet I come in first in a couple long-tail searches that are basically identical to page title names from other more prominent and established websites… such as the NIH. I’m not sure how exactly but obviously something beyond PR is at work…
Pagerank is still important. It’s just not the be-and-end-all. Also, every page you make and Google knows about has REAL Pagerank according to the original paper.
It seems no one knows the GOOGLE SECRETS of SEO – my free Microsoft Office live Website I made up was on first page for most keyword Google searches for the Man with van Edinburgh and a few other Common Keyword terms, while the old WordPress blog site sits on page 4/5 dropping from page one some months back …
Shaun what’s happening !!!
I agree with your thoughts however people should really ignore page rank. To see the validity of a link one should merely check how well the site is ranking and how many links it has pointing to it.
Whilst Page Rank is no longer the most important factor in achieving a high ranking on the SERP, I still think it gives the site more credibility if a visitor sees the site has a PR4 rather than a PR1.
“if a visitor sees the site has a PR4 rather than a PR1″ – Most surfers don’t even know what Google PR is, or if 1 is better than 4. You’re sites only more credible to… linkbuilders
I agree with you.
Google has a huge understanding that what makes it top search engine is that it gives to searchers what they(we) want: good quality content related to entered keyword.
If we have good content about any topic, it should be fair that we get good ranked. If we need to artificially force our rank up, than we should pay less attention to SEO uniquely and pay more attention to our content.
Hi Shaun,
thank you for your interesting and useful SEO articles..
I’m not sure if you already published something about the recent words of Matt Cutts about PR sculpting and siloing, where it seems to indicate that there’s a revision of the calculation methods of PR flow through “nofollow” links…I’ve seen some video (videos.webpronews.com/2009/06/09/latest-drama-with-canonical-tags-and-duplicate-content/) and read something (webmasterworld.com/google/3925952.htm) but in Italy it’s not yet a very “hot discussion”…any suggestions?
Bye
Actually I do have some thoughts in a draft post. But I intend to finish the get the Ebook out first before I resume normal blogging frequency.
OK I broke the silence.
“I still think PR may be a defining entry level requirement for pages to get into Google’s main, competitive results,”
I don’t think that is the case, my three busiest sites all don’t have any page rank at all. And all rank well for terms in Google and Google images.
I’m new to this ranking system. How does Google distinguish between good and bad content?
Also, in theory, site material that was plagiarized would be up the ranking with the original content?
Google looks at keywords and citations from other sources. It can’t tell if content is good or bad like a human can. If it meets it’s requirements IE has the keywords in the title and the content and incoming links from trusted websites (or indeed the website it appears on has already passed some trust analysis), it will rank it. Duplicate content? Generally speaking Google trys to work out what the original source is again by citation via links from other websites but if your content appears on other sites with a lot of authority and is modified somewhat, this will rank too.