You must consider different SEO metrics as a creator to know how your webpage is performing. One of them is PageRank. Many users don’t even know what is PageRank and its essential role in SEO metrics. Perhaps this is why PageRank is rarely mentioned anywhere to measure a webpage’s growth. However, this blog will explain to you what is PageRank and how you can calculate it to estimate your website’s growth.
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What Is A Pagerank For A Webpage?
Pagerank is an algorithm developed by Google. It is one of the significant algorithms used by Google to rank web pages on the search engine. Pagerank is designed to access the authority of web pages. The higher the number of backlinking, outbound links, and interlinking you have from the authoritative page, the more preference your webpage gets from the search engines. This means that whenever a query is searched related to your niche and your web content, the chances of your site appearing on the search engine result page (SERP) increases.
How Are Pagerank Calculated?
Google usually calculates Pagerank based on the number and the quality of backlinks and outbound links a webpage contains. Here’s the mathematical formula for calculating the page rank of the webpage.
PR(A) = (1‑d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + … + PR(Tn)/C(Tn))
This equation, T1 to Tn, is represented as all pages linking to page A. C is the number of outbound links, and d is the damping factor. For people who do not know the damping factor, this is the possibility of the person continuously following links that were randomly clicked before.
How To Check Google Page Rank?
The only way to check the page ranking of your webpage is by using Google page rank checker or others available online. Listed below are some of the top 10 best web page rank checkers.
- SmallSeotools
- Check PageRank
- Duplichecker
- Sitechecker
- DNS Checker
- Searchenginereports.net
- Ahrefs
- prchecker.info
- The HOTH
- Google Tools
Accumulating inbound links from the authoritative page is significant as the links from the webpage with lower ranking scores will hinder your page ranking score. This is one of the reasons why Google gives preference to other webpages than yours.
Which Of The Following Factors Have An Impact On The Google Pagerank?
Since we know the importance of inbound links in SEO PageRank, it’s time to look through some other factors beyond that. It will give detailed insights into your page and help you discover unknown factors that influence your page rank.
Factors That Have An Impact On The Google Pagerank
1. Anchor text
Anchor text is the clickable text in a hyperlink that provides context about the linked web pages. According to Google’s original paper, Anchor text has a crucial influence on a page’s ranking as it describes the webpage better than the page itself. Suppose you had a page about eco-friendly carpets; the authoritative pages used the exact term as anchor text. This would have increased your page ranking score.
Ensure to audit the inbound links you get from the pages and see if they have used the exact term as anchor text to their page. If they haven’t, it is advised to get rid of those links.
2. The Probability Of A Link Being Clicked
The PageRank algorithm allotted equal weights to each link the webpage contains. Whereas, Google patent says that not all links should be provided equal weight as some links are more likely to get clicks, but some aren’t. So the links that have clicks should have more weightage than the others, which also impacts your page ranking score.
3. Internal Links
Internal links are the links you add to your content from your website. This is another powerful SEO tactic to increase the ranking score of your page. Through interlinking, you let PageRank walk through your site and drive authority to orphaned pages that aren’t interlinked anywhere.
4. Nofollow links
Web pages with nofollow links don’t pass the PageRank. So if you are writing webpage content with multiple links and do “nofollow” all the links except one, the ranking score of that webpage will only increase. Earlier, SEO used the nofollow attribute to sculpt the page rank flow, also known as “PageRank sculpting.”
3 SEO best practices for maintaining and improving PageRank
SEO involves a lot of optimizations, but we are focusing on the basics that will satisfy the PageRank algorithm.
1. Prioritize Internal Links
- Make a list of high performing pages on your website and pass internal links to other pages that need a boost.
- You can compile strong and weak pages using Google Search Console (taking impressions and CTR into account).
- Use partial match keywords as anchor texts, and be very careful about exact-match keywords.
- These internal links should relate to the page where you add them.
2. Find and Fix Broken Pages
- Broken links are those links that lead to dead pages — these links can either be internal pages or external ones.
- You can use the “Site Audit” feature on Ahrefs to find all the broken internal and external links on your website.
- For Broken external link: Paste your domain > Click on “Project” > Then Choose “External Pages” > Select “HTTP status codes” > Then find “4XX.”
- For Broken internal links: Go to “Site Audit” > Select “Project” > Choose “Internal Pages” > Choose “HTTP status codes” > Click “4XX.”
3. Build High-quality Backlinks
- Aim to get backlinks from players associated with your niche but who aren’t your direct competitors.
- You can also get backlinks from high authority news sources.
- If expenses are too high, then you can also get backlinks from lower authority news sources — Just ensure that they are not spammy websites.
- And the external source you are receiving a backlink from, should be relevant to your page in terms of language and topic.
Conclusion
Now that you know what is PageRank, remember that auditing your backlinks is critical to know if your page has links from a lower-ranked webpage or spam sites. Inbound links can do both, build your domain authority or ruin it completely. For that reason, you must practice link building, as it is one of the best SEO strategies to increase page rank.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q.1 Is Google still using PageRank?
Yes, Google still uses PageRank algorithm to score pages and determine their quality.
- It looks for a website with diverse content pages – But here’s the catch, the content of all pages should be related to the things you claim to cover on your home page.
- It analyzes content of your pages because it values trustworthiness and authority.
- You can look for pages with canonicalization issues.
- It was created in 2019 by Larrey Page and Sergey Brin – But has changed since.
Q.2 What tools can I use to check PageRank?
Following tools can help you know the domain authority of your website.
- Semrush
- Moz
- Ahrefs
Q.3 How does PageRank affect search engine rankings?
- So the PageRank algorithm number, quality and location of internal links as well as backlinks.
- Hence it’s recommended to clean up the broken links (internal or external).
- And to disavow the spammy backlinks gained from external websites.
Q.4 Do “nofollow” links pass PageRank?
No-follow backlinks don’t affect the ranking of your website, but they impact the traffic influx towards your website.
