SEO 101

PageRank as Explained by Google

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important."

Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don't match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query.

Top Rankings In the Search Engines Depend on your Link Popularity

Good link popularity can drastically increase search engine traffic to your website. Well placed text links are often a very good source of targeted traffic that will have a direct impact on your link popularity and can even generate additional search engine traffic to your site.

All of the large search engines now recognize Link Popularity as being an important factor in their keyword relevancy algorithms. Therefore, increasing the amount of relevant sites that link to your site via your selected key terms can improve your rankings for those terms. Although there is no guarantee to getting good rankings, boosting your site's popularity can help you get an edge on your competitors.

Google uses three things to determine the ranking of your site: