The Long View: What is Page Rank and how does it affect my online presence?

If you are unfamiliar with the term, Page Rank can be explained very simply. Search engines such as Google rate websites by their relevance to the search terms used by people when they use these search engines to find things.

The order in which search results are displayed is very much down to Page Rank, which is basically the importance of that page in the eyes of the search engines. As a business with an online presence, you obviously want to make it as easy as possible for your potential customers to find your website.

The world wide web is a very competitive place to do business; regardless of what industry you’re in, there are more than likely a large number of competitors out there all vying for the attention of the consumer. This makes having the highest page rank possible an essential requirement for your business, if you hope to reap the lion’s share of web traffic.

Thankfully, there are a number of things which your business can do to ensure that its page remains high on the list of search results.

One of the most important things your company must do is to ensure that your website is properly optimised for search engines. Not only your main page, but every page which makes up your site should be optimised for its particular topic.

Let’s suppose that one of the products which your business sells is colour sensors – you’ll
want to optimise the page on your website which features these products for this key phrase. Not only should you do this, but when creating links to this page from elsewhere on the web (we’ll cover this briefly later on), the anchor text you use for this link should ideally contain your keyword – this gives your link increased relevance in the eyes of search engines.

Failing this, your link should be on a page with a decent page rank if its own and with very few other links on it. This will also give you great value in terms of link popularity. The 'Talk' sites currently offer this for all advertisers.

Links which point to your website can be a great help towards achieving a higher page ranking. However, search engines do know the difference between a higher and lower quality link. Links which come from websites which are relevant to your own carry the most weight, particularly if your link is one of only a few on the page. The more links there are on a page, the less impact each will have in terms of page rank.

If you look at a typical page on Engineeringtalk, for example, you will see that it will have a page rank of 3 or above - advertisers will also have a guarantee that their link will be the only outgoing link on the page.

Take a look at this page http://www.engineeringtalk.com/news/elc/elc000.html
You will notice that Elesa (UK) are an advertiser and they have a banner advert at the top and bottom of the page. This will link back to their website and carry a Google page rank of 4 with it. This is the page rank of that page and as it is the only outgoing link on the page, this will boost their website page rank as a result.

There are of course a wide variety of strategies to use for optimising your website and building links in the interest of increasing your page rank. However, the methods given here will be helpful to companies who have already begun to use the potential of web marketing strategies to raise their online profile and those who are just getting their feet wet in the sea of the internet alike.

Remember, the 'Talk' sites are highly relevant marketplaces for your products and services and this is why we rank so well with the search engines. Make the most of them and they will work very well for your business.

Andrew Long
February 2009

Andrew Long is a freelance advertising sales manager for Pro-talk and also offers advertising services at http://www.selling-advertising.com

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Recommended further reading at:
http://tinyurl.com/bvwjq5 - with a link to Google's webmaster checklist.

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