Improved search engine rank is difficult enough to obtainwithout you having to trawl through all that has been writtenabout Google Page Rank in order to find the truth. There aremany misconceptions about Page Rank, and Part 2 of this articledispels the most common of them, the first being that Yahoo andMSN have their own version. In fact this is not so. Yahoo had a beta version of a ‘WebRank’ visible for a while, ranking complete websites, but it isnow offline. MSN has no equivalent as far I can ascertain. Theterm ‘PageRank’ is a trade mark of Google, which is why I referto it as Page Rank and not PageRank. A small difference, but asignificant one. If you are one of those that believe that the more links youcan get to your website the better, then you are wrong. WhenGoogle started the Page Rank frenzy by putting that little greenbar on their toolbar, they didn’t realize the consequences ofwhat they were doing. People fought to get as many links totheir website as possible, irrespective of the nature of thewebsites to which they were linking. That is misconception Number 2. You do not link to websites,you link to web pages, or should I say, you get links back fromweb pages, not websites. It is, after all, the link back thatcounts isn’t it? The link away from your site doesn’t count.Wrong! Misconception Number 3. The link to your web page counts no more than the link away from your web page. In fact, it could count less. You could lose out in the reciprocal linking stakesif your web page is worth more than the other person’s. Let’s dispel that misconception right now. When you receive alink from a web page (not web site) you get a proportion of theGoogle Page Rank of that web page that depends on the totalnumber of links leaving that page. When you provide a link toanother web page, you give away a proportion of your Page Rank that depends on the number of other links leaving your web page.

The Page Rank of the website you get a link from is irrelevant,since that is generally the rank of the Home Page. You willlikely find that all these great links you think you have fromPR 7 or 8 websites are from a links page that has a PR of ZERO!So you get zilch for the deal. If you are providing them with alink from a page on your site even of PR 1, then you lose! Mostpeople fail to understand that. No incoming link can have a negative effect on your PR. It canhave a zero effect, but not negative. However, if you have anincoming link with zero effect, and an outgoing reciprocal linkwith a positive effect to the target page, then you willeffectively lose PR through the deal. Every web page starts witha PR of 1, and so has that single PR to share amongst otherpages to which it is linked. The more incoming links it has, thehigher PR it can have to share out. If your page has a PR of 4 and has three links leaving it, eachgets twice the number of PR votes than if 6 links leave it. Yourpage with a PR of 4 has to get a similar number of PR votesincoming as it gives away to retain its PR. In simple terms, ifyour PR 4 page is getting links from a PR 8 page with 20 linksleaving it, you lose out big time! It’s simple maths. No page ever gives away all of its PR. There is a factor inGoogle’s calculation that reduces this to below 100% of thetotal PR of any page. However, that is roughly how it works. Youdon’t get a proportion of the whole website ranking; you onlyget part of the ranking of the page on which your link isplaced. Since most ‘Links Pages’ tend to be full of otheroutgoing links, then you won’t get much, and will likely getzero. That is why automated reciprocal linking software is often awaste of time. If you want to make the best of linkingarrangements, then agree with the other webmaster that you willprovide each other with a link from equally ranked pages. Thatway both of you will gain, and neither loses. Some softwareallows you to make these arrangements. Another misconception is that only links from external webpages count. In fact, links between your own web pages can bearranged to provide one page with most of the page rankavailable. Every page has a start PR of 1, so the more pages youhave on your site then the more PR you have to play with anddistribute to pages on your website of your choice. Search engine rank can be improved by intelligent use of links,both external and internal, but Google Page Rank does not havethe profound effect on your search engine listing that many haveled you to believe. Good onsite SEO usually wins so keep that inmind when designing your website.

About The Author: Peter normally has several pages his websitelisted within 2 days, and he shows you exactly how he does it onhis website http://www.improved-search-engine-rank.com usingscreenshots and actual examples Add a Comment

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