Many customers believe that a high PageRank will make them number one the results page. Is this true? Yes and no? Let’s take a view of what PR is.

p>First of all what is PageRank?

PageRank is what Google initially based their link analysis algorithm on when they first launched their revolutionary search engine. It allows Google to calculate the relative importance of a site based upon the number and quality of inbound and outbound links that exist on a site.

The formula for PageRank can become slightly complex but sometimes an image is worth a thousand words:

Let’s assume that your site is F and the BBC is B and that CNN is C. Finally a similar site to yours (completion) is E.

If you site F gets a reciprocal links from site E this help promote your sites PR as E has a large PR since this has 6 inbound links from low weighted sites. But you also give a little of your PR away as you give a link to B and back to E

But C has very high PR due to the nature of B having massive PR from its inbound links and only 1 outbound link. So 1 good high quality link can push your PR rankings up massively.

How can I find out my current PR?

You can find out what your current PR ranking is but downloading Google’s toolbar. On this tool bar you will find a greenbar that ranks from 0/10. 10 Being the highest!

Google toolbar only updates periodically, about every 3 months. SEO experts get very excited/depressed when the PR export happens. PR is actually calculated in real time by Google but they only display their results every 3 or 4 months, to stop people reverse engineering their algorithm.

PR exists to Google as a floating number but we see it as an integer.

How any links do I need to get a PR4?

As you can see for the diagram above, PR four can simply be achieved from 1 link; but the most common way is to obtain a number of lower weighted links to help push your rankings up.

How hard is it to get to a 10?

It’s almost impossible to get to a 10, there are a very few numbers of sites out there that are a PR10. Google.com being one of them. To give you an example of hard it is to reach a PR10, Mircosoft.com is only a PR9, and this has millions of pages and thousands of inbound links.

My Site is on a PR4 it’s not that hard?

Well to get a PR4-5 is1000’s easier than a PR.

Hopefully this diagram will explain this:

So what can I do to get a high PageRank?

The best way to do this is to obtain high quality back links from reputable sites. Many backlinks will not necessarily help you.

Will having a high PR get me to number one?

Back to our original question, yes high PR will help get you to number one, but having a high PR alone will not make you number 1 in your industry. If you concentrate on high quality content and a service that people want and proper search engine optimization, doing this will help you cut through your competition with relevancy even though they might have much higher PR.