| In the SEO community there is a lot of focus on PageRank as an indicator of a domain's value. Although it is probably one of the most important factors in a domain's value in the eyes of Google, there are a few points that should be understood.
The higher the PageRank, the more likely Google is to trust it. This holds true for both external and internal hyperlinks. Google PageRank has 11 values, between 1 and 10. Google gives each page on the internet a weight and when one page links to another it passes some weight onto the page it is linking to. First of all, for anyone who doesn't know what PageRank is - it is a value used by Google to determine how important a domain is based on analysis of link on the internet. Web pages that don't have any PageRank are often referred to as having N/A PageRank.
Also, pages that have a lot of low PageRank and PageRank N/A links pointing to them can have their PageRank lowered as a result. A website can have a high PageRank with relatively few links pointing to it if those links are of a high PageRank.PageRank is generally not assigned to a web page higher than the pages that link to it. Probably the most important factor in the distribution of PageRank to a web page is the PageRank of the web pages linking to it. So, if a page has 4 PageRank 4 and 3 PageRank 3 links pointing at it, it will probably be assigned a PageRank of 4. The sheer quantity of links does not help to increase PageRank. The higher the PageRank of pages linking to a given page, the higher its PageRank is likely to be.
Some people suggest that the text content of the page affects PageRank assignment, but this doesn't seem to be the case. There is no substantiated evidence that text affects PageRank other than pages that have been spammed often have their PageRank reduced.
When it come to sub-pages, time is a factor in PageRank assignment. When new sites first get assigned PageRank their sub-pages often remain without any PageRank. In general, sub-pages are a little slow to get assigned PageRank. Google is generally less trusting of sub-pages unless they belong to a trusted domain. In particular websites with a lot of sub-pages and even more so sites that link to a lot of internal pages (like directories) can really struggle to pass their PageRank to internal pages.
The structure of the site has a major role to play in the distribution of PageRank. Google uses what is known as block level analysis to pick apart web pages. They use their vast knowledge of the structure of the web to decide what links on a page are probably the most trustworthy and the pages these links point to are more likely to be assigned PageRank.
Google can and do manipulate websites' PageRank. This is generally as a penalty for sites that have used unhonest methods. This can often cause all the site's sub-pages to loose their PageRank. It has also been claimed that in the past Google has made mistakes in PageRank distribution.
Finally, the PageRank of a web page may change even when there has been no change in the links pointing to that page. This is either due to changes in the structure of links between all websites or modifications made by Google.
Sky Alfaro is an SEO consultant with the SEM Labs SEO Agency where she helps small to medium sized companies with search engine marketing training. |
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