Google, the search engine that has evolved into the focus of all search engine optimization professionals has in the past half of a year introduced the Page Rank feature. This is nothing new to the search engine optimization industry, and probably nothing new to most of our readers as we have mentioned it in previous search engine articles.

For those who are not familiar with Google's Page Rank, which is commonly known as PR, is Google's calculation or score of a web page based on external and internal linking of a site, as well as on-page criteria of the web page being linked to as well as the web page being linked from. The Page Rank calculation is much more detailed and complex, and we go into the calculation in more detail later in the tutorial, as well point out other places that you can read up on how Google calculates a web page's PR.

Before you can begin to develop or increase the PageRank of your website and individual web pages, you will need to evaluate what the PageRank of your site's pages is currently. To view the PR of your site you will need to download the Google Toolbar.

PageRank is in some ways related to link popularity, but the calculation is dependant on the quality and strength of the links, not just the number of links. So, how does one go about building and increasing their Page Rank. It is not as difficult as some may think.
Google
searches more sites more quickly, delivering the most relevant results.

Ranking Web Pages
Google runs on a unique combination of advanced hardware and software. The speed you experience can be attributed in part to the efficiency of our search algorithm and partly to the thousands of low cost PC's we've networked together to create a superfast search engine.

The heart of our software is PageRank™, a system for ranking web pages developed by our founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University. And while we have dozens of engineers working to improve every aspect of Google on a daily basis, PageRank continues to provide the basis for all of our web search tools.

PageRank Explained
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.

Integrity

The Google Page Rank value relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the Internet by using its vast global link structure as a prime 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 or are favorably viewed as "established firms" in the Web community weigh more heavily and help to make other pages look established too.