Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on this topic.

When I first started blogging, I was always excited to see people give me blog links or put me on their blogroll mostly because it was cool to think that someone thought my blog was worthy of citation. In the back of my mind, I was secretly hoping that it would drive some direct traffic my way.

While it’s true that direct linking may drive some traffic when done by a very popular website (my legal blog netted roughly 100,000 visitors when it was linked by Kotaku), the real effect is usually on the backend and you may not even know about it.

The first thing that you need to do is download this plugin for displaying Google PageRank and Alexa Ratings if you use Firefox. Once it’s enabled, you’ll notice a little bar in the bottom right hand corner of your Firefox browser which will tell you the PageRanks and Alexa Rating of the webpage you’re visiting. If you don’t or can’t use Mozilla Firefox, you can use this free pagerank checker.

We’ll deal exlusively with Google’s PageRank right now. What is it? Why do you want it? How do you get it? Let’s take one at a time.

What is PageRank

PageRank is meant to be a measure of your authority from Google’s perspective. Google implements a series of algorithms to find out information about your site so that it can label you an authority on a particular keyword or phrase, a spammer, or something in between.

Why Do I Want PageRank?

Let’s start off by saying that there is definitely a corelation between having a high traffic website and having a high PageRank. It’s no coincidence that IMDB and Wikipedia both have very high PageRanks, and that they both show up whenever you search for movie stars. The higher my PageRank, the more likely Google is to return my website in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page), leading to more traffic from my website.¹

How Do I Get PageRank?

The experts agree that the single most important factor to obtaining PageRank is getting your website linked from external websites with “spare” PageRank. Imagine the act of placing a hyperlink to another webpage as telling Google, “Hey, I like this person’s content.” If Google thinks that people like your content, they’re more willing to have you represented on their SERPs, and this is reflected by your PageRank.

Caveat: By linking to another page (internal or external) you’re giving away some of your PageRank. In actuality, you only have a certain number of PageRank to give. You can’t “create” new PageRank — you have to share it. So whenever you think about linking to another blog or website, consider that you’re giving a little part of your PageRank away.

Don’t be discouraged from linking now, though. In a lot of cases, you DO want to give away some of your PageRank to websites that deserve it. Consider it a reward for a job well done.

One thing to keep in mind is that when you give away PageRank by means of linking, you can only give as much PageRank as your website gets from linking. Looking at it from this perspective, it’s a reciprocal arrangement. You wouldn’t have had this PageRank to give away if it weren’t for some kind soul linking back to you. So give credit where credit is due and don’t hoard all of your PageRank.

In The Importance of Linking and Getting Linked - Part II, I’ll explain how you can still link to another webpage without losing any of your PageRank, and I’ll tell you what I’ve done to joshauriemma.com to maximize my PageRank with respect to “link love.”

Share and Enjoy: