The Real Buzz on the Value of PageRank in SEO

People involved in search engine optimization or SEO are now asking about the real value of PageRank. Perhaps it is one of the most frequently asked in SEO forums. A lot of people have been wracking their brains just to find ways of increasing their PageRank ratings, but what is really its value?

PageRank is basically one of the components of the ranking algorithm implemented by Google. In short terms, it ranks the pages that appear in the search results in a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 being the lowest and 10 being the highest. All other factors equal, a page that has a higher PageRank is more popular than one with less PageRank. But PageRank alone is not an accurate measure of a websites ranking, and thus the extent upon which the value of PageRank for SEO is still being questioned.

Websites take so much pride about getting high PageRank ratings. A lot of website owners celebrate quite grandiosely when they reach PageRank highs of at least 8. It seems that PageRank is considered to be an important status symbol these days and thus it is very much valued in SEO circles.

SEO or Search Engine Optimization has been a very much prioritized aspect of web designing that almost every person who avails of the services of a web designer would devote a lot of their resources to be on top of the search engine results when their keywords are typed in. Among the measures that website owners look for in achieving this feat is the PageRank rating that their site obtains, and they are willing to pay extra amounts of money to get a high ranking and maintain it. With such great value placed on PageRank, web designers come up with various steps to increase a pages ranking.

What PageRank Is

PageRank is basically a method used by Google in which a numerical value is given to a site to indicate the quality and number of links pointing to it. A websites PageRank is shown on Googles Toolbar, which is embedded on a web browser such as Mozilla Firefox or Microsoft Internet Explorer. PageRank was originally formed out of a theory formulated by Googles founders wherein they thought that a web pages quality could be partly assessed by counting the number of links that point to it. Each link, was considered a point added to the websites ranking. PageRank represents the scale of these votes, combining the number and the quality of the links of a site.

PageRank follows a formula where a links quality is derived from the PageRank rating of the site from which the link comes from divided by the amount of links present on the very same page. Thus, a link coming from a site that has a fairly small PageRank rating but still contains a few links can still have a higher overall PageRank value than a link coming from a site with a much higher rating but has several links. This means that te ranking of each page is the rough total of the PageRank rating of the many links that point to it. This formula has changed over time and still changes up to date, making PageRank rather an unreliable benchmark for a websites popularity.
The mutable nature of PageRank and the way it is derived has been subject to question by SEO enthusiasts. If such a rating does not give fairly accurate measurements, then its value as a means of establishing rank popularity may not be that reliable.

At present, the value of PageRank as factor to influence a sites ranking is still rather significant, albeit far from the way it did in the past. This is why many web designers and SEO practitioner have dismissed PageRank in their priority for page optimization. The value of PageRank in the eyes of many people has definitely diminished.

However, this is not to say that PageRank should be dismissed altogether. The point is that an SEO specialist should not dwell to much on PageRank ratings, but rather just use it as a reference tool. Perhaps this is just a reminder that in the world of SEO, as in any other field, one should not rely too much on a particular tool or factor because there are many other things that can influence a particular system.

Tags: Accurate Measure, Algorithm, Brains, Buzz, Circles, Extent, Extra Money, Google;, Higher Pagerank, Numerical Value, People Search, Pride, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Results, Search Optimization, Seo Optimization, Status Symbol, Web Browser, Web Designer, Web Designers