How to Get a Top 10 Ranking…

What some fail to realize or account for is that the PageRank values shown in the Google Toolbar are not the actual PageRank values that Google uses to rank web pages. The Google Toolbar is divided up into 10 equal linear ranges from 0 - 10. These linear divisions correspond to a logarithmic scale that Google uses. The actual scale is estimated to be anywhere from log base 5 to log base 10. This public Toolbar PageRank is however what most people talk and agonize about.



The Toolbar PageRank value only indicates that a page is in a certain range of the overall scale. One PR=5 page could be just above the PR=5 division and another PR=5 page could be just below the PR=6 division, which is a really vast gulf between them.



Although the exact logarithmic base used for PageRank is a secret, the following table should give you an idea of how different the Toolbar PR is from the actual PR.







Toolbar PR (linear) Actual PR (log base 5) Actual PR (log base 10)



0 0.15 0.15



0 - 1 0.15 - 1 0.15 - 1



1 - 2 1 – 5 1 - 10



2 - 3 5 – 25 10 - 100



3- 4 25 - 125 100 - 1,000



4 - 5 125 – 625 1,000 – 10,000



5 - 6 625 – 3,125 10,000 – 100,000



6 - 7 3,125 – 15,625 100,000 – 1,000,000



7 - 8 15,625 – 78,125 1,000,000 – 10,000,000



8 - 9 78,125 – 390,625 10,000,000 – 100,000,000



9 - 10 390,625 + 100,000,000 +







What this means is that moving a page from a PageRank of 6 to a PageRank of 7 is

much harder than moving from a PageRank of 4 to a PageRank of 5.



Some pages (such as new pages) that the Toolbar displays a PR value for may not have been indexed yet, and as such don't have any “real” PageRank of their own. What is happening is that one page on such a site may have already been indexed and as such PageRank has been estimated for the new page as a result. The new page generally is then ranked 1 point below an indexed page on the site, but this is













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just an “estimate” PageRank that exists only in the Toolbar. Before exchanging links, search for the actual page on Google to make sure that it is indexed.



Whichever scale Google uses, keep in mind that a link from another site increases your site's total PageRank, as explained next.







Increasing PageRank





Each page of your website has a PR value, and so does your website as a whole. Depending on how you structure your internal links will dictate to some extent what the PR value of a page will be, as will external links pointing to a page on your site. Although page PR value is important, you should really be trying to increase your overall site PR value.



There are only two ways to increase your site’s overall PageRank:



1. Get more incoming links that point to your site.



2. Add new pages to your site (which was discussed in a previous chapter).



The PR value of each page indexed by Google on the Web is in constant flux. New pages are added, old pages are removed, more links are added – all of which over time decrease the “value” of your incoming links.



As the number of websites (and web pages) in Google’s index increases, so does the total PageRank value of the entire Web, and so also does the high end of the overall scale used. This is kind of like the top student setting the “curve” for an exam at college. The top student gets 100% and everyone else gets correspondingly less. Therefore, the top-ranking site (or handful of sites in actuality) gets the maximum, perfect PageRank score (which is a 10 in the Google Toolbar) and everyone else is scaled down accordingly. As a result, some web pages may drop in PageRank value for no apparent reason. If a page's actual PR value was just above a division on the PR scale, the addition of new pages to the Web may cause the dividing line to move up the scale slightly and the page would end up just below the new division.



What this means is that you should always strive to get more links that point to your site, otherwise your site will naturally start slipping in rankings due to the “decay” of PageRank value for incoming links – both from other pages on your site as well as from other websites. This is also why you should add new pages to your site on a regular basis, as additional pages will increase your site’s overall PR score too.



























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The PageRank Equation





OK, I know you’ve waiting for it, so here is the official PageRank equation. Although impressive looking, it’s not really that complicated:





PR(your page) = 0.15 + 0.85 [(PR(page A) / total links (page A) ) + (PR(page B) / total links (page B) ) + «]







There are a couple of observations to note about the PR equation:





PR values for based on individual web pages.



The PR value of each page that links to your site in turn is dependent on the

PR of the pages that link to it, and so on backwards.



A link’s value (amount of PageRank or “voting power” forwarded to the linked- to page) is only 85% of the linking page’s PageRank value, and this value is diluted (decreased) by the number of other links on that page.



PR has nothing to do with keywords - it is purely dependent on link quantity and link strength, as discussed previously.





After playing around with the equation, some may incorrectly conclude that a link from a page with a PR=4 with only a few outgoing links is worth a more than a link from a page with a PR=7 with 100 outgoing links because for the latter, the “voting power” or value is divided up among 99 other links.



However, you must remember the logarithmic nature of the true PageRank. This means that a link from a PR=7 page that has lots of outbound links may be worth more than a link from a PR=4 page that has only a few outbound links. Whether this is true is dependent on the log base used for the PR equation, which is a secret.



Do not get caught up in the minutiae of determining whether a site is worth exchanging links with. Barring link farms, Free-For-All (FFA) sites, sites with a PR of

0 (which either aren’t indexed or have been “blacklisted” by Google), and sites that have nothing to do with your theme, you should strive to get more links that point to your site - period.





Note: Google performs from 20 - 40 iterations of the PageRank equation for each page in it’s entire index to determine the new PageRank value each month. This process takes up to a week to accomplish and is the primary cause of the “Google Dance” each month. For more information, see Deep Crawl and the Google Dance.





In most cases, when you want a link to your site placed on another site, the other site owner will want to have a link to their site put on your site as well. This is called

"reciprocal linking". It is for this reason that you should create and maintain a

"Related Links" page on your site.



In addition, you should also create a “Link to Us” page where other site owners can simply copy your HTML link code to their Links page. In this way, you control the use of keywords in the text of such links that point to your site.





Note: If you won’t be using different graphic banner ads, you can combine these two pages into one. In this case, simply list your “link to us” code at the top of your Related Links page.