Joe Majewski » PageRank

Google’s Next PageRank Update in July 2010?

Joe Majewski — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 10:33:08 +0000

Before you get your hopes up, this is not a confirmation that Google’s PageRank update is underway. On the contrary, I am actually interested in finding out myself when Google will be executing their magical PR update.

I remember learning in the past that Google updates PageRank three or four times per year, and it being the beginning of July, I would expect them to be doing another PR update soon. We are halfway through 2010, after all.

If anyone knows any information about the next time Google will be rolling a PR update, then please comment below, as I am highly looking forward to finding out my latest PageRank status for dozens of pages across all of my websites.

It would be really nice to finally achieve a PR3 for the home page of this domain name, but I would also be more than happy to see some of my sub-pages receive a PR1.

As things currently stand, only the home page of this site has a PageRank greater than zero, which is depressing, to say the least. I do, however, have many pages at PR0, while at the same time boasting a much higher load of pages with a PR N/A, which is also disappointing.

I’ve done a lot of work on this blog since Google’s latest update, adding a ton of new content. In addition to that, I’ve also added quite the abundance of source code enhancements to help Googlebot find the information it needs to appropriately rank me on the search engine results pages.

I’ll be sure to update this entry with any news that surfaces in the coming weeks. Hopefully Google won’t keep us eager web developers waiting too much longer.

The Importance of Backlinks

Joe Majewski — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 19:09:32 +0000

What are backlinks, why are they important, and how can I get more? These are just a few of the frequently asked questions about search engine optimization. Unfortunately, most professional webmasters neglect to share their secrets simply because the information is invaluable. Yes, invaluable. Metaphorically speaking, backlinks are Internet gold.

Also known as incoming links, inbound links, inlinks, and inward links, backlinks are the key to success when trying to increase traffic to your website. To put it simply, a backlink is a hyperlink from an external website that points to yours. The more pages on the Internet that link to your website, the better. It may seem like I’m stating the obvious, but there’s more to it than the simple fact that more links to your site means more people clicking those links. There is a lot more value in a single backlink than you might think.

Take a look at my article on Google PageRank if you aren’t already familiar with it’s role in determining search results. In short, PageRank (PR) is a number that gets assigned to each page on the Internet to represent it’s importance. When Google calculates this value, it finds all incoming links and takes a “share” of the PR from those pages and gives it to the page linked to.

Take this, for example:

This is a small-scale depiction of how PageRank is obtained. As you can see, page A contains links to and from pages B and C, while pages B and C simply link back to A. The first thing that I’d like to point out is that page A is the big winner, as it has links coming from two sources. Although page A does lose some of it’s PR when linking to the other pages B and C, this is outweighed by the links coming right back.

Let’s hypothetically assume that each page on the Internet begins with a single point of PageRank, and that 85% of it’s PR is given away to pages that get linked to. I didn’t just pull those numbers out of thin air, but they are rather the accepted values used by most webmasters for calculating PR. Proceeding, we can calculate the PageRank of page A by using this formula:

PageRank(A) = .15 + .85 (PR from backlinks)

Looking back at the diagram, we can see that pages B and C each contain only a single link which points back to A. Using the formula above, we can see that .85 PR is given to A from both of the other pages, as the entire 85% is transferred over. Thus, page A will have a PageRank of 1.85 (.15 + .85 from B + .85 from C). Pages B and C both result in a PR of .575 (.15 + .425 from A). The reason that page A gives .425 instead of .85 is because page A has two outbound links, meaning that the PR transferred over has to be shared between all pages being linked to.

Page A: 1.85
Page B: .575
Page C: .575

PageRank cannot be calculated in a single iteration, however. Clearly, page A is the victor, but if those same computations were executed again, the numbers would be slightly different. The second time around, page A would be equal to .15 + .85 (.575 + .575), or 1.1275. After these calculations are performed dozens of times, the values become more and more accurate.

What I’m trying to say is this; backlinks are important. If someone links to this very blog post, my entire website would benefit as a result. The reason is because my entire website is filled with links that circulate throughout all of my pages (kind of like the way all websites operate). The PR that this page would gain as a result of being given a backlink would spread quickly throughout the rest of the site upon performing a dozen or so iterations of PR calculation. The home page, for example, is linked to at the top of every page, so it will naturally have the highest PageRank.

There still remains one unanswered question; how do you get more backlinks? For the most part, providing useful and quality content to your readers is the best way to attempt to generate backlinks. You could also put a link to your site in the signature of a forum that you might actively post on.

If you are having issues with gaining quality backlinks, then perhaps you could clean your website of outbound links. Linking to other websites will lower your PageRank, as seen in the example above. Many people, including myself, believe that it is not a good idea to remove all outbound links from your website. Google’s web crawler doesn’t like running into dead ends while searching the Internet, and if you remove all outbound links, then it will certainly be stuck within your domain and you may be penalized.

Understanding the importance of quality backlinks is essential if you intend on optimizing your website for search engines. If you are relatively new to SEO, then I highly recommend that you read more information on the topic. You may surprise yourself with how effective it can be to make slight changes to the overall design of your website.

Google’s PageRank Update

Joe Majewski — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 00:03:29 +0000

Google is in the process of performing PageRank updates today. I recently opened up my web browser and was surprised to find that my PageRank went from a pitiful PR0 to a respectful PR2. This update has really boosted my morale, as I worked very hard for that PR.

I’m going to keep on doing what I’m doing and maybe I can earn a PR3 by the time they release their next update. I have written many articles about Google PageRank which will surely be in the list of related posts found below this article, so if you are interested in learning about how to increase your Google PageRank, or to simply learn more about how it’s calculated, check out some of my other blog posts.

That’s all the news for today!

Aiming For PageRank 1 :: My Insight Into Google’s Algorithm

Joe Majewski — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 17:45:28 +0000

It wasn’t long before many of the pages on this site began being assigned PageRank 0 (PR0), which baffled me at first. I had always been under the impression that PageRank was something that took many months to update. It seems that perhaps PageRank 0 is the exception, or maybe Google assigns PageRank values based off of the PageRank of the rest of the site.

This simple hypothesis would explain why certain YouTube videos achieve PR3 or PR4 weeks after being released, as they are quickly crawled and assigned a temporary PageRank during the period of time between legitimate updates to preserve Google’s accurate results.

Google’s results are constantly changing due to what they refer to as “rolling updates”, made to keep everything up to date. If it took three months for all new pages on the Internet to become valuable to the search engine then there would be millions of outdated pages that “deserved” to be atop the lists but didn’t make the PR update “cut”.

I wouldn’t want to give myself a bad name, so I am going to stand out and admit that this is all just my simple explanation based off of observations that I’ve made. This would also explain why some websites dramatically rise or fall in PageRank seemingly overnight, as the “legitimate” update rolls through and determines a more suitable PageRank for that specific website.

Who knows? Maybe Google truly believes that this website has already earned a PageRank 2, but because of the fact that the official update has not yet been run through, all I can do is wait and find out. For the time being, all of my pages will either be labeled as PR0 or PR N/A.

There is a lot of mystery behind the infamous PageRank algorithm, and I am slowly beginning to understand more and more about it. It will be a happy day once I log onto the Internet to find that this site has got some green on that bar (you know what I’m talking about).

And oh, how I despise the waiting game.

How do Keywords Impact SERPs

Joe Majewski — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:20:05 +0000

When someone executes a Google search, every word in their query acts as a keyword. When Google decides on the results of that search, keywords act as an important modifier for your website’s ranking; in fact, they are possibly the single-greatest factor in determining where you will rank among others.

PageRank is also an important factor, but realize that PageRank is more general. If your website is about flowers, there is no reason why it should place on top of the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) for the search query boats. I consider PageRank to be a multiplier-factor; having a high PageRank will boost the relevance of your website for searches containing your keywords, but you must have the keywords to even qualify.

Let’s go a bit deeper. So what if you do want your website to start competing for the keyword boats, even though your website is about flowers? Simple. Every time the word “boats” is found on your website, Google will take note of that, and increase the relevance of that keyword for your website. Thus, it is extremely easy to gain keywords, but it takes time.

So now that you have written about boats multiple times on your website, you now have some relevance with that keyword. The next time someone searches Google for “flowers and boats”, your website will come out on top. Great job! But how often will it be that someone searches Google for such a random phrase like that? Probably not very often, which brings me to my next point; it is generally a good idea to keep your website on topic.

Take this website for instance. The majority of content here relates to Computer Science. Zoom in a little bit, and the majority of my Computer Science content is about web design. When I make a blog post, I make sure that it relates to Computer Science in some way. Yes, that gives me a lot of things to write about, but I wouldn’t dare writing about flowers; I can’t have it all. When deciding what type of content you want on your website, try to choose a broad topic. For instance, if you want to make a website about flowers, but also want to have the possibility to write about boats, you can think of your website as being under the outdoors category. Now you have given yourself boundaries, and that makes it much easier to decide on what you can and cannot write about.

This is the number one reason why most blogs fail. People tend to write about whatever comes to mind. If I decided to write about random topics, I would have WAY more keywords than I do now, but all of my keywords would have low relevance. Start out small, and slowly expand. If I was to write an article about candy, Google would never dream of putting me on the top of the results for a keyword that I only used once.

If you are a webmaster that hasn’t yet signed up for Google Webmaster Tools, do so now. They provide you with information about your top 200 keywords, and the top search queries for your website, along with many other useful tools. Check this out:

While I do get to see my top 200 keywords, right now the relevancy on most of them is rather low. This website of mine is still rather new, and doesn’t yet have a whole lot of content. Leave a comment and share yours for comparison; I’d really like to see what the keywords page looks like for a larger website.

I check Google Webmaster Tools on a daily basis, watching as my keywords get shaped up. Being a webmaster is a full time job if you plan on competing for the top SERPs, but it’s also a lot of fun.