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Marketing Coaching: Understanding the Basics of Page Rank
By Paul Marshall (c) 2010 Strategic Web Marketing Net
(http://strategicwebmarketing.net/)

You've just built your website and you want to show up on the
search engines. You start reading about SEO and one of the first
things that jumps out at you is something called "Google
PageRank." You know about the big dog of the search engines, but
what is PageRank and why is it important in what you're trying
to do?

Any good marketing coach can explain that easily. If your site is
placing high in free (organic) search results, you're getting
free advertising. Notice the word "free." That's always a good
thing. Building a strong PageRank (PR) by getting good quality
links coming in to your site takes time, but it isn't going to
eat a hole in your pocketbook.

You want to work on raising your site's PR to get "authority"
with the search engines. A site with "authority" gets better
visibility in search results. Really understanding the algorithm
behind your site's PR will likely have you reaching for a bottle
of aspirin. In the beginning, just concentrate on understanding
the basics and how they relate to your efforts to promote your
site.

How Is PR Defined?

Google says PR is all about the "uniquely democratic nature of
the web" and "using its vast link structure as an indicator of
an individual page's value." Basically, a link from one page to
another is a vote for that page. However, not all votes in this
democracy are equal. Some votes come from higher-quality pages
and are weighed more heavily. (Other factors in determining PR
include the relevance of search phrases on a page and actual
traffic to the page.)

How Is PageRank Expressed?

PR values are expressed on a scale of 0 to 10. Sites from 0 to 2
are probably pretty new to the Web and have few incoming links.
Sites that have made it to PR3 to PR5 are fairly well
established; PR6 and above are really popular and have a lot of
high-quality links. There are very few sites that make it to the
PR7 to PR10 range.

The ones that are ranked that high are usually owned by big
corporations or major media outlets like the Wall Street Journal
(PR8). Improving your site's PR by getting relevant,
high-quality, incoming links is one of the most affordable SEO
methods at your disposal. Rather than trying to get to a specific
number, just concentrate on improving your number.

Is My Site's Homepage The Only Page With PR?

No, each page in your site will be assigned a PR, something that
is emphasized in marketing coaching as a valuable tool. You can
use relevant interlinking to distribute PR throughout all your
pages.

Huh? Well, just hang on to that thought for a minute. For right
now, just understand the concept that some pages in your site may
earn a higher PR than others, and that you can use that to your
advantage.

PageRank Passes From One Page To Another

Here's how it works. A page with a high PR passes some of its
value to a low PR page over a link. You can use this to promote
your site in a couple of ways. When your site's pages are
interlinked in a relevant way, PR gets distributed more evenly
throughout the site. Also, you can "court" relevant sites that
belong to other people through your link-building campaign. This
is really how your site starts to gain "authority."

Start By Building Your Index Page's PR

Generally, marketing coaches will tell you to begin by working on
your home page's PR. This can be time-consuming, and not just
because you'll be building relationships with other site owners.
You have to do your time in what's popularly called the Google
"sandbox." This just means that new sites like yours probably
won't get any PR at all for the first few months you're on the
Web.

How Do I Check My PR?

There are a number of free, online tools for checking PR
including PRChecker (http://prchecker.org/) and SearchStatus
(http://www.quirk.biz/searchstatus/). At PRChecker you type in a
page's URL to see its PR. SearchStatus is a FireFox extension
that shows a site's PR at the bottom of your browser. (It also
shows your site's Alexa rating, another method to measure online
"importance.") You can also install the Google Toolbar
(http://toolbar.google.com) for Firefox or Internet Explorer and
enable the PageRank function.

Is Building My PR All I Need To Do?

A marketing coach will tell you that having a strong PR is only
one part of your SEO campaign. For instance, say you're looking
around for a site to link to yours. You find one with a high PR,
but it's a site that sells links. Move on. Their high PR number
doesn't do you any good because a link from that site to yours
will have a lower quality and will pass less authority to you.

Understanding the basics of PageRank is essential in putting
together a high-quality link-building campaign for your site, but
don't get fixated on the PR number and ignore other important
facts. Just gain a basic understanding of what PR is and how it
functions and use that to your advantage in building a reputation
of authority for your site.
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Marketing online since 2004, Paul Marshall can help you market
on a realistic budget. You can learn about his professional
Internet Marketing Coaching and Consulting Services on his home
page: http://strategicwebmarketing.net/ He also offers
Affordable SEO services (and d-i-y Coaching), which you can
learn about here: http://strategicwebmarketing.net/seo.html Get
to know Paul, just visit Strategic Web Marketing.net today!
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