eCommerce Glossary: Page Ranking

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What is Page Rank and How Important Is It?

Understanding Page Ranking

You might have heard about search engine optimization. Any online business is not visible unless it has a Page Rank on the SERPs of Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. If your business doesn’t rank higher in the search engine pages, it will not be able to survive in this competitive market.

In simple words, page rank is the measure of how important your web pages are. Google considers links to be votes. However, some votes are more important than others. So, page rank is Google’s method to count link votes and decide which page is more important on that basis. The score is then put to use along with various other factors to rank well in the SERP.

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Sergey Brin and Larry Page were the one to invent Page Rank calculation. It actually evaluates the link quality and quantity on a webpage to decide a relative score. The score can be between 0 and 10.

There are only a handful of sites with Page Rank 10. They have the highest inbound links on the internet. The websites with a score of 5 have a significant number of inbound links. However, the brand new pages that don’t have inbound links come with Page Rank 0.

So, links in the first page of SERPs are of higher quality and relevant. However, page rank is just one of the many factors that are taken into consideration.

Page rank is crucial. This is because it is one of the factors that search engines such as Google considers when it decides which results to display at the top of its listings. To rank higher, the page has to be relevant and of high quality.

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How to Improve Your Google Page Rank?

Money doesn’t buy Google rank but SEO does. Thus, if you put in little time and effort, you can improve your search engine position without even spending a penny. Here are some ways to do that.

Improves User Experience

As per a study on ranking factors, there are few important factors that decide the page rank of a website. They are time spent on the site, website visits, bounce rate, and pages every session These are the primary top ranking factors. All these play a very important role in improving user experience.

In simple words, if your website is easy to browse and provides relevant and valuable information, it will get more visitors. The users will spend more time on the site to browse different pages. This, in turn, will improve the search engine ranking.

Optimized Content

Make sure that you have high-quality content for the website. This is one of the best methods to increase website traffic. It helps in improving your page rank on the SERPs.

A recent survey of marketing professionals concluded that on-page content development is an effective SEO tactic. So, while writing content for the website, check if it’s error-free, rich in keywords, and mobile compatible. It should target the audience’s specific needs. The content should contain links to additional external and internal content.

Get Backlinks for the Site

Links from other sites are known as backlinks. This is one of the most important Google page rank factors. So, inbound links from high-authority domains reflect your site’s authority. It helps in bringing in more traffic and improving page rank on search results page.

Fix Broken Links

Sure, having good quality links on the website is one of the best ways to get more traffic. However, if links bring a 404 error (page not found error), it can negatively impact user experience and also your page rank in the SERP. So, you need to fix the broken links. There are many tools out there that will help you to find the broken links and fix them easily.

Optimization Page Speed

For desktop, as well as mobile, you should continuously monitor the page speed. Make sure that you keep enhancing it. You can use a tool to keep track of website speed and performance. To optimize page speed, you will have to do the following.

  • Optimize Images: Use image editing software to optimize the image. To further optimize the image, use an image optimizer or compression tool. Also, make sure that the image fits into the given space. This will give your web page a clean look.
  • Browser Caching: As the web browser loads the page, it loads several resources. Browser caching stores the resource files on the user’s device. This way when the users move on to a new page, all the resources don't have to be loaded again. So, enable browser caching and load the already opened resources directly using the cache.

On-Page Optimization

On-page optimization is highly important if you have to rank higher on the Google page rank. For these you have to follow the best practices like telling Google what the page is about, creating descriptive but brief titles, developing clickable meta description, etc.

Aim for Featured Snippets

If a user types a question in Google search, Google pulls out content from relevant sites to display it in a special featured snippet. This is the box above the number one search result. If you aim for this snippet, you can increase traffic significantly. It improves brand visibility and credibility. In order to rank in the Google snippet, think of searches relevant to the business and spruce up the site with authoritative and clear answers.

Stagnant Content, Broken Links, Duplicate Pages, and More.

Things Leading to a Loss of Page Rank

Linking to other sites will not cause you to lose your page rank. It is counted as a vote. However, adding new pages to the site can dilute the page rank to some extent. If you follow the page ranking practices and build links to the inside pages, it can enhance the website rank over time.

A site can lose page rank if the site with a higher page rank removes its link pointing to your website. Other than this, activities like irrelevant or paid links, hidden text links, or automated links inside the content can also reduce page rank. So, getting links for the website is important for SEO. But make sure that you pay attention to quality and not simply quantity.

This is the reason the SEO consultants offer link building services to their clients.