If you have been surfing the web for a while, or have a site on the web you have no doubt heard the term PageRank. If you own a web site and have not heard about PageRank now is a good time to learn.

What is PageRank?

Essentially PageRank is a link analysis algorithm, named after Larry Page and used by Google. PageRank was designed to make search results more relevant to the person using the search engine. It works by assigning a value to a web page based on what sites link to it. However it goes much deeper than that. PageRank also looks at the weight it has assigned to the linking pages. From the number of links to web page and the value of the pages linking to that site, PageRank determines the value it assigns for that page.

Sound complicated? That is because it is complicated. In fact my brief description does not really do it justice. Plus add in the fact that the engineers at Google are always updating the algorithm to prevent it from being abused. Not long ago Google rolled out a few changes that had dramatic effects across the web. Sites that had a PageRank of 7 (PageRank is out of 10) went to a PageRank of 3 overnight. needless to say it was a shock to a lot of people.

How does PageRank Affect a Website?

Well firstly PageRank will affect where the web site shows up in Google search results. As you probably already know the higher up a site appears in search results the more traffic it will get. But if you have or want to have advertising on your site it is also important. A lot of advertisers look at a websites PageRank when determining if they will advertise there or not. I also believe Google AdSense takes into account a sites Pagerank when determining which adds to place on the site.

At one time TenaciousCreations.com had a PageRank of 4. At the time I was upset that it was only 4, but now not having any PageRank I would gladly go back to having a PageRank of 4. However when this site had some PageRanking I consistently had Google placing higher paying ads on my site. As my PageRank decreased so did the price per click of the ads Google Adsense placed on my site.

How Do I Improve My Websites PageRank?

Okay so now we know what PageRank is and why it is important us. But how do we improve our sites PageRank? Well if you have followed my site at all you will know I always stress good content. If you have good content, that people can benefit from and want. You will have other websites deep linking to your site. More relevant links == more PageRank. Link exchanges can also work. However I feel Google has got smart on this and now puts less weight to a link exchange than they do a deep link with in another site. When ever i created a new Photo Shop tutorial I always submitted them to a bunch of tutorial sites. Most of these tutorial sites are nothing more than a collection of links. For a while I enjoyed a very good PageRank, however at the time of writing this article I have a pretty dismal PageRank.

You have to remember search engines are always trying to improve the way they work in order to provide better search results for their users (ie customers). A search engine wants to make sure when a user enters his or her search terms, the search engine will turn up the results they want. If you keep this in mind and provide quality content I am very confident that will also improve your PageRank.

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 Sometimes it seems as though the internet is full of thieves. When I first started my blog I noticed that my high resolution finished pictures were being stolen. That lead me to learn how to place an unobtrusive water mark into my images.

 Now it seems my posts are being stolen word for word and published to sites full of ads. I guess I should be flattered, that some one thinks my posts are worthy of stealing. But they don’t even include a link back to my site. If I even get the idea for one of my posts from another site I always make sure to credit that resource. I would ask people do the same for me.

 It turns out this is common practice out there in the big bad internet. They even have a term for it – Blog Scraping. Well I thought there was nothing I could do about it until I came across this post.

 I was all set to add some code to my site when I thought “Hey I should just make a plug in to do this.”. Thats when the light bulb went on, and I realized that there probably was a plug in already written for that. So I resolved that I would search first to see if there was a plug in out there already made. Well it just so happens that some one beat me to the punch in writing the plug in. If your running word press you should check out Joost de Valk’s SEO Blog to grab a plug in that inserts a link back to your site in your RSS feeds.

 I really don’t know what else one can do to prevent these Blog Scrapers from stealing your content. But if you know some better ways please tell me how in the comments.

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