Many of the SEO concepts we encounter are under debate. One such topic is the importance of Google PageRank.

Overview

Every search result that Google churns out is a result of over 200 factors that govern their algorithm. One of these factors is the so-called “PageRank“.

As Google puts it:

“PageRank is the measure of the importance of a page based on the incoming links from other pages. In simple terms, each link to a page on your site from another site adds to your site’s PageRank.”

Of course, big G knows more than just to credit each and every link that points to a website. Spam links are isolated, together with other links that are manipulated and doesn’t seem to be relevant (an effect of abusing link exchanges and link farms). This is why SEO specialists are always on their toes to build quality links.

PageRank (PR) is presented as a numerical grade system, 0 being the lowest score and 10 as the highest. A fresh new website will have a PR score of 0, while a large authority website will most likely have a score of 8 to 10.

PageRank and SEO

There was a time when PageRank was believed to be the driving force in SEO. It was thought that Google derives its search results according to PR score (PR 10 on top of the list, and so on). But if we do some tests, we will find that the first page of Google results may not necessarily display websites in descending PR order.

Here, a search for “Womens Hiking Shorts” pulls up websites of varied PR scores:

This is why some SEO experts do not even bother to check their website’s PR; as long as they take care of the other tasks that help improve ranking such as article marketing, link building, on-page SEO and others.

Is it still important?

These days, we know that it takes more than just a PR score to lay the groundwork for good ranking. However, we know that it still carries some weight in website optimization. Domains are sold according to their preexisting PR value and high PR backlinks are sought after because those may guarantee a priority spot in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Website optimizers often target at least a PR 4, which is more often than not, a ticket to the first page of Google results. This ranking factor works on page-level statistics, so a domain.com PR score may be different from a domain.com/page PR. At the same time, the PR value of a webpage may be different at any given time, but Google does not let webmasters take a peek at its actual value. In fact, the PageRank values displayed on Google toolbar or SEO Quake (in the illustration above), for example, lags at least a month behind.

Improving PageRank

SEO experts may have different takes on how to increase PageRank, but here are some things that are consistent across the board:

• build relevant, and quality external backlinks
• build internal backlinks (links between pages in your site)
• Use an SEO-friendly template
• limit links within a page (too much links might look bad)
• submit only to link directories with high PR
• continue creating quality content (so readers will want to share your page)

With all that being said, PageRank may just be a way for Google to classify a website but may not really have a direct effect on ranking. In any case, websites built with good intentions will sooner or later place on top of the SERPs.

Here’s something you may want to look into, in getting your site ranked better: domain canonicalization.

Any single webpage may be accessed through a number of URLs, but mainly it’s between www.domain.com vs. domain.com (without the “www”). In the eyes of Google, these URLs are different entities, so they get indexed separately – not good for SEO. Why? Because it will split up the rankings.

To canonize a domain is basically to assign the best URL version for search engines to crawl and index. Close to the original use of the term, it’s like giving it a saintly status.

To check how your site is indexed by big G, do a site: search. Compare the results between site:www.domain.com and site:domain.com. Whichever version turns up most on the results page is your better bet when it comes to creating backlinks.

Take a look at this example where only one version of the domain is indexed:

site:www.domain.com search turns up with no results

site:domain.com search shows pages have been indexed

Consistency is key. If the non-www domain.com version is indexed, then there is no use building backlinks using www.domain.com because it may not do your rankings any good.

But for this website, seowebsite.com, the www-version shows up on both search parameters:

The domain.com search comes up with all www.domain.com results

On this search using www.domain.com, it shows all 14 pages are indexed

To manually set your preference, set up an account at Google Webmaster Tools and go to: Site configuration > Settings > Preferred Domains. Check their help page here. You may additionally do a 301-redirect to your preferred canonical domain, which is pretty much telling the other search engines your preference, too.

There’s also an option to redirect straight from your web host. In which case, it essentially diverts traffic to just one domain, instead of scattering them to the different URL versions.

So, today I learned that one of my new blogs, juantobuy.com is not indexed as www.juantobuy.com. In effect, I will put all backlinking efforts toward the former URL, to maintain consistency (I just did it right there). For this website, however, www.seowebsite.com is more dominant, so that’s what needs to be used from this point on.

Domain canonicalization sounds like a complicated business, but it really isn’t.