HubSpot's Inbound Internet Marketing Blog

Current Articles | RSS Feed RSS Feed

The Importance of Google PageRank: A Guide For Small Business Executives

Digg digg it | Reddit reddit | del.icio.us del.icio.us | StumbleUpon StumbleUpon 


If you’ve spent time (or are simply curious) about online marketing, then the topic of search engine optimization (SEO) usually comes up.  And, no discussion of search engine anything is complete these days without some mention of Google.  This article provides a brief overview of how Google ranks search results with a look at their PageRank™ algorithm (a key component).  I’m not a search engine expert (that’s the bad news).  The good news is that I know enough to describe Google PageRank in relatively simple terms (such that you can impress your friends and family with your new-found knowledge).

Quick Intro To SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Put quite simply, SEO is the process of optimizing your website for the search engines (like Google).  By “optimizing”, I mean attempting to make it such that searches for specific phrases rank your website higher in the search results than other websites.  There are lots of good reasons to want to rank higher, but for businesses, the primary reason is to generate good leads for your offering.  Millions of people use Google every day looking for a product, service or information.  Some of these people might be potential clients looking for your particular offering.  There are two ways for you to show up on the results page when users are doing a search. The first is paid advertising (I’ll talk about this in a future article) and the second is what is known as “organic” (or “natural”) search.  The natural search results are listed free and are dependent on Google’s estimation of how relevant and credible your website is.  Natural search results are my favorite kind, because you don’t have to pay money for them, and they often works better than paid advertising.  I liken this to the difference between getting mentioned in a magazine article and purchasing an ad in that same magazine.  

If you can rank high on the free (organic) search results for Google, it’s like getting tens of thousands of dollars worth of free advertising in the most relevant trade magazines for your industry, every time a new issue comes out.  I’m not sure about you, but that’s pretty interesting to me.  It’s a great way to grow your business and find new clients.  So, how do you get all this free, effective advertising in the search engines?  Well, to do that you need to understand the Google algorithm and how it determines who gets listed.

Google’s Search Algorithm

First, let’s establish a simple example which we can use to frame our discussion.  Let’s assume you are the partner in a boutique strategy consulting firm.  Lets further say that your specialization is advising technical founders of high-growth, venture-backed companies on how to be better at selling.  Now, you could probably identify a number of search phrases that your potential clients might use when interested in this particular topic.  Users may search for something like “technical sales consultant to founder”.  Or, they may just start by looking for content (instead of consulting) and search on “successful technical selling”.  In either case, Google has an algorithm that figures out which websites of the hundreds of millions out there should be displayed in rank order on the results page.  These are the organic (i.e. non-paid) results.  You want to rank high on these results.  [Author’s note:  If you do actually search Google on “successful technical selling”, you’ll find that my OnStartups.com blog ranks #1].

Though Google’s algorithm is extremely sophisticated, it boils down to something like this:

Search Ranking = Relevance * PageRank

Relevance is basically the measure of how your website (or more accurately one of your web pages) matches the search phrase the user has entered.  Measuring relevance is a relatively sophisticated process, but it boils down to some fundamentals like the title of the page, words on the page and how frequently they occur, etc.  So, if your home page has things like “technical selling”, it drives up the relevance for this particular search.  The reason my blog article is ranked #1 on Google for “successful technical selling” is in no small part because of the title OF ONE OF MY ARTICLES (“Successful Selling Tips For The Technically Gifted”).    Basically, Google figures out what your page is “about” by looking at it’s content (and by looking at other sites with similar content that are linking to yours).  It then uses this to figure out how relevant you are for a particular search phrase.

PageRank is an independent measure of Google’s perception of the quality/authority/credibility of an individual web page.  It does not depend on any particular search phrase.  For the public (you and me), Google conveniently reports this as a number from 0-10 (10 being the best).  So, assuming for a second that your web page and your competitors web-page has the same relevance – then whoever has the higher PageRank gets the better ranking – and shows up at the top of the results page.  This is why PageRank is so important.  Your relevance is based on your content (if you’re a consulting company specializing in technical selling, your relevance for stainless steel monkey wrench searches is going to be understandably low).  Your PageRank is what counts.

How PageRank Is Calculated

There has been a lot written and a lot debated about Google’s PageRank, but on one point there is near unanimous agreement.  PageRank is primarily determined by how many other web pages are linking into you.  Google considers this kind of inbound a link a vote of confidence.    But, here’s the trick:  Not all inbound links are created equal.  Web pages with more credibility that link to you have more “value” to your PageRank than those with less credibility.  How is this credibility determined?  Why, by their PageRank, of course!  So, let’s take an example.  Lets say you have your Uncle Charlie link to you from his blog to your small business website.  Let’s also say that Uncle Charlie’s blog has a Page Rank of 3 (this is being a little generous because all Uncle Charlie writes about is his dog Sparky and he has limited inbound links).  This link from Uncle Charlie will certainly help you – a little bit.  It will help you more if you can find 100 such Uncle Charlie websites with a PageRank of 3 and get them to link to you.  

However, if you get a single link from HubSpot.com (the sponsor of this blog), it’ll help you more than a 100 Uncle Charlie websites.  Why?  Because HubSpot.com has a PageRank of 6 and a link from it is much more valuable.  I divide up PageRank into these broad categories:

0-3:  New sites or sites with very minimal links
4-5:  Popular sites with a fair amount of inbound links
6:  Very popular sites that have hundreds of links, many of them quality links
7-10:  Usually media brands (NYTimes.com), big companies or A-list bloggers.

Now, it’s important to note that PageRank is believed to be calculated on a logarithmic scale.  What this roughly means is that the difference between PR4 and PR5 is likely 5-10 times than the difference between PR3 and PR4.  So, there are likely  over a 100 times as many web pages with a PageRank of 2 than there are with a PageRank of 4.   This means that if you get to a PageRank of 6 or so, you’re likely well into the top 0.1% of all websites out there.  If most of your peer group is straggling around with a PR2 or PR3, you’re way ahead of the game. 

What’s Your PageRank?
 
There are two ways to figure out what your approximate PageRank is.  One, you can download the Google Toolbar (the PageRank feature is not turned on by default, so you’d have to enable it after installation).  

The other way is to use the Google PageRank Calculator page on this website.  It’s quick, free and requires no registration.  Check it out.  If you have a PR6 or higher, I’ll be very impressed.

Quick recap:  Organic search is like free advertising.  It’s worth the investment to try and get a high ranking by the major search engines.  To rank high you should do two things:  First, make sure your site has the right relevant content for the types of searches your potential clients are conducting.  Second, try to get the highest PageRank possible.  To do this, you need to get as many inbound links from as many high PageRank web pages as possible.

-Dharmesh Shah

Posted by Dharmesh Shah on Fri, Oct 20, 2006 @ 11:13 AM

COMMENTS

I'm a 6! Woo hoo!

posted on Friday, October 20, 2006 at 12:03 PM by Phil

Well done, a useful entry if I have ever seen one. I wish a lot more people understood how this stuff worked.

posted on Friday, October 20, 2006 at 5:08 PM by Zach Coelius

"So, there are likely over a 100 times as many web pages with a PageRank of 4 than there are with a PageRank of 2."

Isn't that backwards? Wouldn't there be many fewer PR4 sites than PR2 based on what you said before that?

posted on Friday, October 20, 2006 at 5:24 PM by Mike

Mike: You're right, I got this backwards (will fix it now).

Thanks for catching this.

posted on Friday, October 20, 2006 at 5:27 PM by

Well done!

posted on Saturday, October 21, 2006 at 5:23 AM by Sheamus

Thanks for a very lucid article - just checked we have a page rank of 7!

posted on Saturday, October 21, 2006 at 11:54 PM by Dr. Tarique sani

USeful Info. Thanks!!! SO does that mean that one way of increasing my websites page rank would be to leave a comment on a popular blog(for instance) and leave my website name. That would be considered a incoming link to my website. Agreed?

posted on Sunday, October 22, 2006 at 11:08 PM by Aditya

Aditya: Actually, in most cases, simply leaving a comment on another website will *not* increase your PageRank. The reason is because of what is known as a "nofollow" attribute on these links. Most blogging systems use this attribute to prevent comment spam (i.e. links left within comments do not benefit the target site).

I'll plan to write a short follow-up article on this topic in the upcoming week. I think it's a good point and there's good cause for confusion.

posted on Sunday, October 22, 2006 at 11:20 PM by

Question, and I am sure a lot of this kind of thing is being done, but couldn't a high rank site sell its own linking service and just make them hidden, assuming this can remain relatively undetected? How is this playing out, is the quality of the listings just deteriorating or is google on top of this?

posted on Monday, October 23, 2006 at 1:43 PM by markap

Markap:

I believe Google is already on top of this.

The core Google PageRank algorithm "distributes" it's established PR across all of the outbound links. Put differently, if you had a web page with a PR8 and had 1 link on it, the site linked to would get a fair amount of PR value. But, if you had 100 links on that page, each individual link would only get a fraction of the value.

This protects against the "reciprocal link exchanges". Also, it is suspected that Google has even further mechanisms to detect and penalize link exchanges, hidden text within pages and other activities.

posted on Monday, October 23, 2006 at 6:04 PM by

Great article Dharmesh. Clear and concise - as usual.

Got a 7 on our site.

posted on Tuesday, October 24, 2006 at 3:33 AM by sean

Very good information here Brian. Thanks for breaking it down for us.

posted on Thursday, October 26, 2006 at 8:46 AM by Brent Leary

Wow! Tried it and was completely surprised by the result. Good to know as I crank up a new e-commerce site. Thanks.

posted on Thursday, October 26, 2006 at 10:49 AM by k

Helpful article, may help me with my new website

posted on Tuesday, January 09, 2007 at 7:59 AM by Brandon

Great info. How do I add a Post Comments section like this one to my website?

posted on Thursday, September 13, 2007 at 3:33 PM by Monique

Great Article. Seo can be so hard to explain. You put it in simplicite terms ...great job

posted on Saturday, September 29, 2007 at 3:30 AM by Megan

This is a very informative article..^^..thank you for sharing it..I've learned a lot from it..^^

posted on Tuesday, October 23, 2007 at 1:51 PM by Joy

great post...very informative. i had to research like 10 pages just to find all this in 1 post

posted on Monday, October 29, 2007 at 12:36 PM by nc mortgages

If your website can help my page rank, I am willing for hubspot to link to redboxtools. Are you willing?

posted on Thursday, November 01, 2007 at 11:54 AM by Jeff

This is a great article that teaches the lay person about page rank and link popularity

posted on Monday, November 05, 2007 at 11:24 AM by Andy

Place links on these sites. http://pagerank.me.uk or http://pagerank10.co.uk this will help your PR and can cost as little as £1

posted on Saturday, December 15, 2007 at 2:34 PM by Andy

Get a good web designer to SEO your website. It costs a little money but worth it

posted on Saturday, December 15, 2007 at 2:35 PM by Jack

i scored 88% on website grader.
But my page rank is only 1, which is lower than other website which scored lower points than me...
is there anything goes wrong with my website? :(

posted on Tuesday, December 25, 2007 at 1:17 AM by vincent

i forgot to write down my website url. here is it.
http://www.heartbeat.com.my
thanks.

posted on Tuesday, December 25, 2007 at 1:20 AM by vincent

it's quite self explanatory!
thanks for the article
http://www.linkedin.com/in/sumanthkrishna

posted on Friday, December 28, 2007 at 10:17 AM by sumanth krishna

Dharmesh great post...very informative.
http://www.gaj-it.com

posted on Saturday, December 29, 2007 at 1:57 PM by Gaj-it

Very informative post. Thanks.

posted on Wednesday, January 02, 2008 at 7:33 PM by Olugbenga Owolabi

Very useful post, thanks.

posted on Monday, January 07, 2008 at 3:56 PM by Trying to retire early

Simple and easy to understand. Thanks!

posted on Monday, January 07, 2008 at 11:20 PM by Mk

Great post... thank you for taking the time to share!
Quick question, what about forum posts at high-ranking sites? Are they treated like leaving comments? Or could it help PageRank? Thanks!

posted on Wednesday, January 09, 2008 at 11:19 AM by collegeblogger

Great Post, Thanks to this site I got from a 0 to a 1. Hope to keep it going. Lots of great info. thanks again.

posted on Sunday, January 13, 2008 at 3:25 AM by Paul

A very useful post... it's quite self explanatory! It is very fun to read all these ...
Thanks for the article!

posted on Thursday, January 17, 2008 at 10:13 AM by Roolz Sasx

how can i get Google Page Rank.

posted on Thursday, January 17, 2008 at 11:22 PM by edwin

Dharmesh, after reading your article i tried as per your suggestion to get inbound links, now my website ranked good.
Thank you

posted on Friday, January 18, 2008 at 11:37 AM by Jayaraman

You explained it in a clear easy way. Thanks!

posted on Friday, January 18, 2008 at 11:25 PM by Betterbizbuilders

Merci, gracias, thank you!

posted on Wednesday, January 23, 2008 at 7:52 PM by Frau Lami

Oops!
http://lami.us
Merci, gracias, thank you, encore!

posted on Wednesday, January 23, 2008 at 8:01 PM by Languages And More Internet

I found this site very useful and will come back often to get advice on my websites SEO!!

posted on Sunday, January 27, 2008 at 6:49 AM by Jason Thomas

I only got a PR2, I need to get going on moving this up. Thanks for the great information.
Michael J. Fitzgerald, CPA/PFS, CFP, MST
100% Retirement Income Replacement Strategies
http://www.fitzfp-llc.com

posted on Monday, January 28, 2008 at 1:21 PM by Michael J. Fitzgerald, CPA/PFS, CFP, MST

Thanks for a very important article - just checked we have a page rank of 4!

posted on Thursday, January 31, 2008 at 1:32 PM by Sinergica Bilance

I got rank 3, which I think is ok considering my site's only been up for 2 weeks, am I right?

posted on Tuesday, February 05, 2008 at 4:23 AM by Mark

Great resource! Still waiting for my site http://www.top20hotness to get ranked by the almighty Google.

posted on Tuesday, February 05, 2008 at 5:42 PM by banglo

We have only been up for two weeks and are just starting to understand SEO. Thanks for a great starting point. Looks like we have some work to do.
Check us out:
http://jooxter.com

posted on Tuesday, February 05, 2008 at 10:51 PM by Chris Kiernan

Man, I have been trying to understand SEO for a few weeks and I am getting a hold on it finally. I am trying to increase our rankings for Junk removal and junk hauling, but little progress. At least this websitegrader is helping track a lot of this.

posted on Monday, February 11, 2008 at 1:17 PM by Grant

Great blog! This is real good information to have. Thanks!

posted on Friday, February 22, 2008 at 1:42 AM by CasperNCaboodle

Very helpful information. Thank you

posted on Friday, February 22, 2008 at 7:50 PM by adam

Very Good Information. It's Very helpful...

posted on Monday, February 25, 2008 at 1:30 AM by sme

Great article, and thanks for keeping it simple. I feel as though I have a pretty good understanding of Search Engine's and their algorithms, but I just can't figure out why my website has such a low page rank (0). I'm on Yahoo's first page for almost all my keywords, but Google hates my website ;) I just can't figure out why. (I have 309 incoming links, with a decent amount of these quality). I update the site a lot, and get a good bit of visitors = ~300 a day.

posted on Monday, February 25, 2008 at 10:22 AM by Ryan

This is some good information. I guess I have some work to do. Thanks.

posted on Wednesday, February 27, 2008 at 11:30 AM by Marv

Thanks for your help - it has tremendously help my site

posted on Monday, March 03, 2008 at 4:57 PM by Bluetooth

Thanks for the help - this is a great service you offer.

posted on Monday, March 03, 2008 at 4:59 PM by Jesse S.

Great article, thanks.

posted on Monday, March 03, 2008 at 9:53 PM by JigJak

Great information :-)

posted on Wednesday, March 05, 2008 at 9:48 AM by Kiwi Sun Photography

Great info. I think this going to help me out.

posted on Wednesday, March 05, 2008 at 9:09 PM by Hot G Vibe

Thx for the great info. This is going to help my site.

posted on Thursday, March 06, 2008 at 12:03 AM by X4 Extender

I have only learned from this article the interpretation and meaning of Page Rank values. Thanks.

posted on Thursday, March 06, 2008 at 7:51 AM by jessie

Good information. Thank you.

posted on Thursday, March 06, 2008 at 5:11 PM by Diego

Great information... Thanks for the article...

posted on Tuesday, March 11, 2008 at 9:23 AM by Mega Music DJ Services

Great information, very, very, useful. Thank you.

posted on Tuesday, March 11, 2008 at 6:19 PM by Andrew

Great info you have here, I will look into this and see will it give me a better ranking on my webpage. http://www.shinebeyond.com

posted on Wednesday, March 12, 2008 at 8:07 PM by Bryan

good helpful explanation, first time I think I really get it...
Thanks,

posted on Wednesday, March 12, 2008 at 10:44 PM by mark

This posting is extremely helpful and good to provide to my clients.

posted on Thursday, March 13, 2008 at 12:20 PM by Jesus Diaz

I am just starting and this information is really good to know
Thanks
http://www.money-for-grabs.com
s0ny

posted on Thursday, March 13, 2008 at 5:12 PM by s0ny

ATTENTION DHARMESH:
Could you recommend anyone that you personally know who could improve our Search Engine rankings? And also do you know the cost for such professional/technical services? Could you do it for us? You seem really good at it.
From what we've seen, we are the only Immigration-related Website with a news format.
Our website is
www.ImmigrationNewsman.com

posted on Friday, March 14, 2008 at 1:22 PM by Immigration Newsman

My host wants an arm and a leg to modify things you referenced. Is this typical? I paid a ton to have this site (www.lordliftedme.com) built only to run out of cash before I ran out of questions.

posted on Friday, March 14, 2008 at 11:39 PM by JR

Your site has been so helpful to the extent that I have decided to have my page redesigned to be more SE "friendly". I will be back soon to "test" the new design.

posted on Saturday, March 15, 2008 at 7:45 PM by Brian Hunter

Our website www.stub-bud.com has benefited greatly by this site.
Thank you,
James

posted on Saturday, March 15, 2008 at 7:53 PM by James Austin

yes, it is very nice
http://www.kienthuctaichinh.com

posted on Tuesday, March 18, 2008 at 2:19 AM by kienthuctaichinh.com

Best explanation of SEO I have read - great work!

posted on Tuesday, March 18, 2008 at 6:41 AM by Shankar Saikia

Just need software to search high ranked pages to publish website by hand. I do not know how to search pr 6+ pages.

posted on Tuesday, March 18, 2008 at 11:53 PM by mysoftware

This is the best.

posted on Wednesday, March 19, 2008 at 3:04 AM by Anatoly

This is a great post! Goes further than most SEO articles.

posted on Wednesday, March 19, 2008 at 3:26 PM by GreetQ

I have been using a different listing service for over 7 months and I still come up with a zero for Google's page rank. Now, I may switch because of what I have learned here. This is good stuff to know and may help my site http://www.survivalsuppliesusa.com get noticed. Thanks!

posted on Thursday, March 20, 2008 at 7:07 PM by Ron

way to improve of my page rank?
what type of data is very usefull for my site.what type of meta data we can use?

posted on Friday, March 21, 2008 at 4:04 PM by Annie Laya

This is very useful information! Very clear and to the point. I am a graphic designer and am expanding my services into websites. I know how to design them but am still learning about SEO. Thanks for the great information!!!

posted on Friday, March 21, 2008 at 9:51 PM by Aaron

My first grade with websitegrader was a pathetic 7 out of 100. I was depressed for days as Ihad put in hours and hours of daily slog into it. After reading the info on this blog about SEO the bells finally started ringing. After resubmitting my site got a score of 28 out of 100 , big improvement a long way to go still, but have my pages indexed by google. Perseverance does bring rewards. Thanks for your valuable information.

posted on Saturday, March 22, 2008 at 11:12 AM by Cherli

I have had my site up and running for about a year now. www.up2datereaIestate.com I am trying to read everything I can about SEO. I find excellent tools and suggestions here.

posted on Saturday, March 22, 2008 at 11:09 PM by Doug

Does making more outbound links then inbound decrease ranking? Google just dropped Site PR from 2 to 0!!! what else is needed in my site then... www.voipsipasterisk.com

posted on Sunday, March 23, 2008 at 11:59 AM by Sunny

Hi
Thanx a ton from www.findnearyou.com team. As a startup your website grader was an eye opner and hopefully will bring in more visitors once we fix the gaps. Do keep the good work up.

posted on Monday, March 24, 2008 at 5:30 AM by Ram

Just starting to get my remodeling company website out there. These articles and this website are really helpfull. www.renovationinnovationsinc.com

posted on Tuesday, March 25, 2008 at 9:19 PM by Justin Frederick

Thanks. This info has been very helpful!

posted on Wednesday, March 26, 2008 at 1:56 PM by Steven Ray, DMD

Thanks! it will help everybody out there!.

posted on Wednesday, March 26, 2008 at 6:10 PM by onlinecb

Gracias por la información, es muy util y valiosa

posted on Friday, March 28, 2008 at 7:36 PM by Manu

Dear Dharmesh,
Reading your article was an eye opener for me, a rookie website developer from a medical background. It helped me a great deal in optimising www.wikiecho.com a wiki based website I developed as a knowledge base for echocardiography.

posted on Saturday, March 29, 2008 at 7:05 PM by wikiecho

for a computer dummy such as myself...I thank you!:)
GAFSR
www.foryouweddinggifts.com

posted on Sunday, March 30, 2008 at 1:21 AM by GARY A FRANKLIN SR

Darmesh,
This seems like a silly question, but is it possible that using websitegrader can in anyway hurt my site's page rank?
I have a personal blog, and a business website, and I have been checking the "grade" of each site on an almost weekly basis for a couple months. After a couple weeks, I noticed that the page ranks dropped from a "3" to a "0." My inbound links haven't gone down, and I haven't done anything else that I could think of that would angry the almighty google.
Does your product "ping" google in some way, that would cause them to think something is fishy if it is done multiple times?
I think your product, blog, webinars are all fantastic, so please don't take this as an insult. But I don't understand why my page rank has dropped.

posted on Sunday, March 30, 2008 at 10:39 AM by Craig Key

Craig:
WebsiteGrader is an information-only tool (it doesn't change your website). It does query the Google servers to retrieve the PageRank for a given page, but that's very common practice (lots of toolbars, widgets, websites and other things do this querying)
As for the PageRank drop, there's lots of information on the web of recent adjustments in PageRank. Many seem to be random and arbitrary. I'm not sure what caused your drop, but I'm pretty confident it's got nothing to do with WebsiteGrader.

posted on Sunday, March 30, 2008 at 11:27 AM by

Thank a lot. very much

posted on Friday, April 04, 2008 at 9:11 AM by Nattawut

Greate Article I am doing SEO for my site and this article will help me to do that ...

posted on Friday, April 04, 2008 at 10:16 AM by Noman Haider

Hi Dharmesh,
Excellent article.
Clear, Concise and to the Point.
These type of articles are very helpful to us Newbies to the SEO world.
Thanks for having the Links right in the Website Grader Reports.
It's like a Quarterback having the Plays on his Wrist Band.
A quick Glance in the heat of Battle can make all the difference between winning and losing.
Keep up the great work.

posted on Friday, April 04, 2008 at 2:29 PM by Jack Napoli

Thanks this will defiantly help with getting my rank up.
http://www.cheapnfastmd.com

posted on Friday, April 04, 2008 at 10:26 PM by broke

very useful information,
thanks!

posted on Sunday, April 06, 2008 at 6:40 AM by istioselida

My page rank has dropped to a 2 from a 3 and hence my site is dropping from page one placement.
How do I build a good linking campaign. Can someone just tell me what to do?
I do not find specific info on how to do this anywhere...most info just assumes that you know how to do this. I am trying to do this myself as I have had a few SEO people come and go without much success.
Anne

posted on Monday, April 07, 2008 at 1:51 AM by Anne

I have already made some changes to my website! Thanks!

posted on Wednesday, April 09, 2008 at 5:17 PM by Weldon Williford

Wow, great article. I have been using website grade a couple times over the past week and it has started to help me figure out how to tweak my site. In a short period of time (weeks) I have seen my score start to go up and more traffic through my analytics. Thanks!

posted on Thursday, April 10, 2008 at 12:09 AM by Allegheny Creative

Hi Dharmesh,
Since I came across your site this morning I keep coming back time and time again because the information presented here is concise and to the point.
Thank you and please keep up the great work!
Mike Allan
http://www.videozine.ca

posted on Friday, April 11, 2008 at 7:43 PM by Mike Allan

Great article - I've been a fan of Hubspot for about 2 months now...
Would anyone know why websitegrader saw my blog - then stopped seeing the blog? Also, websitegrader does not seem to like Cold Fusion forms - I have one and its not seeing it... thanks

posted on Saturday, April 12, 2008 at 9:16 AM by Raymond

very informative, especially for startup companies developing their website.

posted on Sunday, April 13, 2008 at 5:42 PM by edward

Thank you for this inportant info it is appreciated very much feel free to post your articles on my site if you wish.

posted on Monday, April 14, 2008 at 8:48 PM by freearticlepublishing.com

thanks alot man
http://www.want-it-free.co.uk

posted on Wednesday, April 16, 2008 at 12:48 PM by katie price

Hub spot is fantastic website. Thank you for grading my website for free.

posted on Friday, April 18, 2008 at 5:19 AM by Matt

Thanks for this easy-to-understand explanation of page rank and its importance. I hope I can move my site http://greatcollegeadvice up in the rankings soon!

posted on Monday, April 21, 2008 at 10:41 PM by Mark M

Thanks that was very helpful for answering more questions than I knew I even had!
Get Healthy with me...come join the conversation @ http://kitchentablemedicine.com

posted on Tuesday, April 22, 2008 at 1:39 AM by Dr. Nicole Sundene

Great article! It appears moving up in rank is also logorithmically as hard. ie moving from a 2 to a 3 is 50 times easier than moving from 3 to 4...

posted on Tuesday, April 22, 2008 at 3:40 PM by Jason Shehane

Thank You for the information. I hope this will help my website (http://www.mywiseguys.com) get some sort of page rank in google. I am now on DMOZ.org, or at least submitted.

posted on Tuesday, April 22, 2008 at 10:08 PM by Dennis

Hi Dharmesh:
Website Grader is great! Maybe you can help answer this:
How longs does it take to get your first Page Rank? I score a 90, my website/blog is continually updated and I have 1,021 inbound links. I'm trying to do all the right things. Thanks!

posted on Wednesday, April 23, 2008 at 6:24 AM by Rob @ Real Estate Chocolate - Ridgefield, CT Real Estate

how do you setup a 301 redirect between sunnybeachrentals.com and sunnybeachrentals.com?

posted on Thursday, April 24, 2008 at 8:42 AM by Mike

Thank you kindly for this helpful information! :-)
Serenity Prayer Gifts

posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 at 11:28 AM by Serenity Prayer Gifts

Good info! I just got my 1st page rank, but am working to make it higher. Thanks!

posted on Wednesday, April 30, 2008 at 12:48 AM by J&K Lowline

My site is still in PR 0... I will work on it!!!!

posted on Wednesday, April 30, 2008 at 2:35 AM by Greentac

Generic Drugs & Medications Online. Thanks for the information, some of the best I have ever seen.

posted on Thursday, May 01, 2008 at 2:21 PM by Garrie Paul

http://energyray.com

posted on Thursday, May 01, 2008 at 5:20 PM by energyray.com

http://energyray.com

posted on Thursday, May 01, 2008 at 5:21 PM by http://energyray.com

Hi there,
Thank you for adding such a useful information. I will say, Search Engines like Google, Yahoo and Msn are really quite generous when it comes to (serp) search engine page results.
The things you talked about in this blog are very very useful, for those are looking the best (serps), useful backlinks, and user and search engines friendly websites.
All the best and I think, this topic needs to be further discuessed.
Regards
Tina

posted on Thursday, May 01, 2008 at 8:12 PM by Tina

majical - http://energyray.com

posted on Friday, May 02, 2008 at 10:56 PM by http://energyray.com

Nice summary. There's also lots of good tips in the O'Reilly book, "Google Hacks".

posted on Saturday, May 03, 2008 at 4:48 PM by George Klima

that was good read.. i used to be a PR 4 but google penalized my blog.. Am working on getting more good backlinks to get my PR back.

posted on Saturday, May 03, 2008 at 9:29 PM by lady

I find the site grader tools to be a vital part of my web sites and blogs... I have only just go a Google rank and it is pretty low but hopefully in a few months it will get better.
cheers.

posted on Sunday, May 04, 2008 at 8:24 AM by scott

Redesigned my website a few months ago using wordpress and making is SEO friendly. The previous one was all flash, looked great but never came up in search engines!
I complement the site with the use of a Blog and this new site comes up for all the important keywords on the top 5 with a PR of 3- I simply do not worry about the PR anymore and feed my site with interesting and relevant content and it works perfectly. The only draw back it the time I am spending every day working on my blog!
<a href="http://www.olivierlalinweddings.com/wedding-photographer-london-paris-france.html"> wedding photographer Paris </a>

posted on Sunday, May 04, 2008 at 11:27 AM by olivierlalin

Very helpful article! Thank you!

posted on Monday, May 05, 2008 at 6:31 PM by Heather

is the page rank useful

posted on Tuesday, May 06, 2008 at 8:27 AM by sukhdeep

As a small business owner, I appreciate the explanation. This is the simple, straightforward summary of how PageRank works, which I have been looking for. Thanks again.

posted on Tuesday, May 06, 2008 at 11:06 AM by teadog

Thank a lot. Very good information.

posted on Tuesday, May 06, 2008 at 2:03 PM by Shawn

Nice information :P The tool bar tells me I've got 2 Rank 4 pages.. Which is, kinda nice

posted on Tuesday, May 06, 2008 at 6:40 PM by halfdan

Great article! thanks for sharing :-)

posted on Wednesday, May 07, 2008 at 6:43 AM by Sophie

thanks
it's very helpful article.

posted on Thursday, May 08, 2008 at 10:46 AM by Soroosh

thanks. very good post

posted on Thursday, May 08, 2008 at 2:26 PM by Gavin

Thanks for sharing.

posted on Monday, May 12, 2008 at 1:49 AM by Railroad Keys

Awaiting my Page Rank now - hoping for a 4 straight out of ther bag!
http://www.salesdnaltd.com

posted on Monday, May 19, 2008 at 5:15 AM by Peter

I heard, that Google PR is getting less important to get a good ranking. Is that right?

posted on Monday, May 19, 2008 at 12:04 PM by fletel

Thanks a lot for this eye-opener. I have switched from brick-mortar retail to internet (www.thenamehut.com), and have followed just about every SEO instruction on my pages, only reaching a PR of 1. I am going for the links! Thanks again.

posted on Monday, May 19, 2008 at 1:40 PM by Julian E. Ortiz

MinuteDesigns.com moved from PR2 to PR3, no organic rank change....
A few clients have grown from PR0 to PR3, and no organic rank change...
Has perhaps google stopped using PR?
I pretty much now couldn't give a monkeys what PR I have now!
Google - Captain of the Failboat!

posted on Tuesday, May 20, 2008 at 10:20 AM by Adam

Appreciate the web-site Grader. Gone from a 23 with error to a 32 and hope to move up further. Check our site at www.usabearingsandbelts.com

posted on Tuesday, May 20, 2008 at 2:51 PM by Jo

Thanks for your great information, with you're help I am working to make our website http://bowwowzerz.com even better

posted on Thursday, May 22, 2008 at 9:02 PM by OAL

Excellent advice. The WebSite Grader and Google page rank tips are superb.

posted on Friday, May 23, 2008 at 10:35 PM by zencat

The Website Grade and Google page rank tips have really help my site receive new traffic: www.obama-magnets.com

posted on Friday, May 23, 2008 at 10:36 PM by zencat

I am getting more popular, too... I am squirrel...
http://ilaarijs.blogspot.com/

posted on Saturday, May 24, 2008 at 1:56 PM by MR. ILARIJS

This information was very helpful in trying understand the ranking system. I am a newbie and didnt realize what it took to make a site successful. Just because I have a site doesnt mean it will make it! Im definatly taking your advise, wish me luck!

posted on Saturday, May 24, 2008 at 5:30 PM by Lynette

I'm trying to learn about and understand SEO. I love your articles as they help clear some of the fog.
www.ChristineHowlett.com

posted on Monday, May 26, 2008 at 2:12 AM by Christine Hart Howlett

Very helpful information, I mean it is necessary to explain why pagerank fluctuates too much and what factors contribute to oscillation.
Regards

posted on Monday, May 26, 2008 at 7:29 AM by David

I really appreciate this information. I had my site graded and it was horrible. I need to get the page rank up. I have also made many other changes to my site that has helped. Making the small changes have increased my PR from 0 to 2 in about 3 weeks. Do as instructed in this blog and you will slowly rise to the top. Thanks Again

posted on Monday, May 26, 2008 at 8:32 PM by JDT Sign Shop

Come By and Visit us we can make all of your signsage for you and do it alot less than the other guys can. www.jdtsignshop.com

posted on Monday, May 26, 2008 at 8:34 PM by JDT Sign Shop

I mis-spelled "signage" in my previous post.

posted on Monday, May 26, 2008 at 8:36 PM by JDT Sign Shop

Perfect for AV Cooling Systems!

posted on Wednesday, May 28, 2008 at 11:01 PM by Mark

Forgot the AV Cooling System url.

posted on Wednesday, May 28, 2008 at 11:02 PM by Mark

Great info - I didn't know that PageRank existed before reading this - thanks!

posted on Thursday, May 29, 2008 at 3:12 AM by A Designer

You didnt know Page Rank exsisted? Are you serious? Pagerank and SEO have been like joined at the hip since forever :S

posted on Thursday, May 29, 2008 at 9:52 AM by Website Design Derby

Hi
Thanks mate this Website Grader is fantastic, Ive been using it and just did a permanent 301 redirect with instant results.
http://www.chiropracticmedia.co.uk

posted on Monday, June 02, 2008 at 12:13 PM by Chiropractic Websites

Very helpful information!
I'm trying to get my rank higher from now on! :)
http://mysteryeworld.com

posted on Tuesday, June 03, 2008 at 7:55 AM by MysteryE

Good articles. Thanks for the tips.
http://www.gappscrib.com

posted on Tuesday, June 03, 2008 at 8:55 AM by David Owolabi

Thanks for the PR Tips - hope to see you with a PR 6 in the next year.

posted on Wednesday, June 04, 2008 at 2:23 PM by Princess Auto

Do backlinks count if they are paid for banner ads on well trafficked e-newsletters?
And the thing that I don't understand about links coming IN is if one doesn't want to have a page of links reciprocating with other related businesses-- then who would link to your commercial website except when you are getting free press (ie PR)?

posted on Friday, June 06, 2008 at 11:38 PM by Susan

news

posted on Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at 4:39 PM by rejan

Thank you for the awesome tools and articles!

posted on Wednesday, June 11, 2008 at 3:57 PM by Leigh

Thanks for your website grader product. I appreciate the help in getting my wife's new tropical tastes of south florida bread company noticed! Can you imagine what Kiwi Bread tastes like?

posted on Friday, June 13, 2008 at 5:27 PM by Mark

Great Article! Google is one of the strongest search engines out there and is critical to SEO.
www.itosolutions.net
Eric

posted on Saturday, June 14, 2008 at 7:51 PM by Eric Gray

Thank you for the very helpful article.

posted on Saturday, June 14, 2008 at 11:08 PM by Jay Jeong

Good Article, i'm trying to find out some more info about that. Unfortunately my website has still pagerank 0 :(
I will work on it

posted on Sunday, June 15, 2008 at 12:09 PM by Jasha Nardiello

Very helpful article. I'm looking forward to increasing my page rank in Google. http://pasaway.org

posted on Monday, June 16, 2008 at 4:45 AM by Pasaway

this is exactly what i was looking for in order to make a very profitable website and finally become a rich person

posted on Thursday, June 19, 2008 at 12:02 AM by Extender

this is very good information. i think if you follow these steps, you should move up.

posted on Thursday, June 19, 2008 at 9:17 AM by rr

Very nice article
But, can you help me more detail what should I do to increase my google page rank?
Thanks

posted on Thursday, June 19, 2008 at 12:33 PM by The Success

And there was i falsely thinking that a Page rank of #1 would be the best to aim for.
I now have a much better idea of our forward struggle.
Thanks for the info

posted on Friday, June 20, 2008 at 10:07 AM by Rob

<a href="http://www.stubbuddy.com"> Concerts, Sports, Theater Tickets </a>
There you have it my link with anchor text. Sure could use the "votes" from any site realted to http://www.StubBuddy.com
Thanks,
Buddy

posted on Saturday, June 21, 2008 at 10:50 PM by Buddy

It always hepls to get the "proper" anchor text.
<a href="http://www.stubbuddy.com" > Concerts tickets, Sports tickets, Theater Tickets </a>
thanks
http://www.stubbuddy.com

posted on Saturday, June 21, 2008 at 11:00 PM by Buddy

Page rank is very important.
At our site at http://www.taxhelp-expert.com/free_tax_advice.html we give you free tax advice. Our Ask a Tax Expert will give free tax help to you.

posted on Monday, June 23, 2008 at 4:44 PM by Tax Advice

Gracias me han ayudado mucho paara solucionar problemas que tenia en mi página.

posted on Tuesday, June 24, 2008 at 1:04 PM by Cardenio

Gracias me han ayudado mucho con este artículo para optimizar mas mi página

posted on Tuesday, June 24, 2008 at 1:06 PM by Cardenio

How long usually does it take to get a PR on your site. 
 
http://www.tekeenews.com

posted on Wednesday, June 25, 2008 at 1:36 PM by Tekee

Thank you so much for your tip on PageRank.

posted on Friday, June 27, 2008 at 4:06 PM by lukas

One more thing: How do i get a link on Hubspot.com to my website: http://www.cathopologist.com ? Do i have to purchase a link? If so, how much does it cost? Also, are there other free alternatives you would recommend for free link ad?

posted on Friday, June 27, 2008 at 4:21 PM by lukas

I guess I am doing good, My sites 5 days old, google indexed it this morning and i have a PR1

posted on Friday, June 27, 2008 at 10:15 PM by Matthew

An excellent article on an excellent site, I'll be signing up to your RSS in a minute!

posted on Saturday, June 28, 2008 at 11:56 AM by Kicked the bucket

Excellent article I find it extremely useful.

posted on Sunday, June 29, 2008 at 10:53 PM by Des

It's interesting to compare websites evaluating pagerank vs hubspot website grading. With our new site, over the last 3 months our website grading has improved from under 40 to 72 today, although our google pagerank is still low at 2. Traffic coming via a google search is under 20%, much less than expected, meaning most is coming direct or via other website links. 
However the good news is that traffic has gone from an average 500 unique visitors per month to over 4,000. Being a print magazine our offline marketing helps generate traffic as well as our online competitions.  
Overall the website grader figure is really a better indication of what's happening than Googles pagerank.  
Running a wordpress blog based site with new content added every month is likely helping things too. Maybe a PR3 next month.

posted on Monday, June 30, 2008 at 10:40 PM by Kevin

Kevin you know whats I find interesting, take their own tools and run it against their own sites, iwebtools dnscoop, websitegrader and what they nail you on for points such as to many keywords/to many characters for discription, no alt tags... almost every site has this issue. this site has like 3 broken alt tags and like 50 more characters then they recommend... why is that? ... they also dont have a 100/100

posted on Monday, June 30, 2008 at 10:50 PM by Matthew

Thanks for the cool info. I hope to see an improvement soon.

posted on Tuesday, July 01, 2008 at 3:19 PM by Bernie

I like to play around with it and see what changes both the hubspot score as well as google ranking. It seems easy to move around on google (at least down lol) but page rank is much more fixed.

posted on Wednesday, July 02, 2008 at 8:17 PM by Brendan Murphy

<a href="http://www.antcomic.com">ANT SITE FOR LAUGHS</a> 
 
Fun stuff!

posted on Thursday, July 03, 2008 at 8:51 AM by comedy

www.antcomic.com 
 
www.antcomic.com/blog/ 
 
http://antcomic.com 
 
http://antcomic.com/blog

posted on Thursday, July 03, 2008 at 8:53 AM by Mark

thanks for your usefull information.. 
 

posted on Friday, July 04, 2008 at 1:30 PM by mehdi sedghi

The link Google PageRank Calculator does not work and I can't see why I have not been ranked? 
 
Thanks.

posted on Saturday, July 05, 2008 at 12:14 AM by linda

Post Comment
Name
 *
Email
 *
Website (optional)
Comment
 *

Allowed tags: <a> link, <b> bold, <i> italics

Receive email when someone replies.

HubSpot Marketing Blog

The HubSpot Internet Marketing blog helps businesses leverage inbound marketing practices using the Internet to get found by more prospects and convert more prospects to leads and customers.  A full RSS feed is available, or you can sign up by email below.

Subscribe to our RSS Feed

HubSpot RSS Feed

Inbound Marketing Summit

Marketing Conference

Free Marketing Resources