Positive Searches

Google rankings are hard to understand. They also mean different things to different people. However, there are two types of Google page rankings people seek. The first and most coveted is a page’s position on Google. Ideally, a person going for a certain key word wants to come up in the number one spot. The second ranking less understood and often covered with mysterious Google-esque mysteries as the page Google assigns the importance to a page.

The Google page ranking affects how much weight the search engine gives to a particular site. Getting linked to from a site ranked 9 will carry more weight than getting linked to from dozens of sites ranked number one. Ideally, a web site owner wants to concentrate on getting back links from the sites ranked higher by Google, especially if he wants to improve his own position. A person working on SEO should not ignore any back links to his site as any back link will improve his ranking.

A person may not know why a high page ranking is important. A high page ranking will make people more likely to link to a given page in the hopes of getting a link back. The system is by no means fool-proof. A small start-up site that links to a large site should not expect to receive a link in return.

Although this did not used to be the case, a person can easily find out what his page rank is in Google if he uses the Google Toolbar. He must use Firefox, Internet Explorer or Safari for this to work correctly, as the browser does not make the toolbar for Chrome yet. Google ranks the pages on a scale from 1 to 10. No page, not even Google itself has a ranking of 10.

While increasing Google page ranking may help a person achieve better SEO performance, a person should not focus his SEO goals through page ranking. Building back links through white hat tactics works much better than trying to play the game. Making the process even harder is Google’s refusal to tell the players what the game is. How the page positions are determined has changed, but the page ranking algorithm has remained the same.