Lesson 2 – Google Page Rank and Alexa Rank

When you get past the beginning level of SEO ( see our Lesson 1: Introduction to SEO techniques ) , you’ll begin hearing about a lot of terms that are unfamiliar to you. Among these are Google Page Rank and Alexa Rank. These are topics of concern for web masters who want to ensure that their sites are doing good in search engine rankings. While both Google Page Rank and Alexa Rank are important in SEO and measure much of the same thing ” the popularity of a website” they are also different in some ways. These differences make it important to understand the very basics of both Google Page Rank and Alexa Rank, which will be covered in this lesson.

What is Google Page Rank?

Google Page Rank, as the Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin put it, is a tool developed to rank websites that are listed in the Google search engine. The page rank is given in a scale of 0-10. 0 is the lowest possible score for a site, while 10 is the highest. The higher the page ranking of your site, the greater the amount of traffic it receives.

Now you know what the Google Page Rank is. But how, exactly, is it determined? Well, Google uses a really complicated mathematical formula to determine the ranking of a page. We could literally spend this entire lesson going over this formula, which really would be a waste of time. Instead, we’ll just talk about it in a non-in depth, but still useful way.

When Google is ranking a web site, there are several factors involved. The first is the overall layout of the site and how “complete” it is. Google dislikes incomplete site maps being sent to the search engine, which is why you should only submit the site map when the site is actually finished. The second major factor is the usage of keywords. Google likes a site with good usage of keywords. They like a keyword density of 3-5%. Another major factor is that of external links. Google likes it when your site is getting linked to by other sites. That way Google can find your site more often. The last major factor is how updated the site is. Google hates outdated sites, so make sure yours is updated often. All of these factors make up the basis of the Google Page Rank.

You can determine your Google Page Rank, Alexa Page Rank, inbound links, indexed pages, important directories and site listing, press and media mentions and another 30 ranking parameters for your website using the last version of Website Popularity SEO ranking software.

What is the Alexa Rank?

The Alexa Rank is much like the Google Rank, with one main difference: it is exclusively based on page views, number of users and three months of historical data. It is not based on SEO principles like the Google Page Rank is, although having a good SEO’d site will help the cause.

An Alexa Rank may range from 1 to a billion, depending on the number of web sites. Every web site in the world is included in the Alexa Rank, so you’re up against all of them. The goal is to have a high ranking (generally considered to be in the 1-1,000,000 range). Presently, the highest ranked site in the Alexa Rank is Yahoo.com, although Google.com poses a threat to this. You can find out your Alexa Page Rank by going to Alexa.com directly or checking using the Website Popularity.

How can I improve my Google Page Rank?

The good thing about the Google Page Rank is that it can be improved pretty easily. Follow these suggestions to improve yours:

1. Create a site that is search engine optimized. Your site should be full of quality content that doesn’t fall short in terms of keywords and keyword density. Strive for a keyword density of 3-5% and make sure that all keywords and content are relative to your site’s purpose.
2. Use META and title tags correctly. One of the biggest factors in search engine optimizing a site is that of the META and title tags. When using these, you should make sure that the title tag is accurate and that the META tag describes your site well. For tips on META and title tags, check out Lesson 4: Title and META tag creation.
3. Submit all pages to the Google site map. Do so only when the site is completed.
4. Build targeted traffic to your website.

How can I improve my Alexa Rank?

To improve the Alexa Rank, all you need to do is improve your traffic to your site. Following the tips in the above section and in the next lessons should help you to increase traffic, which will, in turn, increase your Alexa Rank. There are tools out there which claim to improve the Alexa Rank, however, these are usually not very effective and may do more harm than good to your site’s ranking. Do not go for submission to 300,000 search engines, this is the worst thing you can do.