All About Link Popularity and PageRank

By: Chris Beasley, Published: 2003-04-22 Updated: 2006-12-15, Parent Categories: Search Engine Optimization, SEO Guide

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Summary

Understanding Link Popularity

Every page is treated as a separate entity.
The weight of the links matters more than the number.
Link context is very important.

Google and PageRank

Google's version of link popularity is called PageRank.
The Google Toolbar allows you to check your PageRank.

Calculating your Overall PageRank Power

Your overall PageRank Power is the total amount of PageRank a page would get if it were linked to from every page on your site.

Building Link Popularity

Check up on who links to your competition.
Submit to directories big and small.
Email link requests and link exchange requests.

Retaining Link Popularity

Outnumber external links with internal ones.
Use forms or javascript for external or affiliate links.
If you do not want a search engine to view a page use robots.txt to block it.

Further Reading

PageRank Explained a technical article showing more of the math behind PageRank for those interested.
PageRank: An Essay an essay touching on many PageRank related topics.
Search Engines and Outgoing Links we've talked about incoming links, read hear to learn about outgoing links.