How Many Backlinks to Get Better PageRank (PR)?
Google’s PageRank (PR) is one of the most sought after web page attributes. The original idea was that a link from a web page to other site’s web page was basically a vote for that page. Google then used the number of inbound links (IBL or more often called backlinks) to a page to decide its importance. Based on this calculation (however there are many other factors, too) Google ranked the page and decided where it should appear in the search engine results (SERP).
Google uses scale of measurement for PageRank from 1 to 10. The lowest possible PR is PR1, the highest is PR10. The new websites tend to have PR0 which essentially means that they are indexed but they have no PR yet. Here is the official Google’s explanation of the PR.
The table above is only for a better imagination of how the the PageRank is calculated. Only Google knows the exact formula though. When building backlinks for your website remember that quality is more important than quantity. Try to get few higher PR links instead of bunch of low ones. In addition, you must be patient. Google updates the PR averagely every two months (the longest documented period of time between two PR updates was 122 days).
I’m working very hard on getting many relevant quality backlinks. Currently, according to dnScoop, there are totally 2,189 pages that contain a link to netcovered.com (Smart PageRank shows only 1664 though…). I will try to improve this number even more and I hope that during next PR update Net Covered will jump to at least PR3.
Factors that can increase your Google PageRank
- Update Pages Frequently 2/10
- Add Pages Frequently 4/10
- Good Neighborhood Directories with high PageRank Levels 7/10
- Monster Websites 7/10
- Quality Inbound links 8/10
- Quality Relevant Links 9/10
- No Broken Links 5/10
- Article Submissions (this can increase your PageRank by getting more inbound links)
- All these put together 10/10
Factors that can decrease your Google PageRank
- Bad inbound links such as Poker, Porn, Sex, Drugs, or anything to that nature
- Link spamming
- Bad Content
- Lots of broken links
- SEO Black Hat Techniques
Google PageRank Formula
The thing is that nobody actually knows how the PageRank is calculated (except Google of course) but webmasters have discovered over the time the possible algorhitm that seems to fit into equations:
PR(A) = (1-d) + d(PR(t1)/C(t1) + … + PR(tn)/C(tn))
| Variable | Explanation |
|---|---|
| t1 - tn | pages linking to A |
| C | the number of outbound links that a page has |
| d | damping factor - usually set to 0.85 |
More simple way of thinking about it:
a page’s PageRank = 0.15 + 0.85 * (a “share” of the PageRank of every page that links to it)
“Share” is the linking pages’ PageRank divided by the number of outbound links.
April 18th, 2008 at 1:19 am
Hey NetCovered, wanna exchange links? My site is web developer’s blog a bit like yours. Its here: whizdev.blogspot.com
If you want to exchange links, contact my email (I provided with this comment).
April 18th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
Hi Isa,
Please wait few days because it seems that the PR update is just happening - most PR tools are misbehaving or return errors.
I’m really curious what will be my PR after the update
April 18th, 2008 at 9:45 pm
I found this very helpful thank you!
April 19th, 2008 at 1:11 am
I am just wondering? What about pr n/a? Thanks
April 19th, 2008 at 5:29 am
this is very intresting i cant wait till google does the update
admin could you add a link to my site
i would really appreciate im just trying to get my site known
http://www.ringernation.com
April 19th, 2008 at 6:21 am
Hi, Very nice algorithm you have posted, which is very easy to understand.
Thanks for sharing, mate.
April 19th, 2008 at 6:59 am
Hi,
I have a question for my site.
I have about 1,283 backlinks - http://www.iwebtool.com/backlink_checker?domain=www.allucandl.com
But my PR is 0 now.
What’s the problem dear?
April 19th, 2008 at 9:38 am
@h0ly: There are several reasons for N/A PageRank:
1) Your website is new, and not yet indexed by Google.
2) Your website was already indexed by Google but not yet ranked.
3) Your website has been indexed by Google long time ago, but it is recognized as a supplemental (Supplemental Results) page.
4) Your website was banned by Google.
@Nima: Your domain is just 3 Months, 19 days old. You must be patient. Google updates public PR only about 4 times a year and it often takes two updates (about half a year) to show better results (because the public PR is three months behind the actual PR of your website).
April 19th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Yes, you’re right.
Thanks, I must wait.
April 20th, 2008 at 3:51 am
Nima, your actual PR is not 0 as such. You must have better PR as
per your backlinks, it’s just that your toolbar PR is 0 and that’s
misunderstood as actual PR. Unfortunately, we cannot see what our
actual PR is, so we have to rely on whatever toolbar PR is.
April 20th, 2008 at 7:43 am
Thanks for your help. I agree with “we cannot see what our actual
PR is”
April 21st, 2008 at 6:11 am
Hi Nima, You should try SEOMoz page strength checker tool. It’s
predicting the website PR as per the strength of website.
seomoz.org/page-strength Best of luck with your website.
April 21st, 2008 at 4:44 pm
Hi John. Thanks.
April 22nd, 2008 at 6:37 am
Hey John, it’s such a great tool, i found my website strength is 3,
and currently it’s 0 PR. so can i expect 3 PR from Google?
April 23rd, 2008 at 7:00 am
And another question, how can I get more traffic?
April 23rd, 2008 at 7:26 am
Hi, Nima, you are wc. if you are targeting local business, let’s
say Australia, first of find classifieds for the local regions,
submit your website details in those free classifieds, these sites
really hookes up in the ranking. Place all your keyword as you are
providing these all services. Do social bookmarking, blog
commenting and forum posting will help to get high traffic.
April 23rd, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Well, the great quality content is the best way to achieve better traffic. Other ways to improve your daily visits are: social bookmarking sites (like digg.com, mixx.com, sphinn.com, del.icio.us and more), link/blogroll exchanges with other blogs (preferably with similar niche) and then of course you can buy some paid advertising spots at high traffic websites.
April 24th, 2008 at 7:40 am
Hi Mark, You can expect PR 3, but still it’s not authorized by
Google, But i can surely tell you, u will get minimum 2 PR from
Google side in next update, i m sure about it.
April 24th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
Wow very nice explination of Page Rank, I like the graph
April 26th, 2008 at 11:53 pm
Great post Mark. It’s one of the best and most detailed
explanations of Page rank that I’ve found. I found this very
helpful; Thanks! "http://www.spreadbettrader.co.uk/spreadbettingservices.html">Financial
Spread Betting Expert
April 29th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
I’ll try your links, thanks to all.
December 20th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
Great guide on Pagerank, thanks.
December 31st, 2008 at 10:28 am
Greetings, thanks for the article. It helped a lot. I wasn´t able
to find similar table on the web in my country. Good luck with PR
and happy New Year.
January 28th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
Great info. The chart is easy to understand. Have a question: If an
article with a backlink to my site gets submitted and it gets well
spread across the web and then suddenly I have tons of links
pointing to my site almost overnight… would that be considered
link spamming?