Increasing a website’s PageRank is a crucial step when it comes to optimizing a webpage. PageRank is an algorithm set by Google to rank websites in search engine results, which basically means after measuring a few aspects of a website’s pages, Google will determine how important a website is.
It’s important for your website to have a good ranking. Google PageRank scores every website on a scale of 0 to 10, and a ranking of 4 and up is considered to be an above average ranking. Ideally, that is where you want your website positioned.
Now you might be asking yourself, “Thanks for all this info author, but how do I know my ranking? How can I improve my ranking?”
The answer to the first question is quite simple, there are many tools that have the capability to calculate your PageRank, however, I personally prefer using pagerank.net. It’s a practical, free, and quick tool to use for calculating your PageRank.
Now for the answer to the second question, There are many ways to improve your ranking of which backlinks are one of them. Backlinks might be taken lightly by some, but I can assure you if it’s done correctly and linked from reputable and relevant sites, it can be a very useful tactic to increase your website’s ranking. A practical and quick tool to use for checking your backlinks is monitorbacklinks.com.
Introduction to Backlinks
A backlink is an incoming link from an external website, web page, or directory to your website and is an important step in search engine optimization. The number of backlinks is one aspect of what determines the importance of a website or page.
While the number of backlinks is important, it’s even more important for the backlinks to be relevant links and not come off as spam. It’s also important for the backlinks to be high-quality.
Google is very focused on user experience, and if users constantly receive irrelevant data from their search, it will directly translate as a poor user experience. This could result in users moving away from Google as their go-to search engine.
I’ll provide an example to better understand what kind of backlink you should be aiming for. If you’re in the automotive industry, having a backlink from Wikipedia on the topic of vehicles and automotive would be the kind of backlink you should be looking for. I will explain more about the importance of having backlinks from sources like Wikipedia in the “Backlinks From Websites and Webpages” section of this blog.
Backlinks From Directories
Adding your business to various directories is a valuable asset since it provides your business with the exposure it needs. The more directories you’re listed in increases your chances of having clients contacting you for your service or product.
Directories are also a good source for backlinks. All you have to do is include your website when you’re adding your business to a directory page. This will create more traffic to your website which could lead to more turnover for your business, and it would also assist in increasing your Google PageRank.
You won’t always be able to create a directory, at times the business might be listed already. In this case, don’t create another listing, just claim the business. Once you click the claim button, there are a few easy steps that you must follow to verify that you’re the business owner.
Here’s a visual example of a backlink of our agency on 411.ca:
Backlinks From Websites and Webpages
When it comes to backlinks from websites or pages, there are many success stories as well as unfortunate ones. You want to avoid black hat practices, which basically means don’t violate Google’s terms of service.
If you blast your links to as many external websites, relevant or not, you’ll be violating the terms of service. You might temporarily see a rise in your PageRank, but you will lose your score before you can finish saying SEO. It’s hard to recover, once you’ve violated the terms of service.
Now if you post your links to a few relevant and high-quality webpages, your PageRank will increase and won’t be stripped away from you. However, getting your link onto a high-quality webpage is not as easy as it sounds. Depending on the webpage you choose to add your link to, there might be various steps that must be done to be considered trustworthy and not a spammer.
For example, Wikipedia being such a reputable source makes it the right host for a backlink, however, there is more to it than just posting your website or web page’s link. In order to have your website backlinked from Wikipedia, you must gain their trust by correcting a few articles.
You want to create an account with Wikipedia first, which is 100% free to do. Once you’re a user, you have the freedom to provide suggestions to correct any errors. There are many deadlinks and citation errors on Wikipedia that could use some corrections. After giving a suggestion, you’ll have to wait a while before they validate and correct it. Once 2 or 3 articles are corrected, you’re considered to be a trusted good citizen by fixing citation and deadlink errors. Now you are able to post your link onto a RELEVANT article, I can’t stress the relevancy enough. If your link is not posted onto a relevant article it will be removed shortly.
Here’s a visual example of a backlink we have on our webpage linking to our two partners Adverdea and Webility:
All the hyperlinks that I’ve included throughout this blog are also examples of website backlinks.
Wrap Up
As I mentioned earlier, there are many ways to improve a PageRank which we will be posting about in our future blogs. Creating backlinks is a tactic that shouldn’t be taken lightly, and if it’s not done correctly it could backfire.
As long as you follow Google’s terms of service you have nothing to worry about, and if SEO is not something you’re capable of doing (too busy, shortness of staff, etc.), give us a shout. After all, Search Engine Optimization is our profession.