The Key to Ranking Well in Google

Contrary to common belief, it is not necessarily websites with a high page rank that dominate the top space in the Google rankings. It is not uncommon to see a website in the number one position that has a lower page rank than the website in second position. So why do so many people place so much emphasis on the little green bar?

I have the Google toolbar installed and when I am looking for websites on the internet for backlink purposes I always check the little green pagerank bar. I see the value in it even though it may not be that accurate or up-to-date as it gives me a basic idea of what Google thinks of a particular website. But this is what those obsessed with the little green bar fail to see – it really is just a basic representation of that website, nothing more.

How does Google rank web pages?

One of the main criteria Google uses to rank web pages is through the number of good quality links coming into it. So if another website decides to link to your website or blog and they are considered important in the eyes of Google, then it will in turn help to improve the importance of your website.

The keywords or anchor text used in those incoming links is another key factor that can help improve your ranking in Google. The following exercise will illustrate this perfectly. Go to Google.com and type in the words ‘click here’ and see what comes up – the first result should be Adobe.com. Now go into that page and see if you can find the keywords ‘click here’. You will find that those words are nowhere to be seen on the page. So why do they rank so well for those particular keywords? It is because there are hundreds of other websites linking to Adobe.com using the keywords ‘click here’ in their anchor text.

Now if that doesn’t get you thinking about how important anchor text is then nothing will!

Relevancy is also another critical factor. A reason that many websites do not rank well is because they have hundreds of websites linking to them that having nothing to do with their topic. Their website might be about dogs but they have a link from another website that relates to credit cards or something else totally unrelated. These links have less value in the eyes of Google.

Quantity vs Quality

In essence then, it is not so much the quantity of backward links that you have coming into your site that is important but the quality of backward links.

Be selective with your linking strategy. Look for sites with content reasonably relevant to your site that have a good pagerank and good quality backward links. This is the key.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!