Pagerank (PR) is a the method by which google evaluates the importance of any given site. There are some misconceptions about how it works and what impact it has on a site. This article will attempt to dispel some of those misconceptions.

Myth #1: PageRank is a whole number.

Although the Google tool bar only displays the values 0,1,2,3,4,5,…10, in reality pagerank is not a whole number. For instance its possible to have a page rank of 4 that is just slightly higher than 3 and a page rank of four which is almost a five

Myth #2: PageRank is all that matters for getting a high ranking.

No PageRank is not the only thing that matters and in fact it doesn’t matter at all The Google Toolbar PageRank has absolutely no effect on your rankings. The real PageRank the one only the google engineers know about is the one that decides where you will rank.

Some of these factors are….
….keyword density, anchor text used to link to the site. The quality and importance of the site that is linking to you and how many other links are going in and out of that page. And thousands of other factors
“But I have been told by a professional SEO that a high PageRank is needed to achieve top ten rankings. I know they are right.”
No that is just a myth. There are many PageRank 2 sites that can outrank a PR5 or even a PR7 site any day of the week. Why is this? It is because the Google Toolbar PageRank collects all the links much the same way Google collects links to rank a site and that is how the PR value is set however this has nothing to do with the real PageRank or your rankings.

Myth #3: Links from pages with the same pagerank are equal

Another common myth is that a link from a PR 6 site is better than a PR2 or anything that is lower than a 6. And that Site A with PR6 is equal to Site B with PR6.
What is wrong with this theory? Well it is the same reason we have already mentioned a few paragraphs back. Even though two sites may have the same toolbar pagerank they have different importance values. For example a PR2 site may have a importance value of 50,000 but a PR7 only has a importance value of 700. I must make it clear that this is highly unlikely as PR7 or higher sites usually have great value because it takes thousands and thousands of links to get a PR7+. And to get this many links you probably have something worth linking to so will get quality sites linking to you as well as smaller sites. However with lower PageRank sites that are PR5 or lower it is much easier to achieve and still have a very low importance value because it can be achieved with tons of links whether quality or not.

What some people don’t realize is that even if two pages have the exact same pagerank the value of getting a link from each page can be very different for both pages.

How is the importance of a site calculated then? It is calculated by the importance of each backlink which only Google knows and by the out-going links from the site. If a good site links to a bad site it can hurt its importance.
Also each backlinks importance is based upon relevancy. Why would a gambling site link to a health food store? Such a backlink is less than useless unless you still use Altavista. However a PR1 link from a Health Food resource page with “Health Food Store” as the anchor text would benefit you highly especially if that link was surrounded by content related to ‘Health Food’ and wasn’t just a side menu link.

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