Although many people have heard or read about the benefits in achieving search engine prominence, the term Page Rank is commonly misunderstood and misused. The following article is a short guide that addresses the important characteristics of the concept in order to help demystify it. Before we analyze it in more detail, let us have a look at its definition: Page Rank refers to the hierarchical position decided by major search engines like Google for a particular website indexed in their databases.

The confusion behind the concept of Page Rank sets in when you don’t know the exact algorithm used by search engines in establishing a certain ranking for each particular website in turn. To keep things simple, it is important to understand that search engines don’t set one single Page Rank for an entire website, instead each individual page (including the index page) gets a distinctive positioning depending on its characteristics, ranging anywhere from PR0 to PR 10, where the first represents the lowest ranking and the latter the maximum threshold.

Page Rank is always set starting with the index page, and then assigned for the rest of your pages, according to their level. For this reason, it is necessary to ensure that your Anchor Text is evenly allocated onto each of your pages, and that you do the same thing for inbound links. To form an idea about the way you should address this, keep in mind that the standard procedure requires about half of your Anchor Text links to be allocated on your home page, while the remainder should be spread out evenly on all your other pages.

Remember that effective site Page Ranking optimization should encompass every single page on your website; don’t make the mistake of placing all of your Anchor Text links on your main page, as this will have virtually no impact on your site’s Page Ranking. The key is to balance things out and make sure each individual page of your site becomes search engine friendly.

Another very important aspect that needs to be addressed properly in the optimization process is the usage of relevant keywords. When you finish the keyword research for your site, you need to come up with one keyword you think will weigh the most in search engines and make full use of it in your Title Tag and Meta Tags. This will not only ensure increased exposure in search engine rankings, but also that you get relevant traffic to your website. However, be careful when handling the keyword density issue, as too much of that might be perceived as spamming and have a negative effect on your site’s Page Ranking. As a rule, it best to start with a 1% keyword density for your content and make adjustments from there if necessary.