Google PageRank Just Updated – Is Your Site Affected

To the surprise of many and, perhaps, even by Matt Cutts, Google PageRank just updated silently on December 6, 2013, thereby ending the long debate on whether PageRank is dead or not. For those whose ranks were elevated, this is good news. But for those who lost their previously high PR, this is bad news. Is your website affected by the latest PageRank update of Google? Find that out! Check your Google PageRank right now.

The latest update of Google on PageRank only proved that even a high ranking Google official like Matt Cutts can’t tell when an algorithm will be updated. He previously mentioned on October via Twitter that a year-end update is unlikely since it would come as a surprise. So surely, he must have been surprised when the update was rolled out.

He responded, however, that the update was made while a team of technical people was doing some fixes on a backend service. So in other words, the update was neither planned ahead of time nor was it done as a main purpose of the technical team. Thus, its importance on the side of Google remains questionable. Google may already have the intention of gradually taking it down, but it cannot do so because of the significant numbers of people still using PageRank in the conduct of business, online.

Therefore, Google PR optimization is still highly recommended while the PR continues to update, even if irregularly, in order to continue enjoying the priceless benefits. With this in mind, it is best to know what factors that affect PageRank so that you can better formulate more effective strategies.

Factors that Affect PageRank

Backlinks

Google PageRank is all about backlinks. The more authority links your webpage gets the higher Google rank it will attain. Thus, focus on getting more authority links and your rank will improve on the next update, perhaps, anytime next year. Take note of the usage of the term ‘authority links.’ It’s because having a lot of ordinary backlinks will not work. Redundant links will not count but only those coming from highly-respected sources, or blogs with high PR.

 

Therefore, focus on getting links naturally from sites with authority. One way to do that is to publish guest posts in high PR blogs. This will not only give you valuable backlinks but direct referrals, as well. Moreover, focus on providing value to your readers. If they will find your post very helpful, they will not hesitate sharing your guest posts to their friends via links. This will add more organic backlinks to your website, thereby helping in improving the PageRank.

Content

Another important factor that affects PageRank is content. More contents can attract more views and more backlinks.  When linking to your site, don’t direct all links to the homepage, but spread out your links to different pages. Take note that each page will have different rank, depending on the popularity of the webpage based on authority link quantity.

So, if your homepage enjoys a high PR of 6, for instance, that doesn’t imply each and every page will get the same high PR, as well. Some pages will be ranked lower than the homepage, while others including the newly-published posts will have no PageRank at all. However, having a good PR for the root page will make it easier for you to rank other pages.

Nonetheless, your optimization activities should not be confined on your homepage but also on other posts. This can help improve the overall rank of your website. But if your contents are only few then your chances of getting good PR are low compared to sites with many posts.

In any case, Google just updated the PageRank. This also means that your PR optimization should go on. If your blog was affected by the new PageRank update, don’t give up. You can regain your rank by optimizing it using the above tips.