So, you’re new blog has finally reached a page rank of 3, now what? Don’t kid yourself here. Yes you have begun to climb the magical ladder to page rank heaven but will your site suddenly explode into the next Google or Facebook because of it?

No, of course not.

I’m writing this post more out of personal frustration more than anything. This is for all those people new to the SEO world who are convinced that Page Rank is a symbol of success. My main point to this post is to say that to be successful, you don’t necessarily needa high PageRank.

What is Google Page Rank?

“PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important”.”

So Google Page Rank is a measure of this weight. It measures how much weight a link from your site has. A link from a PR 7 site is therefore ‘supposedly‘ more important than a link from a PR3 site.

How can I check my Page Rank?

The best way to check your google page rank is by downloading the Google Toolbar from http://toolbar.google.com/. This toolbar has a button on it which will show the page rank of the page currently being browsed. To get this button up click the “settings” button then go to “select options”, then choose the “More” page and browse to “even more buttons” and finally add the “PageRank and Page info” button.

When building backlinks

What I’m trying to say is that when building backlinks do not focus solely on the Page Rank of the site you are putting your link on. The truth is that the relevancy of the site linking to you will be a lot more important. Say your site was a site about bathrooms. If you pursuaded people with Technology blogs to link to your bathroom site then the weight those links will carry will be low. There will be little or no relevancy.

Focus on relevant backlinks