Google Ranking Tips

David Callan 

Google Pagerank formula

It's beginning to come complex isn't it, just wait till you see this formula. It looks scary for non math's people.

First let me explain what the damping factor is. The damping factor is the amount of your PR which you can actually pass on when you vote / link to another site. The damping factor is widely known to be .85, this is a little less then the linking pages own PR.

PR(A) = (1-d) + d(PR(t1)/C(t1) + ... + PR(tn)/C(tn))

In layman's terms PR(A) is the Pagerank boost your page A will get after being linked from someone else's site (t1). PR(t1) is the pagerank of the page which links to you and C(t1) is the amount of total links that (t1) has. It is important to know that a pages voting power is only .85 of that pages actual PR and this voting power gets spread out evenly between all sites it links to.

Imagine http://www.akamarketing.com was linked by XYZ.COM's link page which had a PR of 4 and 9 other links, here's how the formula should look like:

PR(AKA) = (1-.85) + .85*(4/10)
PR(AKA) = .15 + .85*(.4)
PR(AKA) = .15 + .34
PR(AKA) = .49

To sum up my site would get an injection of .49 PR after being linked from a page with a PR of four and 9 other links.

Let's say I was linked from a site with a PR of 8, double the previous example's amount, which had 15 other links, a total of 16 outbound links, my boost would be:

PR(AKA) = (1-.85) +.85*(8/16)
PR(AKA) = .15 + .85(.5)
PR(AKA) = .15 + .425
PR(AKA) = .575

The above two worked examples show that not only is the PR of the linking page important but what is also important is how many other sites are also linked to from that page.

I think we've had enough maths stuff for now, just remember that the name of the game is to get as many links from pages with high PR and few other links. The more of these links you get the more your PR will grow and the more your rankings will improve for your relevant keywords.

Google Pagerank™ & web directories

The best thing you can do for your PR seems at the moment seems to be getting listed in Dmoz.org. Dmoz.org is home to the Open Directory Project which is a human compiled directory of websites.

Pagerank™ is widely known to be biased towards big name directories such as Dmoz.org, Yahoo and Looksmart.

This is true, especially in the case of Dmoz.org. These ODP links are treated like gold by the Pagerank™ system. It doesn't even matter what the individual PR of the category page is. I have seen sites gain a large PR boost on the toolbar as soon as Google updates its directory with the latest one from Dmoz.org. This is because Google uses its own version of the ODP for the Google web directory.

Don't believe ODP links are very important to Pagerank™?
Don't believe a listing in the ODP will boost your ranking?

Well they are and it will. Perform a search for almost anything on Google and you'll discover that 75-80% of the top 10 results are also indexed in the Google directory and therefore also listed on Dmoz.org. The fact of the matter seems to me to be if your not listed with the ODP, you shouldn't expect much traffic from Google.

Getting a listing is not difficult, it does sometimes take time but it's not difficult. Just make sure your site has good content and follow the guidelines for adding a URL. Try to get your index page listed at least. I say at least because although ODP claims only to list your index page, there are plenty of sites with 5 - 10 pages listed.

Therefore if your site has very distinctive sections you can submit each section, beware though that this must be done slowly, otherwise you may be banned from the directory altogether for spamming. Once Google updates its directory these listings could do wonders for your sites Pagerank™. My article entitled Open Directory Project guide is a complete guide to getting into the ODP, I highly recommend you read it.

Regarding Yahoo and Looksmart, Pagerank™ will usually allocate a more than normal amount of PR boost for any sites listed. Tips on getting listed in Yahoo can be read in Yahoo submitting tips.

If you're a non-commercial site or have a site that's almost completely non-commercial you can get into the Looksmart directory through http://www.zeal.com. I really love this site, just like Google obtains its directory results from ODP, Looksmart obtains its non-commercial listings from the Zeal web directory. Without Zeal I would have to fork out hard earned cash and all my site does is provide free information in the form of articles and tutorials.

To continue, I submitted AKA Marketing.com on a Tuesday and was listed in Zeal by Thursday morning. On Monday I checked my logs and found lots of referrals from Looksmart, I was in Looksmart already. I looked at my logs later only to find MSN had updated its database from the Looksmart database and was sending me loads of visitors because of the good listing I got. My site was listed in Zeal, Looksmart and MSN within six days. Needless to say I highly recommend you get over to Zeal.com and submit your site.

Before you can submit a site however you must pass a member quiz, the quiz is a fairly simple straightforward one, you might however learn a thing or two while doing it.

If you happen to be a webmaster that has a listing in all three of Dmoz.org, Yahoo and Looksmart then I'm guessing your site has good to very good PR and rankings.

Google ranking tips - Conclusion

In closing I would like to recap on some of the main points you have just read. Be sure to have your main keywords and keyphrases in your title tag and well spread throughout your page, use header tags wherever possible. Get as many links from as many high PR low number of outbound links pages as you can. Get listed with Dmoz.org, Yahoo and Looksmart.

Well that's it. I hope you have enjoyed reading this Google Ranking tips article as much as I have enjoyed researching and writing it. I also hope that you can put this advice into use and help get yourself some real traffic.