Pagerank

Pagerank is important to many SEO specialists, even though it is no longer an official function of Google. It is an important metric for your SEO. We cover this frame of reference in detail in the article below.

What is pagerank?

The PageRank is a formula created, to rank pages on the Internet by importance. PageRank was developed by the founders of Google. These are Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

Although the formula is now no longer used by Google, it is still relevant and is therefore still included in many SEO tools. More on that later in the article.

A fun fact: Page (from PageRank) is officially named after Larry Page, not the English term for page.

Pagerank and Google’s algorithm

Google created PageRank to determine the quality of a page. Originally, PageRank was a number between 1 and 10 with 10 being the highest possible. The grade assigned to a website is what Google determines. Only websites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have a PageRank of 10.

The PageRank calculation

The PageRank of a given page can be described as follows:

The PageRank of a given page can be understood as the probability that a surfer will land on that page when that surfer clicks on random hyperlinks and occasionally requests a new page.

When this probability is higher, the PageRank will also be higher. On the contrary, when this probability is lower, the PageRank will also be lower. By this understanding, both the quality and quantity of backlinks to a page are included in the calculation.

SEO and pagerank

The importance of pagerank and SEO is great: after all, you want to improve your SEO to ultimately get a better pagerank. So SEO is performing various actions to rank higher in Google’s search results pages.

So pagerank is a consequence of your SEO, so to speak.

Also, the pagerank of a website is a kind of measuring point, so to speak, not only for Google, but also for SEO specialists. You can tell by the pagerank what quality a website or page is of.

My advice

We often use Ahrefs’ pagerank for our own clients. This is because pagerank indicates how certain pages rank in Google. You can thus see at a glance which pages perform well and which perform less. So you know which pages to improve and can exercise a sound SEO strategy on them. This will help you rank higher in Google.