The patented Google PageRank system is a topic of frequent debate for owners of niche websites and all websites in general. What exactly is Google PR? How does Google PageRank work? And what does it all mean for your niche websites or blogs anyway?

What is Google PageRank?

Google PR is a complex system used to help measure a site's importance. Google PR is given on a scale from 0-10, with 10 being the highest. To help illustrate, Google's homepage has a ranking of 10, Yahoo's homepage has a ranking of 9 and AOL's homepage has a ranking of 8.

All new websites and blogs begin with a PageRank of 0. If a website hasn't been around long enough yet, it will typically say that no PageRank information is available. You can view your website's Google PR by downloading the Google Toolbar. Your site's page rank will appear in a green bar at the top of the browser. You can view more information on every page of your website as related to Google PR by using Google Webmaster Tools. (See the support links section for addresses to both).

What Determines Google PageRank?

Google says that its page rank algorithms consider more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. That would be an awfully lot to try to digest. But Google has also said that the overarching principle of the system is, “to examine the entire link structure of the web and determine which pages are most important.” In English, that means that the main concept behind determining Google PageRank is incoming links to a website.

Google PR is a way to establish and measure a particular website's credibility and status. The theory goes, the more incoming links a website has, the more importance it has, the more information of value it houses and the more people trust and visit it.

An incoming link is any link to your website or blog from another website, blog, profile or article. However, not all links are created equally. Incoming links from sites that own a high Google PageRank themselves are worth more in the system. A site with high credibility can therefore lend out some of its hard earned credibility to other sites.

There are of course many other factors involved, some 499.999 million other factors give or take. One of those is the history of your site or blog, meaning how long it has been around. Another is the frequency of updates and new information found on your site. A blog that publishes 10 new posts per week will end up with a higher Google PR than a blog that publishes 10 new posts per year.

Much about Google PageRank and how it works is still unknown to the public, and will likely remain as such. It is also worth nothing that other major search engines deploy their own complex formulas for gathering and measuring similar information.

What Does Google PageRank Do?

Besides looking cool at the top of your website, Google PR will in part determine your ranking in Google's search engine results. The higher a site's page ranking, the more likely it will be to appear highly in the results. This of course leads to more traffic to your niche websites or blogs. This in turn will likely lead to more incoming links, which creates somewhat of a cycle in which more popular websites can become still more popular.

How Can I use Google PageRank?

You can use Google PR to help research your competition and determine an effective website strategy. If you wanted to create a blog or a niche website about a particular topic, you could Google phrases centered around that topic. Check out the top 10 sites and their page rank. The higher those numbers are, the harder it is going to be to crack that list. Whittling your topic down into a narrower niche or finding a new topic altogether can help you achieve an easier road to the top.

How Frequently Does Google PageRank Change?

Google PageRank is constantly evolving and fluctuating. However, the system only publishes visible changes to Google PR about once every three months.

Can You Cheat Google PageRank?

You can try to cheat Google PageRank, but you probably won't get very far. The system is constantly evolving and can quickly detect black hat scams directed towards increasing incoming links. Bogus link directories and pay-for-link schemes are typically sniffed out relatively quickly. The result can be a complete de-indexing from Google and its search engine.

Google PageRank is another way that owners of niche websites, bloggers and internet marketers can continue to understand the complicated internet landscape and their place in it.

Sources: http://www.google.com/corporate/tech.html

SEO Dallas – Swanson SEO Services – How to Increase Page Rank | SEO Dallas

Hosting24.com Review

As I am doing search engine optimization (SEO) for clients, I get asked every so often about website hosting.  I'd like to tell you about the host I use because I have had such good luck with them.  First, let me tell you what I needed in a host and well, what I was hoping for.  I currently have 44 domains that I have all on the same website host.  Thus, I knew starting out that I wanted a hosting company that wouldn't have any issues handling a lot of domain names.

Some of those sites receive a fair amount of traffic to them and others are smaller niche sites and receive less traffic.  So, essentially what it comes down to is “options.”  I wanted to be able to have a lot of options with my web host.  (A quick aside for those who don't know what a host is: It's the company that “hosts” the files for your website.  Check out Wikipedia's hosting definition here)

It was also very important that the host be very reasonably priced, because you need to watch your business expenses.

Beyond being reasonably priced, I also knew that I was going to have a lot of websites (domain names), an unknown amount of traffic and a lot of MySQL databases.  MySQL databases are the databases that are used to run all kinds of cool opensource software like WordPress Blogs, OS Commerce shopping carts and Open Realty Real Estate sites. 

Hosting24.com meets and, in fact, exceeds my requirements because they have:
Unlimited Domain Hosting
Unlimited MySQL Databases
Unlimited Bandwidth
Unlimited Disk Space

So, how much am I out of pocket for all that?  Get ready, this will blow your socks off: a measly bucks a month!

Lol!  Yep, I only pay $7 bucks a month for those unlimited hosting features.  I was also pleasantly surprised to find I can further cut that cost down to $4.95/mo if were to pay for 2 or three years worth at a time.  All that included my own dedicated IP address too.

It is nice to find the tools you need to run your business without paying a fortune for them.

Support:
One of the most crucial things about choosing a web host is the support you receive.  I have had a really great experience with Hosting24.com's support.  It is all trouble ticket based.  I just log on to their support website and tell them what my problem is (in plain english) and I always get a response back within just a few hours.  That's a lot more than can be said for many other hosts.  I've never had any downtime, most of my problems were related to changes I needed for a website or configuration or something.  They have always been very courteous  and prompt.

So, Hosting24.com gets Swanson SEO Services' official seal of approval!  Please be sure to leave a comment if you have any other questions about Hosting24.com.

Sincerely,
~Nick Swanson~
http://SwansonSEOServices.com