If you’re new to Internet marketing, “PageRank” or “PR” is something you’ll hear a lot about. While the literal meaning is the original patented web-page-ranking algorithm that was the basis for Google, in IM and webmaster circles, it usually refers to the “toolbar export” number that Google assigns to every page it indexes. The range is 0-10, going from ‘weakest’ to ‘strongest’. There are a lot of misconceptions and misunderstanding surrounding PageRank
First, though we often hear the term used to qualify a site, it is misleading to think of “a PageRank 5 website”. Websites don’t have PageRank, only individual pages/URL’s do. While it is usually the homepage that has the highest PR, it isn’t always the case. When you hear “a PageRank 5 website” this usually means a website with a PR5 homepage. The ‘inner’ pages of that site will almost always have lower, and even no PageRank.
Second, “PageRank” is an indicator, it doesn’t “do” anything. Based mostly on IBL’s (In-Bound Links), it’s a relative measure of the overall ‘strength’ of that page. Unfortunately, for our purposes – the purpose of ranking – it is a poor measure. The main reason is that it is a ‘cumulative’ measure, and as such, doesn’t tell us much a page’s strength in relation to individual keywords or phrases. In some ways, it’s like a ‘rating’ – we get our ‘rating’ by virtue of our IBL’s, the ‘rating’ itself doesn’t give us anything.
This is why we sometimes see pages with lower PR ranking above pages with higher PR – the higher-ranking page is stronger for that particular search. This is also why it’s important to think of ‘competition’ as only those pages on Page 1 where we’re trying to get.
When I look at who is occupying Page 1 for a keyword I’m trying to rank for, their PR is only a small factor in determining how hard it will be. This is because a page may have an overall high PR, but not be either well-optimized, or ‘strong’ for the keyword I’m targeting.
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