A Good Question Regarding Page Rank...

A very good question from my post on Page Rank, so here is the question and my answer. I'm sure there are more of you who would like to understand this subject a bit more!

MoneyEnergy said...

OK, I'm still new to blogging so I don't really understand where to check my page rank.Do I need a Google Toolbar to do this? How important is page rank if not everyone has a Google Toolbar and/or bothers to check the page rank of each website? I thought PR referred to where your site showed up in Google search listings when you typed in its main keywords.

Janet Wendy, founder, Gen Plus said...

Hi Moneyenergy. You do need a Google Toolbar to check your page rank, which is simple to download from Google. Because Google is such a powerful entity, their ranking of pages is kind of the "holy grail" of the tecchie world.

Page Rank is important to advertisers and for monetizing your site (Google Ads, for e.g.) because the higher your rank, the more interesting you are to companies who want to spend money tapping into your unique readership. It literally is how important Google thinks your page is. The other thing is that no one knows the top secret formula that Google uses to determine page rank.

There are many factors that are taken into consideration...traffic, content, search engine optimization (SEO), and relevence (and I'm sure many other factors.) On the other hand, where you show up through searches is based solely on the relevence of your content. If you search on Google or Yahoo "jobs for 50 Plus", Gen Plus will always show up in the top ten and often in the #1 or #2 spot solely due to the amount of content I've created over years of blogging on this particular subject.

When you show up in the top "sponsored" searches, that will be because you are paying for keywords...those are paid ads. Excellent question. There is a fantastic site filled with incredible information on blogging and monetization, written by a young writer and given freely. High marks for www.doshdosh.com.

Hope that helps...it's very challenging to understand this "other" blogging world at the outset!