What are the PageRank algorithm’s criteria, and how to use it to improve your popularity?

Contents

• What is PageRank?
• How to measure PageRank?
• How to improve your PageRank?

What is PageRank?

In the past, the PageRank was an official data from Google that indicated the "popularity" index of a site or rather of a page of a site. The PageRank could indeed vary from one page to another within the same site. It was found on the "Google PageRank" toolbar which displayed a score from 0 to 10, defined according to the criteria of an algorithm. This toolbar disappeared in 2016 and has not been replaced. That year, SEOs were in an uproar and wondered if the notion of PageRank still existed. Today, we can say that the answer is: yes and no!
We are well advanced!
In reality, PageRank is inescapable because it is at the heart of all Google's algorithms. Without this notion, how could Google define the pages to be indexed and positioned? It is just not publicly available anymore.
Moreover, it is a criterion that has become much more complex than it used to be because it encompasses a large number of factors from the different algorithms. In the past, the value of a page was assessed by the number of links it received. But faced with the proliferation of directories, satellite pages and other low-quality link-buying platforms, Google had to crack down. Today, the quality of backlinks has become just as important as the quantity, if not more important.

How does Google PageRank work?

PageRank is simply a mathematical formula, which looks like this:

PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + ... + PR(Tn)/C(Tn))

Okay, that was just a little info but it may not be the formula that will help you understand how it works.

Google takes three factors into account when calculating a page’s PageRank:

• Inbound links quantity and quality
• Number of outbound links
• PageRank for each link on the page

Let's take pages A, B and C.

• Page C receives 2 links: one from page A, and one from page B
• Page A has a higher PageRank than page B, and fewer outbound links.

Enter this information into the PageRank algorithm, and you will get page C’s PageRank.

The PageRank formula also incorporates a "damping factor" which simulates the probability that a user will continue to click on links while browsing the web. Each click’s importance decreases with each link.

In other words, the likelihood that someone will click on a link on the first page they visit is high. But then, the probability that he/she clicks on a link on the next page is slightly lower... and so on.

Since Google needs several pages’ PageRank to calculate that of a single page, one might wonder how it comes to calculate the initial page’s PageRank?

Here is an excerpt from the original article on PageRank:
PageRank or PR(A) can be calculated using a simple iterative algorithm and is the principal eigenvector of the web's normalized link matrix.

In other words, PageRank can be calculated even without knowing the linked pages’ PageRank because it’s a relative score, and not an absolute. A page’s quality is also assessed against the other pages, a bit like teachers who, upon finishing grading homework, adjust the marks according to the class’ overall level.

How to measure PageRank?

Therefore, we have just seen that the PageRank notion still exists, but that the official tool for learning about it is no longer available. Unfortunately, since this is data that only Google owns, there is no PageRank toolbar replica. But it’s possible to get an estimate.

Ahrefs URL Rating

URL Rating is a metric that indicates a URL backlink profile’s strength (from 0 to 100).

It’s comparable to the original Google PageRank formula because it:

• Takes nofollow attributes into account
• Integrates the damping factor
• Takes into account all the URLS found

However, while Ahrefs' URL Rating gives us a good clue about a page's popularity, it can't be used as the only official criteria. Google's PageRank has evolved considerably over the years, and today it incorporates very advanced criteria, secretly kept by Google. This fact alone makes it very difficult to understand how Ahrefs' rating differs from Google's current iteration of PageRank.

TrustFlow and CitationFlow on Majestic

TrustFlow is a metric that analyses the trustworthiness of your site based on the quality and theme of the links. This metric is determined by the number of clicks a specific page receives from a set of sites.
The trustworthiness of your site will increase if it is authoritative and qualitative. This means that your TF score will be determined by the amount of traffic generated by the link and the relevance of the linking site.
Like TrustFlow, CitationFlow measures the popularity of a link, referring to the number of clicks the link receives. The only difference is that it does not take into account the quality of the links. In other words, if your website has a higher CitationFlow than TrustFlow, it probably means that it receives a lot of poor quality links. An ideal link profile should therefore have a perfect balance of TrustFlow and CitationFlow, which is a very condensed scatter plot on the Majestic graph.

By mixing quantity and quality data, Majestic's metrics therefore tend to approximate PageRank criteria.

Moz's Domain Authority and Page Authority

Domain Authority (DA) is a metric that predicts a website's ranking in the SERPs (search engine results pages). It ranges from 1 to 100 and, like the URL Rating, is calculated according to several criteria similar to those of PageRank, except that it gives a global score, over the whole domain. Moz also offers the Page Authority (PA) score to evaluate the relevance of a single page.
Moz's DA and PA can be accessed from the freeChrome extension Mozbar, the Link analysis tool, the SERP Analysis section of Keyword Explorer and many other SEO tools.

The LinkJuice, by SEMJuice

Some specialists who want to go further have developed their own ranking criteria. The LinkJuice developed by SEMJuice is among the most relevant to date. It mixes numerous metrics from Majestic, SemRush, Monitorank and many others, while applying a clever weighting according to the importance of each criterion.
You can find out your LinkJuice by registering on the platform, which is primarily intended to improve your popularity through netlinking.

How to improve your PageRank?

To preserve and improve a PageRank, you have to act on 3 levers: internal linking, outbound links and backlinks.

The internal mesh

The way pages relate to each other affects a website's PageRank. This is because the "SEO juice" that is sent to a website from external links is often sent to the homepage. The homepage is a website’s level zero. Through internal links, the homepage transmits the popularity it receives to other deeper pages. An optimized internal linking helps this SEO juice to be transmitted to the pages that interest us. This is called internal PageRank. Therefore, internal linking does not improve PageRank, but it does help to keep it level.

Outbound links

To understand this concept, we must keep the notion of “SEO juice” in mind. If a page receives quality juice from a page, it’s in your best interest to keep it. This requires not only limiting internal links to other pages on the website, but also to other websites. Otherwise, the page’s PageRank will be “diluted”.

Backlinks

Inbound links are the biggest source of PageRank, only if they are of good quality. It’s better to have 10 quality backlinks on 10 trusted websites (sharing a common theme), than 1,000 links on directories or content farms. To assess the quality of the links you may have with partners, you can use the metrics available in Majestic (Trust Flow), Moz or Ahrefs.

Conclusion

PageRank still is an essential and important metric in search engine rankings. Despite Google’s total opacity on this topic, it’s still possible to assess a page’s importance thanks to various metrics developed by reputable SEO players. However, PageRank should not be the only data to evaluate a page’s effectiveness. It’s also essential to measure its technical performance with tools like PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix.