Back in Google’s very early days, Larry Page developed an algorithm with fellow Google co-founder Sergey Brin. It was dubbed PageRank (which ended up being a wonderful name because it is a metric that measure web pages) and became a key metric for how Google ranked pages in its search results.

Despite such rich beginnings, PageRank is now considered by many SEOs to be a less meaningful metric that too many people focus on for all the wrong reasons. As Google has shaped and refined its algorithm over the years to include hundreds of different factors, PageRank just isn’t as important as it used to be, but it still has some interesting value to SEO.

As you may know, the formula for calculating a PageRank is based on linking. Essentially, every page in Google’s index receives a PageRank, based on the number of websites linking to it and the relative quality of these links. Scores come in a logarithmic scale from 0-10, with 10 being the highest and most elusive PageRank (not even google.com ranks at 10).

When Google assigns a PageRank to a site, it’s assigning a level of importance. Pages that look important get crawled and re-indexed more frequently than others. Getting your content crawled at a higher rate means that it can be ranked by search engines more quickly – which can give you a leg up on the competition.

PageRank is also a good indicator if your site is having a problem. If your site is being exploited by hackers or if you are engaging in unscrupulous SEO, Google is likely to warn you by dropping your PageRank before dropping your ranking in searches.

Although PageRank is not the be all end all of SEO anymore, it is still a useful indicator for certain aspects of your site.

When someone reads a newspaper article online, there is normally a picture of the author/journalist above or next to that article. What would happen if everyone had their faces posted by article they have written? We could be closer to that happening than you think because Google+ is helping to make this a reality.

Google+ members who publish an article, and link to it in their Google+ account are standing out in Google’s organic listings. It’s one thing for a person’s article to appear in the organic listings, it’s an even greater bonus when your name and picture show up next to it.  Look at the example below. This article has a picture of the author right next to it along with their name.  It definitely makes it stand out from the other listings.
The organic listing links to the website where the article was originally published and the picture links to the author’s Google+ account.

This can be utilized as a great SEO tool for businesses.  For example let’s say the CEO for company A, which is a home improvement store, publishes blogs monthly. The CEO also has a Google+ account. Every time the CEO posts a blog to company A’s website, he links to it through his Google+ account. As people are searching the web for home improvement they come across the blog in the organic listings. It stands out because there is a picture next to it, and it seems to be related to what they are searching for. After clicking on the organic listing, they read the blog and proceed to do business with Company A. Company A received several benefits. First they received a sale. Second they improved their SEO value when the CEO linked to the blog. Third their blog drove traffic to the website which brought in a sale.

Many companies could benefit SEO-wise from this Google+ feature. In fact, it’s all the more reason to blog and publish articles.  There’s no word yet, if this capability will be given to individual companies (once Google+ opens up to companies), so it’s good to have a company representative(s) who can post and link to articles that they have written on the company’s behalf.

When you visit Google or any other search engine and type in keywords that are important to your business, do you see your listings anywhere on page one?  If your answer is yes, great – keep up the good work! If your answer is no, it’s time to consider (or reconsider in this case) your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy. When was the last time you reviewed your website from an Organic perspective? If your site is not optimized for the most important and relevant keywords, then you will not likely show up when someone searches for them. This is not to say that all you have to do is add some content to your site and poof – there you are, #1 in Google! Sorry, but that isn’t going to happen. Unlike paid search, which can garner results almost instantly, organic search takes time, patience and a knowledgeable team of SEO Engineers, who are well versed in the industry.

First, you will need to determine where your site is lacking in terms of being “Google Friendly”. We have created a rather robust document called our Search Engine Optimization Review, which I typically like to describe as a website report card. Here is how it works: Our SEO Engineers carefully review a site and provide a detailed written analysis, complete with prioritized action items, in order to get your website in better shape for organic search. This Review will look at every aspect of a website that matters to the search engines and ultimately affects rankings. Just a few topics that are focused on during this Review: domain configuration, navigation structure, content optimization, inbound and outbound link structure and much more.

No matter which tactics you employ, be sure to always follow a Best Practices/White Hat approach. In other words, do not ever do anything to trick or fool the engines. This approach is known as Black Hat and it will backfire eventually if not immediately. If you do decide to outsource your efforts to an agency, I encourage you to dig deep into their reputation, knowledge and experience as an SEO firm to ensure that they are not engaging in any tactics that would be considered unacceptable by Google or the other engines.