Page 201 - Professional Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

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Link building 200

8.4.4 Should you consider Google PageRank?

The Google toolbar will display a little green bar that shows the PageRank of a
website. There are many hints that the PageRank numbers in the toolbar are not
updated and that Google uses other (internal) PageRank numbers to calculate the
ranking of websites.
The official PageRank number that can be seen in the Google toolbar is more or less a
marketing instrument for Google. It has nothing to do with the real PageRank that
Google uses for the ranking algorithm.
The toolbar PageRank of a web page shouldn't be the determining factor when
choosing link partners. A link partner with a low PageRank that has a similar topic to
your site will bring you much better visitors than an unrelated link partner with a
high page rank.
If you see a good website with good content that has a low PageRank you should
trade links with that site if that website is useful for your visitors. One day, that page
might have a higher PageRank and it will still link back to you.
Ask yourself: Is the website related to your site? Would it make sense for web surfers
if they linked to you and you linked to them? Could visitors of the other website be
interested in your site? If you find a website you would want to visit or your visitors
would want to visit then link to it and ask for a link back to your site.

Just use common sense. If websites that are related to your website link to your
website, then your own website must be important for that topic. If the links
are useful for website visitors, search engines will eventually find this out.
Search engines try to put common sense into a mathematical algorithm.

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