In my post about Pagerank and Link Juice, I mentioned the factors of creating pagerank, but now I'm going to discuss them at a little bit of length. The factors of pagerank are:
- How long your site has been on the internet.
- How large your site is.
- How many inbound links your site has.
- What your bounce rate is.
How large your site is. Search engines like sites that have relevant content. In fact, search engines seem to have this kind of equation: Content = Good. More Content = Better. If your site is about antique tea sets, having content about antique tea sets will gain you more pagerank. Why? Because you're providing more information to the world about your subject, and the more information you provide, the more valuable visitors are going to think your site are, and thus search engines will also think your site is more valuable.
How many inbound links your site has. Not just ANY old link will do, but links from "authority sites". In other words, if you get a link from someone who sells links (link farms), it's worthless as best, and harmful at worst. There are plenty of link farms, so do your self a favor and DON'T EVER BUY LINKS. Buying links to your site is usually a scam that will only take your money and possibly get you in trouble with search engines. Link farms are considered to be a form of spam. Buying ad space from a site that is relevant is not the same, so there's no problem with buying legitimate ad space on a legitimate website. If you get a link from someone else who writes about antique tea sets, that link helps pagerank. If that site is very large and well established (amazon, wikipedia, etc) and the link is relevant to your site, you get even more pagerank!
What your bounce rate is. This is actually a debate in the SEO community as to whether this actually contributes, and I believe it does simply because it makes sense. A "bounce" is when someone comes to your site, and leaves without clicking on anything. If your site has a high bounce rate, your site probably doesn't have good and/or relevant content or it's built poorly, and you will not gain page rank. If your site has a low bounce rate, your site probably has lots of good and/or relevant content that users enjoy and your site is built well. It's in the best interest of search engines to give high ranking to sites and pages that visitors like.
In summary, build a good site with content that your visitors will love, and share it!
Cheers,
Chris
