Importance of Google PageRank and Inbound Links
Having developed a quality and useful site now allows your site to now be recognized by other site owners as a source of good information or offering a quality service. This is one of the most important stages of developing a popular site, receiving support (inbound links) from other websites. The internet is a big network of sites, however it is unrealistic for one site to have all the information anyone could ever want on one site, and as such this has resulted in the common practice of linking other sites that contain the relevant information that your own site lacks that the visitors of your site might find useful. Links are important for a number of reasons, firstly and most importantly they are a great source of traffic itself, and much of any site’s traffic will come from links from other sites or from other pages within your actual site, which makes an effective and efficient navigation system within your site just as important. However of late inbound links have received much more attention for their ability to affect your Google PageRank, one element in the algorithm that is believe to be quite significant in a site’s position within Google search results. As such people have begun to place a significant value on receiving inbound links from other websites, and in many cases have placed much more focus on improving their Google PageRanks (PR) rather than improving their actual sites. Whilst a good Google PR is preferable I would suggest that there are many more valuable things that could and should be done to a site prior to focusing to heavily on Google PR.
Google PR is essentially a system where by Google sees inbound links from one site to another as a vote for the value of that site. For example if Tony’s Tonka Truck fan site links the official Tonka Truck site that is Tony saying that he recommends the site as it will be source of valuable information. So when site A links site B, it tells Google that A recommends B. Now if A, C, D and E all give a link to site B that tells Google that many sites see site B as a valuable site and as such Google will give site B a higher Google ranking. Now in addition to the number of sites that support your site the significance of the inbound link is also important, meaning that a site that is 2 months old and has very little inbound links itself, usually meaning a low Google PR, may give your site its recommendation with a link from its site, but that link or recommendation won’t be worth nearly as much as a link from a well established site in the industry that has hundreds and thousands of inbounds links and has been established for years. So basically to improve your own Google PR you want to receive as many inbound links from as many sites that are of the highest quality as possible that already have established and significant Google PR.
Official Google Explanation of Page Rank
Click Here To Check Your Google Page Rank
Google Toolbar
However as I have mentioned above many webmasters are aware of this and gaining inbound links from other sites is sometimes difficult. Often offering link exchanges results in small gains for both parties, but by far a better way of improving your Google PR is through having a quality site that many website owners are happy to link your site regardless of a return link due to your site being of use to the site owner as a result of the good quality content or unique information it offers.