Viralogy

A simple way to understand page rank, is to think about votes. In a voting system, with every vote that you get, you are slowly achieving more visibility and credibility. The more you get, the stronger you get. Similarly, page rank is a link analysis algorithm used my Google search engines that essentially tells how influential or ‘important’ a site is.

In relation to eCommerce sites, page rank can be especially important as it not only helps in search results, but it also is a way to gauge your sites influence among your competitors. While the actual algorithm that Google uses is not public, there are many ‘experts’ that like to chime in with their advice.

5 positive ranking factors that influence a site’s page rank:

1. Link Source Diversity
2. Keyword use in the title tag
3. Trustworthiness of the Domain Based on Link Distance from Trusted Domain
4. External Link Popularity
5. Keyword focused anchor text from external links

5 negative ranking factors that influence a site’s page rank:

1. Cloaking with Malicious/Manipulative Intent
2. Link acquisition from a website link broker/sale
3. Cloaking of links
4. Website maintenance and downtime
5. Links to spam sites

In addition to those forementioned, there are also a few off-page factors that can determine a websites page rank. A few of them include:

1. Age of the website — the longer your site has been around, the more ‘credibility’ it has which will yield a higher page rank
2. Relevance of inbound links to the site — sites that link into your site should have appropriate target keywords that are relevant to the site
3. Rate of new inbound links to your site
4. Statistical performance of your site — this includes data points such as how long visitors stay on your site, how many pages they view, and how often they return to your site.