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Learning Your Page Rank on Google Using Web Tools

Learning Your Page Rank on Google Using Web Tools

“What is my Google Page Rank?”  If you haven't asked yourself this question at least once in the last month, you're making a mistake.  Checking your Page Rank with Google on a regular basis is a key part of making sure that your web marketing strategies are working where it counts—on search engines, where over 85 percent of clients look for a new attorney.  In this guide, you'll find out how to get the answer to your “what is my Google Page Rank?” question.  Keep reading to find out not only how to get your Page Rank from Google, but also how to use that information to keep your website growing and improving.

Why Does My Page Rank with Google Matter?

You may be asking “What is my Google Page Rank?” without really knowing what the Page Rank is and isn't used for.  There's actually a great deal of misleading information on the internet about how much Page Rank matters to Google, so it's important to know beforehand what you can and can't use PR values to do.

Page Rank with Google is a way of estimating how popular your website is compared with other websites on the internet.  The very most popular web pages on the entire internet (less than fifty in total) get a 10, and a logarithmic scale means that there are many, many more 9's than 10's, many more 8's than 9's, and so on.

Attorney websites aren't generally the highest ranked sites on the internet.  The best question may not be “what is my Google Page Rank,” but rather, “what is my Google Page Rank trendline?” If your Page Rank with Google is improving, it is a good sign that efforts you're making to improve inbound linking and overall traffic are working.  If not, you may need to keep working on finding places to place links.

The Basic Page Rank Google Tool: Google Toolbar

The first tool that you should grab if you're going to start asking “what is my Google Page Rank?” is the Google toolbar.  It's easy to use and can tell you the Page Rank that Google has assigned any URL. However, it also has some disadvantages as a tool.

Because this tool comes directly from Google, you might think that it would give you an up to date answer for the question “What is my Google Page Rank?”  However, the toolbar actually only updates periodically, and these periodic updates can be far enough apart that the Page Rank you see listed may not truly represent what your website's PR value is today.

This means that you'll be able to rely on the results of the Google Toolbar more when you believe your Page Rank with Google has stayed roughly the same recently.  If you believe that you've experienced a sustained increase in web traffic since the last time the toolbar was updated, you may not get an accurate answer when asking “What is my Google Page Rank?”  Try again in a few days or a week and see if new updates have been released.

Beyond “What is My Google Page Rank”: Comparative Tools

Of course, you may not just want to check on your own website.  Knowing what your competitors' Page Rank with Google is can help you understand what you need to do to stay competitive in your legal market.  One of the best tools you can use to help you understand your Page Rank with Google as compared with some other website's is a list PR checker tool.  Any Page Rank for Google tool that lets you input a list of URLs instead of using just one URL at a time is fine to use for this purpose—you may find one that you like particularly well.

If you notice that your competitors are consistently getting web pages with higher PR values than you, you should consider ways to improve your Page Rank on Google.  For example, you may want to look at how they're building their inbound link structure and improve your links based on the ideas that you find from checking theirs.

Beyond “What is My Google Page Rank”: Increasing PR

Of course, you don't just want to know what your Page Rank on Google is.  You want to be able to increase it.  Because Page Rank on Google is based mostly on web page popularity, as determined by inbound links and overall traffic to the page, you should mostly work on getting more people to visit and link to your website if you want to improve your Page Rank.

You can do this in many different ways—through social bookmarking websites, social networks, or even just telling friends or family with websites to link to your site and tell their friends about it.  Increasing your Page Rank on Google is easier than ever with today's more social internet.

Avoid using any kind of automation, which produces copied content and leaves telltale signs behind.  Google can identify automated attempts to build Page Rank, and will generally stop websites in their tracks who try to use these techniques.

Beyond “What is My Google Page Rank”: Analyzing Changes

You should also learn how to look at the changes that have occurred to your website's Page Rank on Google over time.  Whenever your Page Rank changes, it can indicate significant things have gone right or wrong for your website.  

If you use a tool like SEOMoz to check out the historical Page Rank of your web page, and you notice a sudden drop, you should figure out what happened.  Had it been just a brief spike for your Page Rank on Google, and the drop brought it back to baseline?  This often happens when an article is posted to a social bookmarking site.  A huge drop may mean that Google believes you've violated webmaster guidelines and is now penalizing your site in rankings.

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