No more secrets! There are innumerable theories and speculations about Google Page Rank. In the end no formula is good enough to predict the PR. Basically Page Rank is a value that characterizes how important a page is on the internet by counting how many votes (links) a page has from other pages.

However, the PR algorithm is very complicated. There is no doubt that the Algorithm also analyzes the page that gives the link. That’s why I’d like to present 10 myths about Google Page Rank to help you figuring out the best practice of gaining a high PR.

  • Myth 1: If I buy an expired domain name with a high PR, Google will strip me of the PR next time I renew the domain name. False! If you retain the initial topic of the expired domain and at least partly keep the old file names and hierarchy (you can look it up on Archive.org BEFORE you buy an expired site) you will not lose your PR. It is uncertain whether G looks into WHOIS to detect a change of the owner but it is certain that you can keep the PR. Reason being that webmasters who have linked to the site are unlikely to remove a link if you keep the topic and your new site is of good quality.
  • Myth 2: If I submit my site to hundreds of free directories and alternative search engines, I will soon get high PageRank.False! Approximately 99% of free online directories have no PR in their category/subcategory pages, hence no PageRank juice can be transferred to your site. If you keep submitting and get lucky, you will be PR1 on next PageRank update, providing you fail to execute other link building strategies. If you are unlucky or go too aggressive about submitting (i.e. link spamming) you will remain PR n/a (don’t mix with PR0).
  • Myth 3: Once I am given a high Page Rank on a certain page, I can turn it into a link farm, under construction page or Adsense page.False! No way! Content is considered when assigning Page Rank. Don’t even try to prove me the opposite. I have based this assertion on real experiments.
  • Myth 4: If I exchange links with many sites, I will get high PR.False! No, you won’t. If you want to go for reciprocal links, regard it as traffic exchange, because in most cases you will get no PR boost from reciprocal links. Site A votes for site B and the site B returns the vote for site A. Bang! The votes devalue each other.
  • Myth 5: I have to avoiud linking to other sites because this way I will give away my link juice.False! You must link out to strong and established sites, especially if your site is new, it will show your relevancy and increase your credibility. In fact, there is a lot to gain linking to relevant and quality websites and lot to lose linking to bad neighbourhood and link farms. In fact, you can utterly damage your PR and drop from the SERPs if you do not research the sites you link to.
  • Myth 6: It takes lots of backlinks to even dream about a high Page Rank.False! It is very common that a new, nicely built site having only one PR4 backlink from a relevant, established site through a correct, keyword rich anchor text, gains PR2 or even PR3 on next update. Although the aforementioned example is a result of my own experiment, it is extreme and you have to aim at more than one backlink. In fact, if you don’t keep building your links, you can lose Page Rank. Remember that a single PR4 backlink is much better than 10 PR1 links.
  • Myth 7: My links page or directory category pages will never gain any Page Rank.False! Cheer up! There is a part of the algorithm that severely deals with link pages and directory subcategories (read the article about Directories Page Rank ), but you can easily outsmart the bot by using the Myth 5. Obvious link pages lose out on gaining Page Rank because G wants to cut link sale. That’s why you have to turn your link page into valuable content. Change the filename from links.php to my-keywords.php and mix the links into paragraphs of relevant and quality text. It works fantastically and you can still use an image button reading “links” because the bot cannot read an image. Just avoid using “links” in any anchor text links.
  • Myth 8: Page Rank is totally useless.False! Although search engines usually don’t list the results sorted by PR, backlinks are a part of G ranking algorithm and because high Page Rank usually means many backlinks, you will eventually rank higher with a high PR site. Also high Page Rank means credibility, which makes life easier when it comes to networking, selling advertising space and trying to get into human edited directories.
  • Myth 9: Commenting on other blogs and forums cannot help me gaining Page Rank.False! It depends on the way each site organizes its links. Some webmasters decide to use NoFollow attribute to tell the bots not to follow outbound links. You can check if this is the case by viewing the source of a page. However, many websites let bots follow the links, which means that if your signature or comment appears on a high Page Rank forum or blog you get a backlink. The rule is to post useful comments - never spam! Believe me, there are ways to punish spammers.
  • Myth 10: If I own two sites and I link from one site to another, I will get penalised.False! If your sites are on similar topic, you can and you should link from one to another. I have five tourism related projects and they have all been interlinked for several years. In the end it has actually increased the Page Rank and I benefit from transferring traffic from one site to another. If the topic is too remote but you just want your visitors to see your other projects, use NoFollow attribute with your A HREF tag.


So, 10 myths about Google Page Rank have been busted and crashed. The main idea is to look at link development in a long-term scope. Backlinks should be gained gradually and webmasters should diversify their link building methods.

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