If you are new to article marketing and SEO, then you may wonder what the significance is of a site’s page rank. Technically speaking, Page Rank refers to a link analysis algorithm, and one that is commonly used by Google. (Actually, Page Rank is named after Larry Page, the co-founder of Google) Wikipedia states that Page Rank
“assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents.”
Online, you will find various page ranking services, including PRChecker.info, that can help you determine where your site is in terms of ranking. Entering a site name into this software can reveal to you that your site is PR0 through PR10.
The significance of the PR ranking is that, ideally, you want to create links that have a high PR ranking. Link exchanges are only valuable if the other site you’re doing business with is evenly matched and has high traffic. In fact, creating a bunch of low quality, low traffic links will probably backfire. Buying links is also a mistake, as search engines like Google and Yahoo consider context and relevancy when determining link popularity.
So, if you are investing in article marketing (which is essentially a form of linkbuilding) ask the SEO firm which directory sites it submits to, and what their PR rankings are. Submitting to a PR0 or PR1 site is not going to do you any favors. Ideally, you want to work with sites that have the highest levels possible, so that these links will be valued by search engines.
Some of the top directory sites in terms of popularity and high PR rankings include EZineArticles, Buzzle, Suite101 and Articles Base. Not only is quality linkbuilding important, but in the end, you want to work with these higher PR sites because that means more traffic for you!
For more information on creating quality links talk to an SEO consultant.
