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- [Anson] When analyzing web pages,
search engines use more than basic link popularity
to determine a web page's ranking
in search engine results pages.
Google, for instance, uses something called PageRank.
PageRank is a value assigned by Google
to every webpage in its search index.
PageRank value is an indicator of the worth of the page,
based on the number of links that point to that page.
Sometimes PageRank can also be called authority,
and the authority that one page sends to another
can sometimes be called link juice,
when we're talking informally.
In effect, websites vote for different pages
by linking to them.
All votes, however, are not counted equal.
For example, let's say we have two web pages
that are linking to a page on our site.
Let's say one of these pages has a high PageRank,
and the other page has a low PageRank.
Now, when these sites link to our site,
they're passing on authority,
but you'll notice that the page with the high PageRank
passes on more authority
than the page with the low PageRank.
Additionally, the amount of authority passed on by a link
is diluted by the number of total outgoing links
from that page.
For example, a page where they high PageRank
that only has one outgoing link
will pass on more authority than if the same page
had multiple outgoing links,
because those links have been diluted,
due to the number of links that are outgoing from that page.
So if your webpage is the only page that's linked to
from a particular article,
you're going to receive more authority from that link
then you would if the same article
linked to 10 other websites.
Now remember, PageRank is passed from page to page,
not just site to site.
Every webpage in a site has a PageRank,
and that rank can vary greatly throughout the same site.
Pages within your own site pass PageRank from one another
when you link to them from within your own site.
So your homepage passes link juice to the about page,
and the about page passes it back to the homepage.
Same with the about in contact page.
And then of course the home and contact page
also pass link juice.
Now this is important, because Google uses PageRank
to help rank pages in search engine results pages.
So if Google has two pages
that seem to be an equally good match
for a particular search query,
the page with the higher PageRank
will rank higher in the search results,
because in effect,
the worldwide web has voted for that page,
based on the number of links it has.
Now, Google no longer publishes the PageRank data publicly.
Because of this,
there are a number of pseudo PageRank metrics
that online SEO tools use.
So let's take a look at some of those.
For example, Majestic.com uses the Citation Flow metric
as a replacement for PageRank.
Okay, so here we are in the Majestic site explorer,
and I've gone ahead and I've entered a website to analyze,
and you'll notice that on the right side of our screen,
we have this metric called the Citation Flow.
This is Majestic's equivalent to PageRank.
So if you're using the Majestic tool,
that's what you'd like to look at to see how much authority
a particular page has.
The metric that Moz uses is called Page Authority.
So let's take a look at that metric.
Okay, so here I am on the Moz site,
and I've gone ahead and I've entered a website to analyze,
and you'll notice that on this screen,
we have the Page Authority.
Now remember, this is going to change
for every single page on your website.
So it's not going to be the same across all of them,
but this is Moz's equivalent to PageRank.
And finally, if you're using the Ahrefs tool,
they use a metric called URL Rating
as their substitute for PageRank.
So let's take a look at what that looks like.
Okay, so I've gone ahead and I've done a search
for a website here in Ahrefs.
You'll notice that right up here at the top,
we have two metrics.
We have the UR and the DR.
The one that we're talking about right now is the UR,
that's the URL Rating.
So if we're trying to find out a substitute for PageRank
using the Ahrefs tool,
this is the metric that we want to look at,
UR or URL Rating.
So, as you can see, because Google uses PageRanks
as one of its primary determinants
in how a page ranks in search engine results pages,
it's important to have an idea of how PageRank works,
and you can see how important it is
to have a lot of websites linking to your site,
so that they can pass that PageRank, that authority,
that link juice along,
so that you can rank higher in search engine results pages.
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