Whether you are studying at school and competing with other students or have a blog and competing with other blogs in your niche, ranking matters. In school, you try to be the first boy and in the web world, you try to get a place in the top 10 search results provided by Google for the keywords related to your business. However, the competition in World Wide Web is far more since millions of other sites fight with you to secure a top position on SERPs. Some website owners hire a SEO company to boost SERP ranking while expert bloggers use their knowledge to get noticed by Google. So you should know what is google author rank and pagerank.
Veteran bloggers used to employ several search engine optimization techniques such as link building by guest posting and on page SEO but after Google Penguin and Panda updates, they have become very cautious about their SEO strategy. They are scared because even a small wrong move can damage their page rank and SERP position. However, it’s hard to blame Google for being so strict. Some business website owners used to post hundreds of articles in article submission sites for backlinks as a result of which spam content would spread rapidly all over the web.
Two Ranking Factors
If you asked any SEO company in 2011 or 2012 about their SEO strategy, they would have told you that link building was their number one priority but things have changed now. Earlier, optimization experts used to search for websites with good page rank and collect backlinks from them. Link building is still important but unlike a few years ago, now there is no guarantee of top SERP ranking even if you have highest number of backlinks. You need to have both quality page rank and author rank to achieve a good position on SERPs.
What is Google PageRank?
It shows the trustworthiness of a site and that trust score is decided by Google. For the last ten years, the search engine giant has been giving websites a PageRank score from 1 to 10 and the higher rank you get, the better place you are likely to get on result pages. Google decides the PageRank of a site by considering the following factors.
- Age of page
- Nofollow backlinks
- Dofollow backlinks
You must get backlinks from high PR websites to boost your website’s page rank. However, don’t link your site with a site if it’s not related to your business. Meaningless linking can result in punishment. For example, if you have a blog on website development, acquire backlinks from another website development blog to maintain transparency. Remember that Google updates PageRank 4 times in a year.
What is Google Author rank?
It’s completely different from PageRank. Unlike PageRank, Google is not giving any score to websites for author rank, but in near future, it may start rating sites on the basis of authorship. Have you heard about Google Authorship? It’s a process that lets you help Google understand the genuineness of your content. When you sign up for Authorship, Google identifies the articles that you have posted in web and considers you as the original creator of those articles. You can compare the process with product patents.
Here are some of the crucial factors of your author rank
- Quality of your content
- How frequently you update content
- Niche
- Your social media profile
Content quality is the most vital factor to get good author rank. No one knows his/her author rank but you can easily check it on Google search engine result pages. Perform a vanity search and you will get to know your position on SERPs. If you rank in the top 10 results without backlinks, then it’s really good. When you search for your name, you may see multiple authors with the same name but if your articles are better than others and you have a great Google+ profile with images, your name and profile details will get better ranking than others.
For better author ranking, you need to prove your expertise and share the latest information. For example, if you had post an article on Flash design last year, you can update last part of the article and discuss how Android and other operating systems have abandoned Flash in the last few months and that the end of Flash is really near.
Make sure that you maintain your niche. Google does not like a “Jack of all trades” attitude. If you have written articles on web development related topics so far and suddenly start writing articles on cooking, don’t expect good ranking for cooking tips. Google knows you as an expert in website development, not for cooking tips.
If you are a blogger, trust me that the days of keywords are gone. Quality and genuineness matter the most. As long as readers are happy with your content, Google will also pay attention to your website. You may hire a SEO company for on and off page optimization but ultimately content is king.
About Author:
Aditi Datta is a professional Search Engine and Social Media Strategist who works in a leading SEO Company in India. She also concentrated her SEO resourcefulness on the diverse fields of SEO and SEM.
