Use Google Toolbar to View PageRank - SEO Tools

We've talked about the concept of PageRank before - the numerical measure that Google assigns for how important a given page is in the context of the overall web. PageRank is a critical determining factor in how search results are ranked by Google, and therefore a critical component of SEO.

We know how important PageRank is, but how do we know what PageRank is assigned to a given web page? There are a number of tools out there, but one that I find to be useful and convenient is the Google search toolbar. Not only can you easily search from the toolbar, but, among other things, it also shows you what the PageRank is for the page you're currently on.









This is a great way to quickly estimate how valuable a link is that you're receiving by knowing how reputable Google thinks a given page is. That said, pagerank in the toolbar is not always the most up-to-date, and it also doesn't speak to how relevant a specific page might be for a given topic (a page might have a lot of authority but only for a single topic and that might be understated in the single measure of PageRank).

Hope you can add Google Toolbar to your SEO toolbox as yet another valuable SEO tool that makes your analysis quick and effective.

Using Nofollows in SEO: Controlling Page Rank Passthrough and Avoiding Links to Spam and "Bad Neighborhoods"

Nofollows are a powerful and important tool when thinking about SEO. They are used by adding a rel="nofollow" to a link, for example (courtesy of Wikipedia):
a href="http://www.example.com/" rel="nofollow"

Nofollows should be used to indicate to the search engine that you do not want to pass any authority on to the page the link is pointing to. It either means that the page is one of little importance, or one who you're not necessarily sure you trust and therefore don't want to endorse with a link.

The first case is often done for footer links on your site, or to limit the number of followed links a page has. This is oftentimes mixed up with the practice of "PageRank sculpting" which is a practice that we'll talk about another time and that has unclear value.

The second case is great to employ if you have a site with user-generated content and user-generated links. By no-following things like comments and posts, it discourages spammers to post links from your site pointing to theirs in efforts to boost their own credibility with the search engines. Also, it prevents you from getting penalized by the search engines for (unknowingly) linking to "bad neighborhoods," or sites that are known to be malicious or spammy.

The bottom line? Use nofollows when you point to pages on your site you don't want to pass authority to as well as for most out-going user-generated links that you cannot reliably trust.