I have mentioned Page Ranking from Google before, and I wanted to take a moment to explain what it is, and what it means for your blog.
The Page Rank (or PR) from Google is a scale from 0 to 10, 0 being a brand-new blog or website, and 10 being one of the most important websites on the Internet. Google assigns a Page Rank to a blog based on a multitude of factors, which I’ll get into in my next blog. Right now, let me explain how your Page Rank affects you.
In a nutshell, the higher the PR of your blog, the more traffic Google will send your way. When you are a brand-new blog, your PR will be 0. As you grow, your PR should rise – a 2 is a fairly good, and a 4 is great! Most personal blogs don’t get higher than a 4, although there are a few rare exceptions of professional bloggers who are making six figures or more per year. The majority of blogs or websites that have a ranking of 5 or above are run by companies.
To understand page ranking, think of a giant pyramid – lots and lots of 0’s at the bottom (I have been blogging for four months in my personal blog and it still rates at a zero) up to a very tiny group of websites ranking at a 10.
Why does this matter to you? Because when you are trying to decide whether to go to work for a company or blog for yourself, you’ve got to look at the page ranking of the company’s blog that you’re contemplating working at. The home page for Families.com has a PR of 6. That’s really good, even for a company website, and is one of the reasons that I wanted to go to work for Families. I knew that my blogs would receive a lot of traffic because of that high page ranking. A lot of traffic meant a lot of readers, which meant high revenue, which meant nice sized paychecks for me. You can post the same exact article on two websites and yet the website with the higher page ranking will receive more traffic, and you will get more income, from posting there.
10’s, on the other hand, are an elusive white rabbit that I didn’t believe even existed for the longest time. I finally saw two: The White House and Microsoft. Needless to say, I don’t have any aspirations of creating a blog that has a page ranking of 10 anytime soon – I’d be better off setting my sites on more realistic goals, like flying to the moon every summer for vacation. 😉
Even 8’s and 9’s aren’t seen very often, and are mostly huge websites like eBay or Amazon. Bottom line: If you want the largest reach possible for your writing, doing it through a company will be the way to go.
How is the page ranking actually determined? Check out my next blog where I discuss that in-depth!
This was part of a series on blogging. If you haven’t read the other entries in this series, make sure to check out the summary page for a listing of all blogging articles. Comments and feedback are always welcome – feel free to leave them below or send me an e-mail at Hava L {at} Families dot com. Thanks for reading!