Links and PageRank

PageRank is the most important indication of the power of back links but do you know where does the PR come from and how it is distributed? It’s important to know that to avoid mistakes when building links.

First of all, you have to understand that the PR does not originate in links, it originates from pages and is distributed by links. Therefore it’s impossible to tell the original source of PR nor is that important. The only thing to remember here is that PageRank is a metric of a page, not a link.

Now, because the PR is distributed by links, the amount of PR an outgoing link carries depends on other links on the same page. So it is important to evaluate how many links are on a particular page. For example if you have a PR3 page with 200 outgoing links, you will only get 1/200 of PR3 with your link, meanwhile if you get a link from a PR2 page with only 10 links, the latter will be more valuable than the former.