Effect of Links on Your Pagerank

Google’s Page rank algorithm uses a mathematical analysis called ‘Singular value decomposition’. This analysis uses mathematical functions to derive a single value from amongst numerous variables. I don’t wish to get too much technical here but you can check the wikipedia for a detailed maths.

Pagerank and links are very closely connected to each other. Google considers that whenever any website links to another website it is voting for that website’s credibility in terms of content usefulness. Psychologically people tend to link to useful & relevant contents & no one would like to link to low quality & useless contents. So whenever there is a link going to any website from your website you are voting for the website you are linking to. More the votes any website has more the Pagerank.

Pagerank and Incoming Links:

Higher the dofollow backlinks coming to your website higher would be your Pagerank. Please note that all the links are not weighted equally by Google. Links from high PR & relevant websites help you more to achieve a higher pagerank for your website pages.

Pagerank and outgoing Links:

We have seen that when you link to any website you are casting a vote in favor of that website. However, by linking to other websites, you are also transferring some portion of your pagerank to that website. Whenever any website links to any other website without adding a rel=nofollow tag, it passes some of its Pagerank link juice to the website it is linking to.

Adding NoFollow Tag to outgoing links:

Unless you wish to transfer a pagerank credit (link juice) to any website, it is recommended to add a rel=nofollow tag while linking to external websites. By adding a Nofollow tag you are informing Google that they should not count the link for deciding your pagerank. So in case of Nofollow linking Google would not pass your pagerank credit to the website you are linking to. At the same time the users of your website would still be able to see the useful content that you have shared through the link. So it’s a win-win situation for both.

To summarize, you should understand & keep in mind that Links play a very important role for deciding your pagerank.