Many website owners assume that a page rank is merely the place where their website ranks in the search engines. In reality, your site's page rank is more complicated than that. When webmasters discuss page rank, they are usually referring to the Google PageRank and not a general placement of a listing in all of the search engines.

PageRank is actually a unique and patented analysis algorithm that is used by Google to determine just how important a web page is. Many people assume that the “page” in PageRank refers to the web page. Actually, the PageRank technology was named after Larry Page, the person who created it.

Your site's PageRank is determined by a number of factors. It is quite a complex mathematical equation, but what it comes down to is that when sites link to yours it can increase your site's PageRank. The higher the rank of the sites linking to you, the higher your page rank is likely to become.

Pages receive a rank of between PR1 and PR10. A brand new site, or one that hasn't been developed properly is going to have a rank of PR0, while sites like Amazon.com (PR9) and eBay.com (PR8) score much higher. In general, a rank of PR4 or higher is considered to be a good one.

So why is your website's page rank important? Because it plays a part in where your website appears in Google's search engine results. While no one knows exactly how much a site's PageRank contributes to the search engine placement, studies show that pages with a higher ranking, appear higher in results than those with a lower one.

Of course building your site's PageRank is more than just finding a bunch of sites to link back to yours. The quality of the sites linking to yours is important. That's why a quality link-building campaign can help a site achieve better search engine placement. Just remember, higher rankings don't happen overnight. They take time to achieve and Google takes time to update.