Summary:
As we approach the quarterly update from Google on website Pageranks this article explores what Pagerank and Alexa Rank actually are and how they can be used to describe how well your website is performing.

So, you’ve heard a few things about SEO and now you are trying to learn some more about what SEO actually is and what your goals actually are. Well, your main two goals in SEO are to increase your websites position in the search engine results pages(SERP’s) and increase website traffic. Google Pagerank represents how important your website is compared to all other websites and Alexa Rank is how many visitors your website gets in relation to all other websites on the Internet. You are aiming to get a high Google Pagerank (commonly refered to as PR) and a low Alexa Rank. What looking at these two measured elements does is give you some idea of how well, or how badly, your website is doing in comparison to all other websites. Lets explore these two rankings in a little more detail.

What is Google Page Rank?

The co-founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, describe Google Page Rank as a tool designed to rank a website that is listed in the Google search index. A Pagerank of a web page is given on a scale of 0-10. 0 is the lowest possible score for a website and conversely a 10 is the highest score possible. A high Pagerank is defined by the amount, importance(PageRank) and relevance of web pages that link to the web page in question. When a web page links to another web page, Google consider that to be a vote for the page in question and therefore of some importance. There is a formula associated to how PageRank is calculated but for the purposes of this article it is too indepth, but if you are interested in the theory behind PageRank (PR) then a quick search on Google will provide fruitful.

What is Alexa Rank?

The Alexa Rank is different to Google PR; Alexa rank websites based solely on traffic to the website. Alexa rank websites in descending order towards 0, where the most highly visited website on the Internet is given a rank of 0. At this point in time the top three ranked websites (most visitors) on Alexa are, 0 – Yahoo, 1 – Google and 2 – MySpace. According to Alexa these 3 websites get the most traffic on the Internet. Alexa Rankings vary from 1 to a billion. Every web site in the world is included in the Alexa Rank, so the scale on your Alexa ranking is constantly changing in relation to other websites on the Internet.