Do you want to do a Google rank check?  Google’s page rank is a patented algorithm.  Google considers more than half a billion variables when determining your rank on the search results.

No one person knows what all of these variables are, not even the person who oversees the code.  So, anyone claiming to be a Google rank check authority should be viewed with caution.

Still, there are some things we do know about how page rank works.

Google flat out says that pages they believe are important get a higher page rank than others.  Pages with higher rank tend to appear higher in the search results, though you will see page rank 5 pages occasionally ranking higher than page rank 7 pages for a specific search.

Google also sees the links on a page acting as a ‘vote’ for other pages.  So, if a highly ranked page links to your site, you get more ‘juice’ out of it than when a friend with no page rank links to your site.

Most experts agree that backlinks from .gov and .edu sites to have higher link juice than other top level domains because they are restricted to not for profit sites.

One way to get .edu links is to take out online ads on college newspaper sites.

But, any links from PR 2 or higher sites can help your page rank.  One way to get links is to post comments on with decent page rank.  But make sure that Google ‘followsî’the links on the page first.  Some webmasters set their sites up so that you don’t get any link juice from your posts.  You can do this by downloading free software on the internet.

Other ideas for increasing page rank include:

• Join forums and post a link back to your website in your signature.  Every time you make a post, you’ll get link juice.
• Submit your site to directories.  Each directory which lists you will give you more of a chance of being listed higher in Google’s search results.
• Add an ezine to your site.  Not only will this allow you to keep up with the people who visit your site, but you can also post information about your ezine to ezine directories.
• Publish articles on the article sites.  You can drive traffic to your sites this way.  But, high PR article sites also give you link juice.
• Create a sitemap on your website.  This lets Google know how to index your page.
• Link to other pages within your web site.  Putting links to the internal pages within the web site allows you to increase your link juice.
• Continue building pages within your site.  Every page you create and link back to your home page increases the strength of your home pageís PR.

To do a Google rank check, you can install the Google toolbar to your Firefox browser.  The tool is at http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/toolbar/FT3/intl/en/index.html -This will give you the page rank of every page you visit.

A Google rank check will allow you to know how your site is faring compared to similar sites.