Will a web page with a higher Google PageRank always be higher in SERPS?

Many people have heard of Google Pagerank - the number that Google assigns to each page on the web. In one sense the rank assigned to a page controls how high up the page appears in search results. The reality is more complicated and Google takes into account a number of factors when positioning pages in search results. In fact, Google themselves say that content is now more important than Pagerank.

Take two pages, page A and page B, each with a Pagerank of 3. When a user searches for a specific phrase, let's say "dog biscuits", why will one page appear in the results above the other if they both have the same rank?

One answer is that if page A contains the text "dog biscuits" and the other page doesn't contain the phrase, page A will appear higher in SERPs. Page B might not appear at all.

What if page A is trying to sell pet food and mentions "dog biscuits" twice and page B is a story about how much someone's dog that loves biscuits and also mentions "dog biscuits" twice? Which page will be higher then? Maybe both pages will be trying to sell pet food and both pages will mention "dog biscuits". Who wins out in this case? The winner will be the page with the better on-site and off-site optimisation.

Off-site optimisation largely comes down to getting relevant links to a web page.

Google takes into account the text associated with links to a web page. For example, the HTML for a link will look like  <a href="...">some text</a>. If page A has more links to it where "some text" is "dog biscuits", Google will take that to mean the page is all about dog biscuits and place the page higher in SERPs. Page A is likely to come higher in the results in this case, even if page B contains the "dog biscuits" phrase but has fewer relevant links.

Often this voting by external links will override the Pagerank of either page - the one with the outbound or inbound link. A number of links from pages with low Pagerank but the right link text will count for more than just a few links from pages with average rank with irrelevant link text.

There are a number of on-site optimisation (or on-page optimisation) factors affecting positioning in SERPs. These include the domain name and web page URLs. The most important on-page factor is probably the page title, e.g. does the page title mention "dog biscuits"? Is "dog biscuits" near the start of the title? However, you should never ignore the need for backlinks with relevant link text to reinforce the topical content, i.e. keywords, of a page.

by ML