You've built a great website, you've checked it over and over for typos and broken links, but how do you judge just how well your site is doing when it comes to search engines? You could enter search term after search term into the search engines and see where you come up, counting page after page looking for your website, or you could try out some of the tools being offered by the search engines themselves.

Google is definitely the big elephant in the corner when it comes to search engines. Everyone wants to be number on Google. Some see it as the Holy Grail of success as a website. Google can certainly help you become more popular, and more profitable, and knowing how well your website does when it comes to Google should be a part of your overall plan for driving traffic to your website. And fortunately for us, Google has provided us with a tool for tracking our websites. Page Rank and the Google Toolbar.

http://www.google.com/downloads/

Once you install the toolbar you will see a bar in the middle called page rank. Page rank does not tell you everything about your site, but it can give you an indication of how important google thinks your website is. Go to your website and look for the bar to turn green. Put your mouse over it and see what your rank is.

The scale is a one out of ten scale with google being a 10 and sites like MSN and microsoft.com rank in at a 9/10. A new website might come in at a 1 or a 2, and a site that is doing ok might rank in at 3/10. Get up to a 6/10 and you are a real powerhouse. But what exactly is Page Rank? It is a graphical representaion of your In Bound Links (IBLs). The more people linking to your site, the higher your page rank. It really is that simple. IBLs are just a small part of the entire Search Engine Results, but they are a part that you have a lot of control over.

Get the toolbar and look at your site. Look at your competitors. See what your rank looks like compared to those around you. Page Rank isn't everything, but it can be a useful tool in seeing how well you and your website are doing according to Google.

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