Google Toolbar – A must have for the aspiring web master

In my previous post Alexa Toolbar every webmaster should have it i talked about the Alexa toolbar and how it helps web masters gain important insights in how popular web pages are, and how that information can help you. Well today I am going to talk about the very well known Google Toolbar, and how some of its features can also help you in your quest for great SEO.

The Google Toolbar is a free toolbar from Google. It allows you to have access to many of Google’s useful services from right inside your web browser. It offers access to services such a Gmail, Google bookmarks, Google Translate, and various other online services. This is especially useful if you have a Google account and use many of Google’s Services.

However, the Toolbar has one very important feature that is often overlooked that can be incredibly useful to web masters and SEO. That feature is the PageRank feature. The Google toolbar has the ability to show you the Google PageRank of each page you visit. The PageRank score, is how important a web page or web site is in the eyes of Google. It is also one of the factors Google uses to determine search engine rankings. While Google Page Rank is not as all encompassing as Alexa traffic stats, it will give you a pretty good idea of how popular a web site may be in the Google Network. This will allow you to decide which pages you think you should link to, and which pages you shouldn’t. The PageRank feature will also allow you to see how your high competitor’s sites Page rank is and allow you to alter your strategy to better compete with them.

I have found there are many sites on the Internet that claim to be able to show you your real PageRank. I personally hold these sites with a very cautious eye. The only real way to know what your PageRank is, is to ask Google. The Google Toolbar draws its PageRank check from Google’s own servers. By using this toolbar, you will know your getting a real reading on a web pages real Page rank according to Google.

The Google Toolbar should help you get a grasp on your competition, and how well your web site is doing in Google’s eyes. Google updates the PageRank information of the Google toolbar pretty regularly. No one really knows for sure how often Google updates it, until the update happens. Sometimes 3 months go by before they update it, and sometimes its only one month. It just depends on when it gets pushed out the network.

One word of caution however. When using the toolbar, I caution webmasters don’t try to buy links to Pages with High PageRank, or use any type of black hat SEO to generate an artificially high number of links, or to manipulate the PageRank as Google will penalize you for such practices. It is better to not concentrate on Page Rank directly, as Google has stated that PageRank is only one of many factors weighed when delivering search results. Always concentrate on delivering good quality original content, and everything else will balance itself out.

You can download the toolbar from Google.

Give it a spin, and I hope it helps you out.