After your web site has been online for a few months or so, it will usually be assigned a PageRank (PR) by top search engine Google.com. This is an important factor in determining how well your site ranks among other search results. There are a few different ways to check your current PageRank, each with its own advantages; here’s how:

1. You can check your Google PR on a number of different web sites, such as prchecker.info and checkpr.org, which is one of the fastest services of this type. To check it on CheckPR.org, just enter your web site’s address in the “Site URL” field and click on the “Rank” button. After loading, it will show the site’s PageRank at the bottom of the page, along with its Alexa.com traffic ranking.

2. Another option regarding how to check your PageRank is to use the Google Toolbar. It is free for anyone to use and includes other features like a pop-up blocker and a built-in search box. However, it requires IE 6.0+ or FireFox 2.0+ and doesn’t work in Windows 95/98/ME. Various other SEO add-ons and plugins are available which allow certain browsers to directly check the PageRank for specific pages.

3. If you frequently check your site’s Google PageRank, a convenient option is to add an icon to the site which indicates its current rank. These are available from several sites, including pagerankbar.com and prsitecheck.com. You will have to edit the HTML and paste in their code. However, you probably won’t want this if the PageRank level is very low, as all of the site’s visitors will also see it.

4. Try using one of the free services that generates an SEO report on your site; these check a wide range of statistics including the PR, backlink counts, the number of links on certain social bookmarking systems, Compete.com rankings, and other information. This provides a clearer indication of a web site’s popularity. Popuri.us and xinureturns.com are two examples of these services.

Keep in mind that each page of a web site will have its own PageRank level, ranging from zero to ten. PageRanks only update every few months or so, but the updates generally don’t occur on predictable dates. Consider keeping a record of changes to the PageRank each time you check it; this will make it easier to track how much progress your site makes.