Although it should not be the only part of your Web site you are worried about, many people want to know what their PageRank is via Google’s system. The fine folks over at HUEBit have come up with a tool that will allow users to place a small graphic on their Web site with their Google PageRank number.

PageRank is a numeric value that represents how important a page is on the web. Google figures that when one page links to another page, it is effectively casting a vote for the other page. The more votes that are cast for a page, the more important the page must be. Also, the importance of the page that is casting the vote determines how important the vote itself is. Google calculates a page’s importance from the votes cast for it.

How important each vote is taken into account when a page’s PageRank is calculated.

PageRank is Google’s way of deciding a page’s importance. It matters because it is one of the factors that determines a page’s ranking in the search results. It isn’t the only factor that Google uses to rank pages, but it is an important one.

Another set of tools I like to use is from the people at SEO Chat. They have a plethora of Online utilities for you to find out everything from your PageRank number to keyword density. They also have a nice set of forums for anybody who wants to learn more about search engine optimization.

Breaking it up into percentages, personally I only worry about search engine optimization about five percent. Not five percent of my day, but five percent of the time I spend tweaking my Web site. It shouldn’t be the only thing you worry about but it doesn’t hurt to spend a little time researching your stance and place in the search engines.