Working as a Search Engine Marketer and Online Developer, for the past couple years, I constantly come across people saying things such as, ‘But the website only has a PR of 2 or 3′. PR 2 or 3.. so what?!
Let’s take a look at what Google Page Rank is:
Page Rank is a numeric value that represents how important a page is on the web. Google determines that when one page links to another page, it is effectively casting a vote for the other page. The more votes cast for a page, the more important the page should be. Also, the importance of the page that is casting the vote determines how important the vote itself is – Effectively saying that a link coming from a page with a high Page Rank is valued more than a link coming from a low Page Rank page. Google calculates a page’s importance from the votes cast for it. How important each vote is is taken into account when a page’s Page Rank is calculated.
Let’s look deeper:
Spot on, this is exactly what it is, but does this really mean anything? Ok, perhaps you have links from some websites with high Page Ranks, which effectively should mean that you will get more traffic, but does it guarantee the traffic or does it always result in traffic? No! Yes, the premise suggests that the website is important on the Internet, but that does not say anything about the traffic, which is the almost the most important thing to look at when deciding where to buy advertising space. I’m not going to go into Niche markets and conversion rates here, as that’s another topic on its own.
What do others say?
I know a number of bloggers and website owners who have Page Ranks of 4 and even 5, yet they only have a fraction of traffic that iMod gets. I would love to post their URLs here, but they’ve asked me not to, for obvious reasons. I did however get some feedback from them with regards to Page Ranks. Of the three people I spoke, all three told me that they spent a great deal of time organizing inbound links from relevant high Page Rank websites and they’ve seen a traffic increase, but agree that Page Rank does not result in traffic and that they are no longer concerned about it.
Conclusion:
Page Rank is not the be all and end all. Yes, it’s an indication that a website is important, but it’s pretty much irrelevant in terms of traffic if you ask me!
Any idea of what a “good” page rank should be?
Also: if Pagerank isn’t thaaat important what is?
Traffic is important, proof of good traffic, and on top of that, traffic which converts and not bounces.
A good page rank, well it’s out of 10, so you do that math ;) As I said, I don’t do the Page Rank thing :)
Nice Interesting Post!
I’m definitely with you on this one. From my somewhat limited SEO experience I quickly learned that google page rank is highly over rated and too many people get hung up on it.
Ah Justin, so fantastic to hear another web person agreeing with me on this one! If you really want to spread the word a little, blog it on Make Big Money mate, link back to this one and let’s open peoples eyes.
I’m honestly tired of people worrying about advertising on pages because of a low PR, what nonsense, it’s about the traffic!
Thanks for popping in mate, appreciate it big time!
Good Idea, I’ll get a post together soon about it.
And just to add a little more…
It’s people that visit our sites and decide if they’re worth reading or recommending to others, why should we care what google thinks about site content or quality with their silly little green bar? Makes no sense at all.
There’s loads of ways of building traffic from a variety of sources and…. Hang on a minute… Let me stop right here and save this stuff for my post!!
:)
Wicked, will be great to start spreading the word about PR and it’s basically uselessness.
I think people in general who claim to be Internet savvy have simply read about PR and assumed that that is the thing to go by, I guess it’s ignorance, not really their fault either, so it’s up to us bloggers to put the word out!
I look forward to reading your post :)
Yeah as the big old Google master himself Matt Cutts says… Too much emphasis is relayed about PR.
That’s why the last Google update dropped PR rank of directory sites and paid listing sites. The emphasis given and amount of money paid to those sites was not worth what you were getting (my thoughts about the topic at least)
WizardMan
I’m so glad that people are agreeing with what I have written about PR. I was worried that I would get a string of comments stating that I was incorrect! It’s great to know that the other SEO junkies around and about see the light with regards to PR.
The more this is spread, the better!
And here we go, Google’s starting to phase out Page Rank.. http://imod.co.za/index.php/2009/10/17/google-page-rank-is-fading-away/