One of the most controversial, misunderstood, confused and debated in SEO Universe is the importance of PageRank.
But let me be more specific here. When I use the term “PageRank,” I’m not talking about PageRank 0-10 logarithmic Google toolbar, which is nothing more than a “tool of vanity” and no longer has a direct impact on the ranking of a website. This fact was established long ago.
In fact, Google removed the data from Google Webmaster Tools PageRank in October 2009.
Text from Google itself: “We’re telling people for a long time that they should not focus so much on PageRank, site owners seem to think is the most important metric for them, and this is simply not true. We have removed [Webmaster’s Tools] because we felt it was silly to tell people to not think about it, but then show them the data, implying that they will look. ” (Source: Google Webmaster Central).
So what we’re talking about Page Rank?
When I’m talking about PageRank in this post, I am referring to the algorithm – one of the more than 200 signs that Google uses to rank web pages. Personally, I always thought that the importance of PageRank has been overestimated.
Why do I feel this way? Because whenever I do research, I always see that many times pages have PR 0 up in front of other pages that even have a PR3 or PR4 up – and this happens constantly! Make a test.
Also, I saw many website PageRank decreased, while their traffic continues to increase. Even more: you can not control your PageRank, so why worry about it?
What should I focus on to have a quality blog?
It has been my experience that the best way to improve your rankings is to play by the rules and practices use common sense. This includes making sure your content is relevant to your keywords and your keywords are relevant to the overall theme of your site.
Having a fast loading, user-friendly blog continually build your site’s content, make guest-posts, relevant backlinks, etc.. are fundamental to have relevance.
Now, let me say for the record, I’m not an SEO expert, despite having a blog about SEO, I am a scholar, a art lover.
That’s why I decided to write this article – to give the “true” facts about PageRank – not speculation or rumor. Relevant information presented in this article were gathered from U.S. sources and sites highly respected and recognized, top-level professionals and SEO Google insiders – people who know what they are talking about.
What the experts think about PageRank and its importance?
We end up going straight to the point, that is what Google itself says about PageRank:
“Do not bother thinking about it [PageRank] We only update the PageRank displayed on Google Toolbar few times a year;. This is our tip: for you to worry less about PageRank, which is just one of more than 200 signals that can affect how your site is crawled, indexed and ranked. PageRank is an easy metric to focus on, but only because it is easy does not mean that it is useful to you as an owner of the site.
If you’re looking for metrics, we encourage you to take a look at Analytics, think about conversion rates, ROI (return on investment), relevance, or other metrics really correlate with significant gains for your website or business. “(Source: Google Webmaster Central FAQ)
The head of Google, Peter Norvig, said that PageRank is an exaggerated term, and probably needs a new name.
“One thing I think is exaggerated is the term ‘PageRank’. People think you make that calculation in the web graph and then you just ordered all the pages for it [PageRank]. Yes, it is important, but it’s just one of many things. And people say, ‘You are lost if you do not have it. “Never felt this way. I never felt I was as big a factor. It has a name and name recognition, but we always look all available data. “(Source: Search Engine Land)
And finally:
Here is what Aaron, author of SEO Book has to say about the importance of PageRank:
“PageRank is important for the conduct of indexing, but for rankings, is not nearly as important as it was before. SEO has become a much more refined art”.
Nice info Isha. i agree with your points,page rank is not so important,backlinks and seo also matters.
Page Rank is not important, traffic is main for any site because it gives profit . So try to get better traffic not page rank
PR matters if you want your ads to be sold else you need lots of backlink and of course some good seo places your blog on the top of search engines.
I agree with you Isha, to some extent, but because my advertisers are fixing their eyes on this silly metric and offer me the money in proportion to that number, I have to always think about it and disheartened when it falls a bit.
Page rank was never effective for SEO and It is not so important than traffic . It just tell the authority of site
I think PageRank is not as important as it used to be. However, it’s for sure that high pagerank is good for site. So why not pursue it? Besides, Google updates frequently recently, and pagerank changes once and once. If it does like what google say ” there is no important of pagerank, why it so cares?
I am learning about SEO and I have just come across “Page Ranking” in my search engine optimization book. You have a very informative post. Thanks for the info. I am going to bookmark this site and frequent often.
I always thought pagerank is the number one factor of any SEO campaign – apparently I was wrong! Thank you for pointing that out!!! I’ll sleep better now that I know that PR isn’t everything! Great article! I’m sure you taught several people something they didn’t know!
I create new website before 2-3 or maybe 4 days
can anyone tell me when i got alexa rank ???
Now its showing no data
I’ll tell you that is one thing I didn’t know, how irrelevant google pagerank was in relation to to ranking in the search engine. I guess you can say I usually stereotype, and expect the highest, most popular websites to have the highest pr. I even did a little experiment, and found that to be false. Indeed the entire backlinking process is a huge chunk of it, but I just never, ever would have guessed how unimportant pagerank is. And of course, right after my site moved up to a pr1.
i thought Pr is most important factor , but traffic is also important to make profit .
I completely agree with you Isha. Page Rank is just important for getting ads on your blog.
as far as i concerned eventhough PageRank is not as important as it used to be, it is still very important for site. So why not do better in Pagerank? Besides, Google updates frequently, and pagerank changes once and once. If it does like what google say ” there is no important of pagerank, why it so cares?
I thought page rank is for relevancy. Thanks! Now I know that it is more on indexing. Not bad at all! But some of my blogger friends in blogosphere are very conscious about there page rank. I will just focus on quality content to make panda more friendly.
Well I agree Page Rank was important part of SEO before the launch of Google Panda. Now the ranking purely depends on quality of backlinks availed for a domain from social media hub and reputable websites.
Hey Isha I strongly agree to your point here as in the coming days Google might secretly remove any support for page rank. Page rank was a very well known SEO weapon until early 2010 but certain spammers exploited it to an extent to force Google eliminate this factor completely.