What good is Page Rank anyway?

by Sean Bissell

Posted: 15 years ago 16 replies

Hey Warriors,

I'll be to the point here:

What good is PR anyway?

I've got a PR3 site...

I get like 50 hits a day, and most are from Google Images and other irrelevant sources.

You'd think with a decent PR would come good rankings + decent traffic.

I'm offering a free piece of software on my site and it's being linked to by many software directories.

I'm considering just scrapping the links and selling it on my site and working on traffic other ways.

The absence of the links may hurt my PR rank...

But what does it matter?

I'm actually kinda stressed out about this, because yanking the software could be a big move for me from a strategic business perspective.

Thanks for the help.
-Sean

#good #page #rank

Easy Cash 15 years ago

How are you trying to monetize it?

Go for quality - 50 visitors of high quality could make you some good cash if you set it up to deliver exactly what they are looking for.
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- strauss 15 years ago
  
  If you have good page rank to your website means it does't get more sales and traffic, the page rank what we are getting for website means it depends on the google, because google see's some requirements.
  
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  dburk 15 years ago
  
  Hi Sean,
  
  Congratulations on your epiphany!
  
  For years Professional SEOs have been telling newcomers to this industry that PR is not very important. All that really matters is targeted traffic.
  
  For some reason, many new folks ignore this advice and toil for months or even years before they see the light. Now that you have become enlightened, you can avoid wasting your time and money on foolish pursuit.
  
  This is your chance to start fresh with a clear understanding of what really matters. Focus on backlinks that will send you targeted traffic and leave all those useless links to the guys chasing the little green line.
  
  Who cares if a backlink is nofollow or not. The real question is: Will it send me targeted traffic? You now have an advantage because you truly understand the difference. Now go and capitalize on your newly gained knowledge!
  
  Thanks
  
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surferman 15 years ago

Better page rank gets better organic traffic. PR3 is not that good. You need at least PR4 or more to get decent traffic.
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magnum3 15 years ago

page rank is just like a score.. the higher you get means the more traffic you have..
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- indexphp 15 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by magnum3
  
  page rank is just like a score.. the higher you get means the more traffic you have..
  
  No... that is wrong. PageRank IS a score, but it doesn't reflect traffic.
  
  PageRank doesn't even matter. It's best to focus on marketing to the right audience and forget about PageRank.
  
  Thanks
  
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IowaGal 15 years ago

Hi Sean -

PageRank actually doesn't mean anything truly purposeful. I know of PR 2 sites that outrank PR 6 sites and the main reason is the quality of the incoming links. So where you rank in the search engines has nothing to do with the PR of your site.

Personally I'd work on getting more links from places other than software directories.

To do that, I recommend you find out (if you don't already know) who your main competitors are in your industry (those who rank in the top 10 of Google), find out who is linking to them and then attempt to get a link from them yourself.

You can find out who is linking to your competition by heading to Site Explorer - Yahoo! Site Explorer.

Are you bookmarking any of your sites?

Have you submitted a press release about your software?

Are there any companies that you might work with locally who would gladly point a link in your direction from their website?

Are you writing articles related to your software and submitting them?

The bottom line is, your rankings will improve if you work on getting additional (and quality) incoming links. In which case I do recommend you look for a PR - it's not the be all end all but a decent PR from a potential website will at least give you somewhat of an indication of what Google thinks of that site.

Kristine
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- dburk 15 years ago
  
  Hi Sean,
  
  I find this thread somewhat amusing. It's like you have PR advocates on one shoulder telling you to get PageRank and you will get traffic. On the other shoulder you have folks telling you PageRank doesn't matter just go for traffic.
  
  If you go for traffic do you still need PR? If you are tops in the SERP do you still need PR? If you get PR does it really put you in the top of the SERP? It's easy to see that the answer to all these questions is a resounding NO.
  
  I ask you, would you rather have lots of PageRank or lots of traffic? Is your goal a long green line or a lot of green in your pocket?
  
  Google constantly adjusts their algorithm to eliminate the effects of PageRank manipulation. As a result of their constant efforts, PageRank has not made much difference in SERPs for quite some time.
  
  Thanks
  
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Hendry Lee 15 years ago

PageRank certainly means something. However, high PR doesn't mean high traffic. If your site is linked from PR 7 site, resulting in PR 6 to your home page but people who search for your keyword is like 10/ day. You may only get 3-4 visitors per day for that keyword on position 1.

PR = authority in Google's eyes. If you analyze search result pages, you will also find that PR 3 page often outranks PR 4, 5 or even 6 so other factors also matter.

Still, I still use PR to gauge how authoritative my site or page in the niche compared to others.
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Suzanne Morrison 15 years ago

Hi,

Here's my take on it...

Page Rank is a measure of the quantity/quality of backlinks to your website and does have a big influence over where you rank in the search engine results.

BUT... if you don't do any keyword research and don't ensure that your target keyword phrases are in all the right places on your web page, then page rank isn't going to help you at all.

This is why a well optimized page with a lower page rank can rank better than a poorly optimized with a higher page rank.

The other thing is that the toolbar page rank is always out of date. Google calculates the PR on a regular basis but only updates the toolbar every few months.

Cheers,
Suzanne
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- Ricky Parker 15 years ago
  
  PR has never had anything for me personally to do with amount of traffic.
  
  I've had sites with a PR 5 and more and they have gotten their asses kicked from some of my PR 0 sites when it comes to traffic.
  
  And most of them still do.
  
  Forget PR.
  
  Ignore it and just do your thing.
  
  Thanks
  
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bannor32

15 years ago

Isn't PR determined by the number of back links, and don't the number of back links at least partially determine the ranking in the SERPs for your targeted keyword? It seems to me that a high PR as a result of many back links could only be a good thing for traffic. If you rank high in Google for a certain keyword and you still aren't getting much traffic then you didn't target a very good keyword

Thanks
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dburk

15 years ago

Originally Posted by bannor32

Hibannor32,

PageRank is not just the number of backlinks, it also measures the quality of of those links based on the PR of the page linking to yours, divided by the number of external links on the linking page.

The key to understanding why PR does not directly effect your SERPs in a significant way, is that there is no relevance factor involved in Pagerank scores. Relevance is the most important factor in determining SERPs. This is why a page with 0 PR will outrank a PR 8 page every time if it is only slightly more relevant.

There is definitely a science behind relevance scoring and if Google were to reveal certain details about their algorithm it would make it easy to game their index. So, they will never publicly reveal these details.

You can gain some insight into what factors are important by testing various strategies. This is expensive and time consuming, those folks who have done this are keeping the results a closely guarded secret.

The easiest way to formulate your strategy is to simply emulate natural link building as closely as possibly. Google's algorithm is tuned to reward web pages that are naturally popular and contain highly relevant and useful information. You will have a difficult time maintaining high rankings if your page doesn't meet this criteria.

As always, content is King.

Thanks
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MinisiteMill

15 years ago

Originally Posted by dburk

PageRank is not just the number of backlinks, it also measures the quality of of those links based on the PR of the page linking to yours, divided by the number of external links on the linking page.

Good explanation. A high PR is not the end-all or be-all. It does help, though. Two identical pages, one a PR0 and one a PR6, the PR6 will beat the PR0 every time, assuming everything else is the same.

There are many exceptions, but generally, the higher a page's PR, the better its chances of ranking high on SERPs, because PR is a measure of the quality of a page in Google's eyes. A couple incoming links from high PR websites will help boost search rankings exponentially better than dozens of links with little or no PR.

Thanks
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girimpula 15 years ago

Links to your pages from outside pages with high Google PageRank (GPR) are most desirable.

Note: GPR is NOT the page's position on Google. It is a value, from 1 to 10, that Google assigns to all Webpages.
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UcheO 15 years ago

PR helps you out when you have a specific strategy of what keywords you want to appear in the search engine with. You could have a PR of 3, but the competition you can have for the keywords on your page could be really stiff.

You should check what words you are targetting, then check the competition and what PR/how many backlinks they have.
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What good is Page Rank anyway?

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