Clearing up some things about PR and SERP ranking

It's been said over and over and over again that the PR of your own site doesn't affect it's position in the SERPs, and yet I still come across people talking about how important PR is for your site.

Since this topic still seems to be so misunderstood, let me give a short explanation of why the PR of your page doesn't matter for ranking in the SERP.

The only reason PR matters for your own site is if you're going to sell advertising space on your site or you plan to sell your site. Those are the only reasons you need to be concerned with the PR of your own pages.


For ranking in the SERPs, the PR of your own page doesn't matter, but the PR of pages you get backlinks from does.
Here's why:
PR is based on the total backlinks a page is getting, but the SERP position is based on how well your site ranks for a particular keyword.

So lets say your website "somedomain.com" has the following backlinks to it:
10,000 for "keyword 1"
10,000 for "keyword 2"
10,000 for "keyword 3"
10,000 for "keyword 4"
10,000 for "keyword 5"

Now the PR will be based on the total 50,000 backlinks, but it's position in the serp for any particular keyword will still be only 10,000 backlinks.

If you create another 50,000 backlinks for "keyword 6" then there will be a postive effect on the PR of the site, which now has a total 100,000 backlinks. But it won't affect it's position in the SERP for keywords 1 thru 5, (although "keyword 6" will now be ranking based on the new 50,000 links).
So that's why the PR of your own site doesn't matter as far as ranking in the SERPs.


But what about the PR of sites you get backlinks from?

Well, higher PR sites carry a little more weight than low PR sites. Lets say that for "keyword 1" you focused on high PR sites to get those backlinks. Now (depending on how many and how high the PR) those 10,000 backlinks on high PR sites will count the same as if you had gotten 30,000 backlinks on low PR sites. So by getting a lot of high PR sites backlinking for "keyword 1", your sites position in the SERP will be improved for that keyword.
To sum it up in short:
A page's PR is based on the total amount and quality of all it's backlinks.
A page's SERP position is based only on the backlinks targeting a keyword


Best Regards
Ninanini41

 

Completely agree with you, PR will disappear from Google toolbar sooner or later.

 

Definitely feel you on that... although our own personal PR doesn't necessarily matter, getting high pr backlinks from other websites won't ever go away.

That's something that Google will always keep, because it's just way too much of an important factor.

For example, if I get a backlink from CNN.com, how can Google turn a blind eye on that lol. They can't lol.

 

Page rank still matters a lot, just install any seo plugin and randomly write any keyword, you will get high PR websites on top and then the others.

 

Not really, I've had a bunch of PR-0 websites that outranked PR-5 lol. It matters, but not as much as it used to in the past.

So what's more important that a websites PR? The healthy balance link profile that outbeats your competitor. You can't imagine how many times I've come across PR-4 & Pr-5 that only have 100 backlinks, because most of their links in the past has already fall off.

SEO involves plenty of factors, but homepage PR isn't as great anymore.

 

So which type of link building is more important these days?

 

High Pr Backlinks + Social signals (facebook likes & retweets). Those never fail me

 

Totally agree with you. High Pr Backlinks and social signals are playing very important role.

 

There is no direct correlation between SERPS and PR. There really has never been the situation where high PR sites appear in the very top listing. However, high PR websites usually can be found in the top 100 ranking for the main short tail keyword. Nevertheless in my experience PR does stills matter because:

It is the only visible authority rating that Google reveals. Despite lagging in updates, it always good to get a backlink from a high PR site in your relevant niche (MUST be RELEVANT). It is true that backlinks from a PR3 website in a RELEVANT niche is worth a thousands of backlinks from a website with a PR0.

I use PR to:

Find aged domains to re-purpose.
To find good places to comment on - forums, authority websites etc
To give me a rough indication of the authority of my websites.

Tools like SEMOZ and MajesticSEO among others have their own authority indicator because of the lag time and inaccuracy of Google PRs. That is because determining authority is important. 'Good website' in a niche generally links to other 'good websites' in the same in niche and avoid linking to bad low quality websites. Until Google reveals a better indicator (like TRUST factor which is rumored to be hidden) PR is the best Google indicator we can use to determine domain authority.

 

PR and SERP is totally different thing. Yes PR of your site does't effect of your site ranking in SERP. also PR not effect of your SERP.

 

flogging a dead horse comes to mind.. does not matter how often you say they are not related people will not read / listen / care