What's The Beef With PR?

SO a lot of people on this forum say PR doesnt matter, Thats fine and dandy. But then other people say Backlinks matter... Well isnt PR a reference of backlinks. SO wouldnt this make PR a very important SEO thing? If im missing something (which i very well may be), please let me know.

Also. People say get as many backlinks as you can. I have only 29 backlinks on MSN and people say it is very low and I NEED more backlinks. This may be true. But doesnt Quality count more that Quantity? Say I had 29 pr5 backlinks with only a few links on the page, Wouldnt that be better than 2500 PR0 directory backlinks?

please shed some light on this for me, thanks!

 

Yea I am wondering this also. If PR doesn't matter why do people quote it so much?

 

PR only matters to those who are selling links.

When they say get as many as you can, yes you should, but relevant to your site that is. Quality is always better the quantity

 

PR and backlinks matter. I noticed those who disagree have dead sites so go figure.

 

A PR1 link from cnn.com, or dmoz.org will be much more valuable than a PR4 link from average site - think about it.

And don't believe that gossips about unimportance of PageRank. There are many threads on this forum proving that PageRank matters. I believe that the reason of such gossips is that PageRank was a decisive factor for good position in SERPs four-five years ago and became less important today making people think that it has completely devaluated. That's wrong - PageRank is still one of decisive factors for good ranking, because PR is not a REASON, it's an INDICATOR of good job with backlinks and other stuff.

 

I look at it this way:

More links to page, more PR.
More links to page, more important link seems.
More important link, higher serps.

A PR0 page will never carry as much weight with google as PR5+ page for example.

Thats what I think anyways.

 

People get wrapped up in PR because we are webmasters and we like to be able to see how we rank against each other. But keep it in perspective, unless you have a site that caters to other webmasters 99.99% of the people that visit your site have never heard of PR, and couldn't care less about it. Traffic will always be most important.

 

okay PERFECT EXAMPLE

this is what i hear all the time...

but PR BRINGS TRAFFIC. who cares if someone sees that you are a pr#.. what matters is that Google sees you are a PR# and it is a major part of their serp algorithm.... so PR MUST matter if backlinks/quality backlinks matter


because PR = BACKLINKS

BACKLINKS= IMPORTANT
therefore
PR=IMPORTANT

 

quality is better. but both is even better

 

ok let me further this

i did a check for my main keyphrase and these are the sites that came up

(the numbers are in order 1...15 (or so) the number shown is the PR

4(page from pr5 site)
5
4(page from pr4 site)
4
3
4
4
4
5
4
2
3
5
3
4
3
4
3
3
0
0
0
0
3
4
3
0
5
4
4
3
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0



from this it obviously shows that PR has SOME sort of relevance to google ranking

the sites at top of serps with lower PR had the keywords in the domain name AND title.

MOST of the high PR sites at the bottom of the list had nearly no SEO applied to the sites. or else werent really targeting my specific keyphrase but were RELATED to the same niche

 

i think if it was easy to figure out it wouldn't be an algoritim. PR is important, but so is content. Work on the content, work on backlinks, work on submitting to directories and PR will take care of itself. Just takes time

 

The PR that you see in the Google Toolbar is about 3 months outdated. Its not that PR is completely outdated but focus on links that get you traffic.

What is the ultimate purpose of everyone doing SEO? to get traffic and visitors to your site. If I get a link from a low PR page and my link in in the content and relevant to what the visitors are reading, chances are I will get a lot of visitors who may tell someone else about the site or link to it.

You can pay money for a link on a PR7 page which is at the bottom of the page and you never get one click.

 

PR brings traffic from Google. What if your traffic doesn't come from Google? Or any SE's for that matter. Then PR is pointless.

 

ya content is a killer,
i have about 10 or so unique very well written articles on my niche... but some websites have 100's of unique well written content. I know a lot about my niche... but just not that much!

And if i was to write an article every day its kind of a gamble because I may never compete with the big boys... but then again if I wrote an article every day you never know, i might just be able to compete sooner than later.

i guess its like any business... there are no shortcuts... you must work hard and you MIGHT make it worthwhile. I see a lot of people on the forum trying to take shortcuts.. i bet few of them make much money (some do) ... but I suppose if you build a nice site with tonnes of articles the worst thing you could do is maybe sell it for 1000 bucks.. or if the se's give you some light you may clean house with adsense,

when i first built my site in January '06 i was told by an adsense guy that I could EASILY make 300-500 bucks/month with my website....

well, here it is 1 yr later and maybe 50cents-1 buck/day. i suppose ill just keep building!

 

I think your equation is not quite correct:

PR = ALL backlinks
RELEVANT backlinks = Important
Therefore
PR != Important
Instead
Relevant backlinks = Important

I could have a site about computers and have 0 links about computers pointing to it but 1000000000 links pointing to it about Viagra. These 1000000000 links could certainly give me a high page rank but it will not help me rank well for computers (my original target).

 

In the recent PR update, with sadness I watched daily as my "live PR" dropped gradually from PR5 to PR4, where it has settled.

At the same time PR was dropping one notch, traffic went up substantially. The past week or so has seen traffic far above any previous week in the site's 3-year history.

I'm beginning to come around (slowly ... fighting it ... ) to the position of many of the veterans on this forum — that is, that PR is overrated and probably has some significance, but not as much as in the past.

I have been focusing on doing some good off-page and on-page SEO, and as mentioned the traffic is way up even with the PR down.

 

PR and backlinks matter

but i think back links is usefual more than pr

 

IMHO, Backlinks are important and pr is a measure of that...

 

I don't think one can definitely say that PR doesn't matter; it's always one of the factors to consider.

 

How many times has a guy got to do this? Yeesh

Everyone is lost… It is not a discussion of whether PR is important or NOT. It isn’t that cut and dried. So let’s not try and pin the tail on the donkey.

To start with ya’ll are talking about ToolBar PageRank NOT actual PageRank. There is a very big difference. The TBPR is an oft updated export of PR that is diluted to a palatable format. Actual PR is a LIVE calculation that goes well beyond 10.

So here is the problem

So it is not about PageRank being of no value (though it has been vastly devalued since 2002) – it is about the value of TBPR as a data source and viable target for investment. Which it is not. If you are selling text links – great – that is the market value. If you are doing SEO – it is not a viable metric to be forming any SEO programming decisions upon

From the Google ToolBar PageRank Demystified


Anyways – have some more fun… I am about 10 000 words in on this topic

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?p=1136514
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=155289&page=3
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=186449

If you want to run around worrying about the ‘Little Green Bar’ – be my guest. I don’t know many professional SEOs that put much stock in it.

I shall continue to chase RANKINGS for my clients... NOT TBPR