I've got a PR3 website that I'm working on. I know some say that building PR shouldn't be a priority. We got bumped up to a PR3 last December and I have seen a consistent and steady increase in daily visitors to this day. I just recently got about 8 PR5 and PR 6 links to our site over the past week and a half. I know it takes a lot for another bump, but am I on the right track? Do we need thousands of these High PR links to get to PR4? Anyone have experience doing link building for a site of our PR level that can shed some light?
Google doesn't really update or bother with page rank. The reason it got updated in the first place was entirely accidental on their part. https://twitter.com/mattcutts/status/409041994707517440 Worrying about PR in any way shape or form is a waste of time really. See... http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/ for much better metrics. hope that helps a bit, Nigel
Thanks Nigel. I've used Open Site Explorer in the past as a back link checker. And thanks for that twitter thread. I've been very curious about future PR updates. I'll bet they go to once a year or something with the sounds of what was being said there. The only reason I am putting focus on this is the direct correlation of PR increase to the traffic increase. But as Google usually does, they could of adjusted their search algo at the same time.
Yep, page rank has pretty much nothing to do with ranking. Its been that way for years actually. A month before the update Matt Cutts stated do not expect a PR update until the end of 2014 or something. It just so happens that the PR may be indicative of some other authoritative components that are worth getting a link from if you will. Nigel
@Nigel Lew said it right. Don't rely on PR as a metric for your ranking capability. Since the last PR update I've done a massive case study on my own personal network of sites (~100) and cross checked it with some colleagues that we're doing the same thing. What we found is that PR really, doesn't mean anything. Here's some of the nonsense we found: Some sites dropped in PR despite having more backlinks from quality sources Some sites gained in PR, even though they had massive link loss since the last update. One site was a PR1 before with 100 referring domains and is a PR3 now with 9 referring domains. One site is a PR N/A with a dramatically better backlink profile than another PR 6 site with a spammy backlink profile and less links As can be seen, it doesn't make sense at all. Google has repeatedly said that they deliberately try to confuse SEOs. This is simply another one of their tools to do so. These days, I hardly look at PR as a metric for deciding on a quality backlink source. Again, from multiple tests, the #1 factor is a clean backlink profile on the linking source. Then DA/PA/TF/CF. I've personally created case studies showing PR NA sites out performing PR 5s in terms of ranking power. As Nigel said, focus on your ranking by building backlinks. The end goal is traffic, and its completely independent from PR. Hope this helps.
Anchor text is a big factor now also. You can rank for medium or lower keywords with only a handful of good backlinks. PR isn't the big whoop they make it out to be - pay attention to it but just don't let it dictate everything you do.