I see alot of threads that refer to page rank as highly important and a must have to rank high on google searches. I just can't get on board with that, page rank might look nice and give you bragging rights but that's all. Keyword ranking is the important thing. You can spend all your valuable time trying to get PR, and still will never get to the top of google. Focus on keyword rankings if you wanna crawl to the top of google results and grab some valuable search engine traffic.
I think a good way to look at it is that anything under a PR 7 doesn't mean a whole lot (save for people selling links for Link Rep), but that is still not entirely true... Look at Cnn.com and Foxnews.com, two similar sites, both with excellent news reporting and top notch news providers... however cnn has a higher PR due to the liberals on digg.com. Does this make FoxNews.com any "less" of a viable news source? Hardly, Foxnews is widely considered the leader in the news market (political opinions not withstanding). Sooo, take everything with a grain of salt. Yes, you should at least show some idea as to your page rank and how you want your site to grow, but it is some where between priority 5 and priority 10 of things you need to concern yourself with when running a website. Serp's Content Quality Loyalty (of your readers) Acuracy (of information) Links from quality sources (NOT NOT NOT link spam) Word of mouth etc etc etc... all the above should take precedence over your sites PR.
PageRank Technology: PageRank reflects our view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that we believe are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results. -- google.com --
PR is simply one of many factors that determine the success of a website. Don't become a one-trick pony, focusing on only one aspect (PR) of a quality website. There are many other items that also need your attention — such as: • Well-researched keywords, optimally placed in your pages • Good titles, maximizing the effectiveness of your keyword(s) • Securing quality backlinks to your pages, hopefully from other pages relevant to your site's themes • Writing good content, which will keep your viewers interested, and as a result spending good time on your site • Writing a good Description meta tag for each page. That description will usually show up in the search engine results and will go a long way towards inducing a surfer to click on your link, if he/she reads an appealing description. • Etc., etc. In brief again, PR is just one aspect of a website. Don't ignore it; don't overemphasize it to the detriment of the many other aspects of a high-quality website.
You're preaching to the wrong crowd at DP. Most of these guys worship PR almost like they worship God. Truth is, you stop caring about PR when you have a PR3 websites that gets 25,000 uniques a day or a PR3 site that ranks for so many keywords you make $30,000 per year on Adsense alone. Make money. That's your only job as a webmaster.
PR is uselles And all the noobs thougt it has importance I like olso those guys who have SEO in there username that say it counts It's a waste of time with PR
Could your constant drumbeat of "PR is useless" have anything to do with your signature links having PR N/A, PR 4, PR 0, and PR 3? Is this maybe a case of "sour grapes"?
To focus on keyword ranking indirectly has a close association with PageRank. Many people that say PageRank means nothing are uninformed or have other motives for not liking PR (caught selling links, too lazy to build backlinks, etc.). Look at what Google says about PageRank: http://www.google.com/corporate/tech.html In this small paragraph, Google says a variation of "important" twice. PageRank is not the only factor in rankings, but it does carry some "importance."
There are alot of other factors that determine a sites ranking in Google eg. domain age, onpage seo, links etc.
That about sums it up, snowbird — some 'importance'. Those who choose to ignore or disparage that "importance" (Google's words, not mine) may certainly do so, but to their own loss. I don't know why so many fail to grasp that when the owner (Google) of a concept (PageRank) says it is "important", it is very likely to be important! But then again, mental blocks are hard to dislodge.