PageRank FAQ

mixke - you are right and I have also published the PageRank FAQ in the hope that countless "PR update" threads will be avoided. While I am not stating that PR is not important, I do think that people need to realize that there are other things which should be higher on their priority list as webmasters.

This thread could be made a sticky, since there are a lot of newbies who mistake PR for something which it is not.

Once they learn that PR does not necessarily equal better search engine positions/traffic, then the number of threads related to PR updates will decrease.

Thank you all for your comments and feel free to share your two cents and contribute with information a newbie reading this thread may find useful.

Best regards,

F1RM

 

Thanks for the FAQ.

 

Thanks for the FAQ

 

PR is = good rankings if you know what you are doing. And wasted on those that do not.

 

Personally, I do not agree and think that there are far more important things then PR a webmaster should worry about but other opinions are always welcome.

Care to elaborate a bit and explain why you think that PR equals good rankings?

F1RM

 

Hey Firm, nice job. Great for newbs. I recognize you from somewhere

Pm me if you are interested in writing some guides for me about various SEO and marketing topics.

 

very helpful to those who do not know about PR

 

It's not that webmasters shouldn't worry about other things. Whatever you are missing is what is going to trip you up. I think that pagerank is extremely important for a healthy strategy.

I don't know where to start. For starters, the higher your pagerank, the deeper your site gets indexed. The deeper your site gets indexed, the greater direct influence you have on keyword relevance. All of your site links are on topic "relevant links" that lend directly to your position.

Internal linking is also alot more agile than external linking, if your website specializes in widgets, and the latest hot thing is red widgets - with a deeply indexed site you can create a page about red widgets and point your 10 000+ indexed pages to your new "red widgets" page and take the top spot as soon as your pages get crawled. With a higher Pr your pages will be crawled as frequently as historic data suggests that the content changes. With a lower PR your pages will be crawled depending on resource availability (if at all.)

Speaking of which, higher PR means more frequent crawling which is wasted on static sites - but more frequent crawling means more chances to prove that your page updates frequently. If you have decent pagerank, but are stuck on the second page of results - try updating the content more frequently. On some of my sites, internal pages that are frequently updated have better ranking than the main page - despite external linking campaigns. Updating your content frequently on a low PR site isn't going to give you as big of a boost because your page isn't viewed as important enough to check frequently.

This is just some of it. Basically if you don't have a healthy pagerank and your keyword is competitive - someone with a healthy pagerank is going to come along and pass you with ease.

 

PR is indeed important and that if your niche is a highly competitive one, any edge you can have over the competition is important. Actually, if there is a lot of competition in your niche, you cannot afford to neglect any aspect when it comes to SEO, and PR makes no exception.

The issue is, IMO, not the fact that PR is useless. It would be wrong to say that PR is not important at all. The issue is that there are other factors which should be higher on a webmaster's priority list.

Wouldn't you agree that there are more important things to worry about than PR when it comes to SEO (of course, that does not mean that PR should be left out of the equation completely)?

Wouldn't you also agree that PR is not nearly as important as it used to be?

F1RM

PS: thak you all for your contribution to this thread and if anyone has something to add regarding this matter or any other issue, opinions are both welcome and appreciated

edited: hi there edbri871, nice to see you here. Actually, I will be focusing on blogging and will drop you a PM with details

 

I think PR is as important as ever; however, its not enough by itself.

What is more important? Depends if you want to survive or thrive. If I want to survive, then air is important. If I want to thrive my focus shifts to the things that are going to enable me to gain ground and keep it.

 

Is PR, in your opinion, the most important thing a webmaster should worry about when it comes to website optimization?

F1RM

 

I don't know how to answer that. What is most important changes as your site evolves. Every activity has a point of diminishing returns where your focus might be better served elsewhere.

 

"...definitely not the most important one" — by the confidence with which you make that statement I assume that you can tell us what factor or factors are the ones that are more important than PR? Just curious.

 

I cannot tell you which factors are more important than PR since I do not claim to hold the general truth

I can, however, tell you which factors I consider far more important than PR as a webmaster.

Personally, I always prefer a link from a website on a topic similar to mine rather than a link from a website with a slightly higher PR but on a totally different topic.

Why?

First of all, it is only logical that Google prefers relevant links as far as search engine positions are concerned.

Simple logic tells us that a website related to making money online, for example, with links from similar resources should rank higher than a website with links from resource which have nothing to do with the topic.

If other moneymaking resources link to me, then it is clear that I have a website which is useful to the visitor interested in making money online.

But that is not the case if most of my backlinks come from websites which have nothing to do with that topic.

Aside from link relevance, let's not forget that traffic does not always come from search engines. Returning visitors should never be eliminated from the equation.

If a website with a topic similar to mine links to me, then the visitors who follow that link and are directed to my website are targeted ones. A visitor who is interested in the information I have to offer is more likely to subscribe to my RSS feed or bookmark my website.

Another aspect worth thinking about: direct visitors which come as a result of a certain link and click -through rates.

Let's say a website about making money online links to me with the anchor text "moneymaking tips". Since the visitors are interested in making money online, they are more likely to click that link and visit my website than the visitors of a health website, for example, which links to me with the same anchor text.

There you have it : link relevance is, as far as I am concerned a far more important factor than PR in general (of course, if you have to choose between a relevant PR2 link and a PR9 link which is not, then it is obvious that you should go with the PR9 one, but somehow the odds of facing such a choice are slim to none )

Hope it helps,

F1RM

 

You have to know the basics before you have a chance to understand more complicated issues. Good Post!

 

Thank you, glad you've found the thread useful

F1RM