In my last newsletter, I wrote about how the Alexa rating of your websites isn’t really that important to the success of your online business. In this issue, I want to look at another popular stat, Google Page Rank, and ask a similar question: is it that important?
First, a quick overview of what Google Page Rank really is…
Google Page Rank (or PR as it is often called) is simply an indication of the number of websites linking to a specific website. It also tries to indicate the quality of those links. PR ranges from 0 to 10 (10 being the “best” PR and 0 being the “worst”). The vast majority of small business websites will generally find them to have a PR of between 0 and 5.
To calculate the PR of a particular site, Google uses a rather complicated algorithm based on the number of web links it knows of from that link to the site in question. This algorithm will also take into account the PR of the page providing the link, so a link from a web page that has a PR of 7 will be considered more valuable than a link from a page with a PR of 4.
Because of the way links from top ranked PR sites are considered more important, many people choose to buy links from high PR ranked websites just so they can boost their own PR. I have seen sites sell a simple text link on their home page for over $700 a month simply due to the fact that they have a PR of 7 or higher. This may sound like a lot of money, but when you consider that the website owners who buy these links often have websites that are not relevant to the content of the linking site, it’s absolutely ridiculous.
Take this example, let’s say you have a health and fitness website and you buy a link for $500 a month from a random website because it has a PR of 7. This random website has no relevance to your health and fitness site. physical, so what is going to happen? Well, your own PR may increase as a result of the link. You may get a little bit of extra traffic, but probably not a lot, since people don’t click on links they don’t care about. You will definitely be $500 poorer at the end of the month!
Instead, why not spend the $500 on pay-per-click advertising and benefit from quality targeted traffic?
Of course, there is more to it than that and the reason most people want to increase their PR is because Google takes this statistic into account when determining where a website will show up in their search results. Many people assume that high PR automatically equates to high search engine placement for your chosen keywords. not so…
Public relations is just one of over 100 different factors that Google takes into account when deciding where your website will appear (and these factors and the main algorithm change very frequently). It is entirely possible for a PR 5 website to rank higher than a PR 7 site if it has better content or is more relevant to the search term in question.
Remember that relevance is very important with Google and a link from a website that is not relevant to your own site will be considered much less important than a relevant one (which makes buying links from random sites simply because they have a high PR even less important). crazier ).
I’ve read several rumors lately that Google hasn’t updated PR for a couple of months and they are considering phasing it out or tweaking it in some way. This is pure speculation, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest. PR is easily manipulated (for example, through link buying as described above) and Google doesn’t like to have its calculations or search results manipulated. It stands to reason that they will look for ways to prevent this.
So, in summary, is Google Page Rank important to your business?
Well, it’s a good indicator of how many other sites link to yours and how important Google considers your site to be BUT I personally don’t place much importance on this statistic and I certainly won’t pay for a link from a website just because it ranks high. PR.
As I said above, Google changes its rules regularly and I don’t see any point in going after a particular PR on the basis that it might get you a higher search engine ranking. If Google decides to end public relations, all their work will have been for nothing.
Instead, focus on building quality, relevant links from sites that are connected in some way to the content on your own site. This will ensure that any traffic you receive through these links is at least of interest to your site. Building links on this basis will automatically increase your PR over time (without the need to pay for irrelevant and expensive links). If you do things this way and Google removes the PR indicator, it shouldn’t affect you in any way and the links you have in place will continue to benefit you.
Remember, just as a low Alexa rating doesn’t guarantee traffic or sales, neither does a high PR. Sure high PR is ‘nice to have’, but high traffic and high sales is even better 🙂
Copyright 2004 Richard Grady