Google Pagerank: Should You Care?

At any given moment, you could go over to many different search marketing or web development forums and do a search for “pagerank” and have enough user posts to fill a library. People really get hung up on it; some people will only accept a link exchange or one-way inbound link from sites that have a Pagerank [insert number 1-10].

Other people see getting Pagerank on their own site up as high as possible, to prove to people that their site is trustworthy and an authority on the topics they present. If I had a nickel for every time a potential client was concerned about their Pagerank, I would have a mountain of nickels. But for all the people hung up on Pagerank, I’m here to tell you that it’s not what you think it is.

Pagerank Truths

Let’s get the facts out of the way first, before I get started on this.

• What you see in your toolbar is not an accurate representation as to what the real Pagerank of your site is (aka Live Pagerank)
• The data in your toolbar gets updated usually once every 3-4 months
• What constitutes how you get your Pagerank has never been publicly disclosed
• Only Google knows the Pagerank formula & the actual Live PageRank value

Now then, here’s my take on this. But remember, this is opinion so please treat it as such.

Pissing Contest

Venture around those bulletin boards and the conversations remain the same; “My site is only a PR3 right now, but soon it should be a PR5!” or “I’m selling links from my PR7 site”, etc, etc, blah blah blah. Big woop. I stopped paying attention to the little green bar quite some time ago simply because it’s not a true tool to measure the important metrics of your site.

Too many people are getting WAY too concerned about this whole thing. Get links to your site on better criteria such as sites that are trustworthy and established, with a good representation of your ideal keyword(s) already in place on the page where your link would be. The PRZ’s (PageRank Zombies) need to chill on this and remember what constitutes a good link, as well as what makes the internet exist; links to other pages so the user can keep exploring.

Selling links because you have a PR7 or whatever isn’t the best thing to do anymore in Googles eyes. Matt Cutts talked about paid links and how they’re being valued now, and how easy it is to snitch on the competition for your gain. The PRZ’s just need to go get their links like the rest of us; methodically, carefully, and honestly. Paid link purchases that guarantee you get exposure on a network of sites can bring you great traffic and some conversions, but your link could be ending up on all kinds of unsavory websites that you would never consider linking to.

If you absolutely must buy links, be ready to drop some big bucks with reputable link networks like business.com if you want relevant traffic from trustworthy sources. Besides, paying for placement on someone else’s site is money poorly spent when you could just opt to earn links for free by putting together good content thats worth linking to. And that’s well within Googles Webmaster’s Guidelines, so you can’t go wrong!

Moldy Cheese

Would you check to see if moldy cheese was still moldy after 3 weeks? Probably not right? Odds are, it’s still moldy.

And so is PageRank; it doesn’t change for a good while. So how can static data ever be accurate in a dynamic setting? 99% of the time it can’t be unless you do absolutely nothing on your website for the whole period in between PageRank updates. But since you probably want your site to do well in the search engines, you’re adding new content, updating old content, and building links. All 3 of those actions are not static, while PageRank static data keeps you waiting for it’s update.

The search engine result pages (SERPS) can give you a much better indication as to how Google views your page simply by how you rank for your desired keywords. You make a change, they index you, they rank your keywords based off your change, and you have substance from your labor. None of that involves their PageRank bar.

Tell Me Lies, Tell Me Sweet Little Lies

Forgive the Fleetwood Mac reference, but it’s appropriate here. PageRank in itself was never intended to be treated as it is by PRZ’s and misinformed website owners. From what I can tell, it just appears as a way for Google to do the following;

• Offer what no other search engines was offering at the time
• Appear to be wise and informed about the authoritative and trustworthiness of ALL websites YOU visit
• Offer the dominance convenience of instant access to Google’s search engine from within your browser
• Data mine Learn more about your browsing activity.. to finetune results and Adwords to your queries
• Ultimately make you feel comfortable about downloading the toolbar

Now here’s where the lies come in; it’s not uncommon to find a page within a site that has zero backlinks and less content magically showing higher PageRank than a page which has backlinks and optimized content present. How does that work? For those skeptical of what I just said, contact me and I can give you links and maybe you can figure this one out for me. But I just can’t see how a lightweight page beats a heavyweight.

Another great example of this is for anyone who owns a Gmail account. Somehow, your inbox has PageRank. Completely unique content (your emails) have been deemed as trustworthy and an authoritative source of information. Thanks for clearing that up for me Google, I would have thought all of my emails were totally BS if it wasn’t for your help on that matter.

An Experiment

I want you to try something with the site you have been marketing just to prove my point. Completely eliminate your concern over PageRank for 2 months when it comes to your linking campaign and content additions/edits. Instead, focus on the following;

• Pay attention to the pages your link would show up on for how well your desired keywords are represented on that page, and more importantly if that page gets cached by the search engines
• Look at your pages individually and make sure that your META description tag represents the content accurately
• Make sure your META description tag for each page has your desired keywords within it
• Pay attention to how your visitors are finding this page when they’re coming from another page within the site so you can determine if your current on-site linking structure needs to be spruced up with those desired keywords or more prominent placement higher up in your copy

Conclusion

So the question is how is PageRank a determining factor in your sites overall quality? Frankly, it’s not. Quality is determined by the content you put in place, the methods you use to market your site and what kind of audience you’re out to attract. Google can’t decide quality, your visitors ultimately decide this.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 17th, 2007 at 3:06 pm and is filed under Google, SEO, Web Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.