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When consulting with companies about “how their website is doing” one of the first things people checkout is the Google PR or Page Rank of the site.
To check the PR of your site officially you have to install the Google browser tool bar which will show you a small green bar from 0-10 with a black box algorithm used to calculate your score. The interesting thing that has happened in the past few years is that this score has become default off with the toolbar, little mention from Google, and an industry directing people that your PR is no longer that important.
What matters is real original content, solid back links from relevant websites, incoming search traffic, rankings on SERPs for specific terms, and referral logs for your site.
How does Google PR play a role in the SEO ecosystem?
It used to be that you could calculate your page rank by the volume of inbound links from other high page ranked sites. For example if many PR 5 sites were linking to your site, your score would increase. I am not sure this is case any longer, nor am I sure that it even matters.
In the past few weeks I have come across benchmarks from a few SEO projects that show an increased number of inbound links, an increase in SERP rankings, and a higher volume of quality content – but a decrease in overall page rank. The net affect of all this is that the webmasters remain happy because “progress” is being made from their SEO efforts – but the only number Google has given them to “score” their site is flat or decreasing.
The lack of cohesion around a metric of success has limited the marketing efforts of many SEO shops and consultants. I think that PR matters to marketers, decision makers, consumers, but not to SEO consultants or agencies.
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November 20th, 2009 at 7:38 am
Hi Eric thanks for sharing this post, looks like the search engine sphere has been going through a changing face since the last 6-8 months as most search engines are now embracing social stuff from big websites like twitter and Facebook.
I think this change has paved the way for 2 schools of thinking first one is of the SEO guys who still believe in the technical way of doing it and the only proof of a successful campaign for them is high page rank.But on the other side the people who are into social media measure success with the buzz they have created among there targeted peers.
So Google page rank is important but we also can't deny the social impact on search.
November 20th, 2009 at 7:56 am
I think people like to circle around a number and benchmark their work. The problem is that its hard to quantify these other new mediums because some are too new, some have rel=no follow, and some are bad neighborhoods.
November 20th, 2009 at 8:19 am
Hi Eric thanks for the prompt reply you are right on this point that the new mediums of measuring specifically are too new but it takes time to understand anything thats evolving and for that I recommend you to read this post from David Berkowitz he has around 100 ways to measure performance of the social sphere http://www.marketersstudio.com/2009/11/100-ways...
and I am sure its going to take time to figure out each one of them but they would be of great help in the coming future as many can get you straight figures.
November 20th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
Thanks – I like David's stuff and I will check it out.
November 20th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
Hi Eric thanks for the prompt reply you are right on this point that the new mediums of measuring specifically are too new but it takes time to understand anything thats evolving and for that I recommend you to read this post from David Berkowitz he has around 100 ways to measure performance of the social sphere http://www.marketersstudio.com/2009/11/100-ways...
and I am sure its going to take time to figure out each one of them but they would be of great help in the coming future as many can get you straight figures.
November 20th, 2009 at 7:57 pm
Thanks – I like David's stuff and I will check it out.