Pro-SEO

The most common questions on webmaster forums are regarding the importance of pagerank and are usually posted by new webmasters who believe that this pagerank value given to their sites must have some importance, and that the value must be an accurate representation of the quality of their site. After all, Google wouldn't give us something pointless, would they?

What i will try to do in this post is try to explain the importance of pagerank, or more precisely the unimportance of pagerank

When pagerank first materialized it was given a lot of weight by google. Out of the 100+ factors that determine SERPS it was probably one of the most important. But as time went on, webmasters started getting all the backlinks they could, Which lead to a lot of spamming and a lot of mess.

Why PageRank Isn't Important.

The most common thing new webmasters have trouble getting their head around is how backlinks can be important, PageRank isn't important, yet backlinks cause pagerank. Thinking about it, it would be confusing. I would most definitely agree that backlinks are an important factor in SEO, Probably the most important factor. But the most important factors in backlinks are the anchor text used in those backlinks and if the site linking to you has related content. Two factors that pagerank doesn't take into account.
So if Pagerank doesn't take into account the two biggest factors of backlinks it can hardly be a reliable way of measuring the success of your link building.

In recent times Google have got pretty good at spotting links from unrelated sites and spammy links to discourage people from overemphasized the importance of pagerank.

A lot of people also assume that sites listed in the SERPS are ordered by pagerank, I don't know where they get this from, and i don't know why they don't see for themselves, it's easy to do, Just do a search. Sites in the SERPS are not ordered by pagerank

So by now you should have a pretty good idea why pagerank isn't as important as it once was.
And as if all that isn't enough, By the time we get to see toolbar pagerank it's four month out of date. So, please, No more questions about pagerank. Measure your sites success by two simple statistics, Visitors and sales, Nothing more.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 19, 2006 at 7/19/2006. You can skip to the end and leave a response.