By: Mischa Weston-green
There has been a big hullabaloo in search engine optimization marketing about Google’s PageRank (PR), what with the update happening in October and many sites having a decreased PageRank. Matt Cutts has stated the reason for this is because of the reasons stated in my article ‘Paying the Price’, paid linking and manipulating the rankings by buying links on high PR websites.
For those who are not a search engine optimisation specialists, PageRank is a combination of factors which would in theory judge your website on a scale of 0-10 of how relevant/important it is. One of the most defining factors in this is how many inbound links there are to your site and where those links are from. Google uses the analogy of a democratic voting system, "… Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important".
So it also depends on the importance or PageRank of the website casting the vote, and this is where we get the problem of paid links that Google are so desperately trying to alleviate; shooting themselves in the foot!
Speaking with specialists in search engine optimisation Hampshire, it seems they are all fairly united on the subject, Matthew Gorrel thinks, "most search engine optimisation specialists think that PageRank is one of the more important factors that the Google algorithm uses in determining the search engine rankings; however it is clear to me more than a few larger factors and many minor ones determine rankings; no one outside of the Google loop really knows how these factors are inputted into their algorithm."
Some other I have spoken to claim PR is a simply a "conspiracy", claiming it is just a number created by Google to keep search engine optimisation specialists talking about it and promoting Google.
In contrast to this ‘conspiracy’ theory, I personally think PageRank is important purely because Google is investing so much time and money in to punishing paid links. They are also bothering to decrease the PR of sites they feel aren’t being natural with their linking strategies or sites that just don’t cut the grain in that market sector; why do this if it is not important?
I think the key word here is ‘importance’; there can be no doubt it holds weight of some form, but how much is the question. Even Google has said that PR is one of about 150 things they use to rank pages, so while PageRank may be important, people give it too much priority in search engine optimisation. Certainly in ‘boundary’ ranking situations, when the Google algorithm is not sure which site is the best match, PR can be the deciding factor.
What search engine optimization marketing strategists need to focus on are good content, relevance in link building and the core rules of SEO. PageRank is not the be all and end all, but is a worthy indicator of what Google thinks of your site. The end all is how much traffic you have and how well you can convert this traffic. Look at PR, but stay focused on the end game, and that’s your bank account; don't treat PageRank as some magic pill.
There has been a big hullabaloo in search engine optimization marketing about Google’s PageRank (PR), what with the update happening in October and many sites having a decreased PageRank. Matt Cutts has stated the reason for this is because of the reasons stated in my article ‘Paying the Price’, paid linking and manipulating the rankings by buying links on high PR websites.
For those who are not a search engine optimisation specialists, PageRank is a combination of factors which would in theory judge your website on a scale of 0-10 of how relevant/important it is. One of the most defining factors in this is how many inbound links there are to your site and where those links are from. Google uses the analogy of a democratic voting system, "… Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important".
So it also depends on the importance or PageRank of the website casting the vote, and this is where we get the problem of paid links that Google are so desperately trying to alleviate; shooting themselves in the foot!
Speaking with specialists in search engine optimisation Hampshire, it seems they are all fairly united on the subject, Matthew Gorrel thinks, "most search engine optimisation specialists think that PageRank is one of the more important factors that the Google algorithm uses in determining the search engine rankings; however it is clear to me more than a few larger factors and many minor ones determine rankings; no one outside of the Google loop really knows how these factors are inputted into their algorithm."
Some other I have spoken to claim PR is a simply a "conspiracy", claiming it is just a number created by Google to keep search engine optimisation specialists talking about it and promoting Google.
In contrast to this ‘conspiracy’ theory, I personally think PageRank is important purely because Google is investing so much time and money in to punishing paid links. They are also bothering to decrease the PR of sites they feel aren’t being natural with their linking strategies or sites that just don’t cut the grain in that market sector; why do this if it is not important?
I think the key word here is ‘importance’; there can be no doubt it holds weight of some form, but how much is the question. Even Google has said that PR is one of about 150 things they use to rank pages, so while PageRank may be important, people give it too much priority in search engine optimisation. Certainly in ‘boundary’ ranking situations, when the Google algorithm is not sure which site is the best match, PR can be the deciding factor.
What search engine optimization marketing strategists need to focus on are good content, relevance in link building and the core rules of SEO. PageRank is not the be all and end all, but is a worthy indicator of what Google thinks of your site. The end all is how much traffic you have and how well you can convert this traffic. Look at PR, but stay focused on the end game, and that’s your bank account; don't treat PageRank as some magic pill.
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