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 statistic, 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 that they have a PR of between 0 and 5.
To calculate the public relations of a particular site, Google uses a rather complicated algorithm based on the number of web links it knows of 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 with 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 higher PR ranked sites are considered more important, many people choose to buy links from high PR websites just so they can increase their own PR. I’ve seen sites sell a simple text link on their home page for over $700 a month simply because they have a PR of 7 or higher. This may seem like a lot of money, but when you consider that website owners who buy these links often have websites that are not relevant to the content of the site linking to them, 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, then what is going to happen? Well, your own PR may increase as a result of the link. You may get a little 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 some 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 stat into account when determining where a website will show up in their search results. Many people assume that a high PR automatically equates to a high search engine placement for their chosen keywords. not so…
PR 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’s 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 various rumors lately that Google hasn’t updated PR for a couple of months and they are considering phasing it out or modifying it in some way. This is pure speculation, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the least. PR is easily manipulated (for example, by buying links as described above) and Google doesn’t like to have their calculations or search results manipulated. It stands to reason that they will look for ways to prevent this.
So, in short, is Google Page Rank important to your business?
Well, it’s a good indicator of how many other sites are linking to yours and how important Google considers your site to be BUT personally I don’t put too much stock in this statistic and I certainly won’t pay for a link from a website just because it has a high rating. PR.
As I said earlier, Google changes its rules regularly and I see no point in going after a particular PR on the basis that it might rank higher in search engines. If Google decides to do away with public relations, all your hard work will have been in vain.
Instead, focus on creating 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 expensive, irrelevant links). If you do things this way and Google removes the PR flag, it shouldn’t affect you in any way and the links you have in place will continue to benefit you.
Remember, in the same way that 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