Is it all about High PR?

[webgk.com]

I would say TT = $$ instead of PR =...? [TT: targeted traffic]

I liked that formula.
That's just short, neat and sweet, conveys a lot.

[felgall]

Since Google don't tell anyone what the actual PR is for their page (you just get an historical value rounded to the nearest number) I don't see how it could possibly be considered to be eye candy.

[Gunner]

Since Google don't tell anyone what the actual PR is for their page (you just get an historical value rounded to the nearest number) I don't see how it could possibly be considered to be eye candy.

My point being is that I've had a site for 5 years with very few backlinks. For the past 3 years it has ranked in the top 10, for the last year and a half it has ranked in the top 3. Before this last update (in april I think) it had a PR3, which was the highest its been, then dropped to PR1. The sites that are below me in the serps have higher PRs. PR has nothing to do with the serps so to me it is just eye candy...something to look at. I get a lot of traffic from google so maybe that combined with the age of the site might explain things.

[AJKock]

If you have a PR of 5 for example, it doesn't affect all the keywords you are trying to target the same way, but if it DID it means there are other factors that play a larger role in determining your ranking for a keyword. Because as most of you might have noticed, some PR 1 ranks 1 & 2 with certain keywords while some PR 6 doesn't even get in the Top 10.

[webgk.com]

Absolutely right. Keyword competition/trend is the major factor to drive the organic traffic.
PR has it's own importance, G only knows that; of course those too who sell/buy links/sites.

[MrCat]

PR and SERP are two different things IMO. Having high PR (thru quality link building) is good if your site is selling links and SERP (onpage/keyword optimization) if you are selling products or services.

[Asso]

I have PR 0 for my site, but it ranks in top ten at googlr for my main keywords.

[webgk.com]

It's a normal thing new sites/posts/pages appears high in rankings initially.
Few days after, due to lack of support start to sink down.
I have observed that, you might want to experiment on that.
It's interesting.

[stymiee]

I have PR 0 for my site, but it ranks in top ten at googlr for my main keywords.

Your site isn't a PR 0. PR is assigned per page. Also, what you see is public PR which is rarely updated. The odds are your home page does have PR, you just can't see it.

[vinai]

A high PR page will not necessarily be relevant to all the queries it is listed for. Google tries to show the relevant results first. I regularly see sites with no PR show up higher up than sites with high PR of 5.

I think overall, if a number of high PR sites link to you, it is one of the factors for Google to know that your site has some good content, and it will give you some brownie points for it. But your site won't list higher up just because many sites link to you.

Ultimately, content is king, IMHO.

[MrCat]

A high PR page will not necessarily be relevant to all the queries it is listed for. Google tries to show the relevant results first. I regularly see sites with no PR show up higher up than sites with high PR of 5.

I think overall, if a number of high PR sites link to you, it is one of the factors for Google to know that your site has some good content, and it will give you some brownie points for it. But your site won't list higher up just because many sites link to you.

Ultimately, content is king, IMHO.

I think you are refferring to SERP - ranking shown on search results for a particular keyword. This differs because as I have mentioned above - PR and SERP building has different ways. I do agree that content is ultimately king

[AJKock]

I think you are refferring to SERP - ranking shown on search results for a particular keyword..

Isn't this the reason why most people actually care about PR in the first place? We are all trying to end up in Google's Top 10?

Yes webgk.com. I have also noticed that Google tends to show fresh content for about 2 weeks before it drops out. Thats why I follow two SEO strategies; short term and long term.

[stymiee]

Isn't this the reason why most people actually care about PR in the first place? We are all trying to end up in Google's Top 10?

They care about PR because they think it will get them in the top ten. Then when they have PR and aren't in the top 1000 they wonder why they rank poorly. It's because they where chasing the wrong thing.

[AJKock]

Hehe, precisely.

[MrCat]

Very true Stymiee!

[aspen]

http://www.sitepoint.com/article/top...myths-revealed

Year article written: 2002.

Current year: 2007

Article still being relevant 5 years later: Priceless.

The fact that people still need that article 5 years later: Sad panda.

[AJKock]

Aspen I have a few questions if you don't mind. Read through the article and related forum posts and boy were they lengthy.

After also sending your comments to management, they came back with some questions.

RP: Google's PR is based on citation of your site by other, authoritative sites (it's based on Google's founders' background at university and the importance of scholarly citation). It's their claim to fame.

RP: If everybody took Aspen's advice then no site would link to any other one - and that would make PR redundant - in fact it would make Google's algorithm redundant

RP: I somehow doubt that Google is "encouraging" webmasters (through their algorithm) NOT to cite other sites.

RP: Finally, if nobody wanted to link to anyone else for fear of losing PR, then the whole IDEA of the web becomes redundant.

My questions: Your commented "...thus the overall PageRank of your entire site will decrease..." I thought that sites don't have PageRank, only pages?

Your comment regarding page redirects scripts "No, then you just throw PR at the script url..." stymiee recommended "Use a 301 redirect to redirect Google,..." to move your PR. So now I am confused.

[AJKock]

Anybody willing to comment yet?

[consultant1027]

In my opinion PR has lost it's value the past 2-3 years because a software program cannot make a subjective decision such as determining if the content on a site is both relevant and valuable versus something created primarily for marketing purposes to bring traffic to one or more sites. Google has really tried to filter these sites and has had some degree of success (with Bozos that don't know how to create a doorway site the right way). However someone with some intelligence can easily hire a web development firm in India at $10/hr to actually create unlimited, decent size, multi-page websites with original content that appear no different to Google than a site that isn't what has been termed a 'doorway' site (and hosted them on different C class IP addresses.)

There is one technique though that I'm not sure if Google uses, but one of the other engines used a while back and that is keeping track of how long someone stays on a website before the come back to the search results and click the next result in the list. While not 100% foolproof, I've always thought this technique could help determine a much more accurate page rank as humans are much more accurate at determining if a webiste is just fluff, or if it is actually relevant to the keyword they entered. If it is a doorway with low-value content, then they'll come back to the search results rather quickly and click on another site.

It seems the consensus here that PR, while still being factored into rankings, is defnitely not as important as it once was. So wouldn't the more important question be then what is?

1. Keyword in the domain name with no other word (duh). This is the easy one, with .com being the most weight, but unfortunately only one person get to have a site with the keyword ending in .com. .net and .org are distant seconds.

2. Keyword in title.

3 on - No one REALLY knows. Except Google themselves. Obiviously PR, keyword in content, keyword in links, keyword in headings, yada yada yada.

One aspect I've always been curious about is how much content to you need in general to get the highest rating for countent quanity? A 5 page website with average of 4 graphics per page, a couple links, and maybe 3 paragraphs of text with about 150 words each?? I think content amount is probably the one black box area where if you can figure out why Google 'likes' the best you can make some improvement on your search rankings. Google always advocates to have your site rank high to have relevant content. They obviously made their own subjective decision in the algorithm as far as what consitutes good quality content from the aspect of the amount of content let alone keyword density, links, titles, etc.

But I'm getting off on a tangent. You can continue to talk about PR to your heart's content. It's all about your domain name and your content.

[aspen]

Aspen I have a few questions if you don't mind. Read through the article and related forum posts and boy were they lengthy.

After also sending your comments to management, they came back with some questions.

RP: Google's PR is based on citation of your site by other, authoritative sites (it's based on Google's founders' background at university and the importance of scholarly citation). It's their claim to fame.

RP: If everybody took Aspen's advice then no site would link to any other one - and that would make PR redundant - in fact it would make Google's algorithm redundant

RP: I somehow doubt that Google is "encouraging" webmasters (through their algorithm) NOT to cite other sites.

RP: Finally, if nobody wanted to link to anyone else for fear of losing PR, then the whole IDEA of the web becomes redundant.

My questions: Your commented "...thus the overall PageRank of your entire site will decrease..." I thought that sites don't have PageRank, only pages?

Your comment regarding page redirects scripts "No, then you just throw PR at the script url..." stymiee recommended "Use a 301 redirect to redirect Google,..." to move your PR. So now I am confused.

I don't visit this forum much anymore so I just saw this... Anyways... RP is very confused....

RP: If everybody took Aspen's advice then no site would link to any other one - and that would make PR redundant - in fact it would make Google's algorithm redundant

This isn't true, people often don't care if they lose a little PR. People also sometimes feel by linking out they make their site more useful which in turn makes people more likely to link to it. But in anycase this isn't a point I have to justify, it is a mathematical certainty, as certain as 1+1=2. Linking out lowers the PageRank of your site.

RP: I somehow doubt that Google is "encouraging" webmasters (through their algorithm) NOT to cite other sites.

They're not encouraging webmasters either way. They're just measuring the behavior. If anything though, the algorithm encourages people to be discerning when choosing who to link to, thus making it more likely that any one link denotes higher quality.

RP: Finally, if nobody wanted to link to anyone else for fear of losing PR, then the whole IDEA of the web becomes redundant.

It'd be nice to live in a fairy land of gumdrop kisses and rainbow roads, but the real world isn't utopian based on socialist principles. PageRank only works if links are valuable, hard to get, and meaningful. If they were really easy to get everyone would have thousands/millions and there would be no differentiation between sites.

My questions: Your commented "...thus the overall PageRank of your entire site will decrease..." I thought that sites don't have PageRank, only pages?

PageRank is held by Pages, but collectively all the pages within your site have value as well, not to the SEs, but to you.

See this link:

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache...lnk&cd=1&gl=us

They have the actual math illustrating how if you have a collection of interlinked paged (a site) and link out to a page that is not part of your collective (off site) then the overall weight flowing through your links in your collective (site) is lessened.

Don't think of PR as constant values stuck to individual pages, think of it as volumes of water flowing constantly. Your site is a series of interconnected ponds with PR flowing from one to another and back again, if a leak occurs and one pond starts draining that doesn't affect just that one pond, but all ponds it is connected to.

Get it?

[aspen]

In my opinion PR has lost it's value the past 2-3 years because a software program cannot make a subjective decision such as determining if the content on a site is both relevant and valuable

PageRank was never about context. Many people got confused and thought it was, and then they realized it wasn't and thought it wasn't anything anymore. It was never context, it was always relevance within a niche once context has been established.

There is one technique though that I'm not sure if Google uses, but one of the other engines used a while back and that is keeping track of how long someone stays on a website before the come back to the search results and click the next result in the list. While not 100% foolproof, I've always thought this technique could help determine a much more accurate page rank as humans are much more accurate at determining if a webiste is just fluff, or if it is actually relevant to the keyword they entered. If it is a doorway with low-value content, then they'll come back to the search results rather quickly and click on another site.

So, if you ran search engines, you'd penalize sites for being easy to use and providing information front and center in a most useful way so people can quickly find what they need, and you're give a bonus to sites with confusing navigation and slow load times that require visitors to spend time searching for the relevant data?

Back to the drawing board methinks.

[AJKock]

Thanks Aspen. I get it. My last question thou? Which seems that 301 redirects just tells Google where the new page is, and Google lists the new page, but if people don't update their links towards your new page, you loose PR? Is this what you are saying?

[aspen]

Maybe, maybe not.

Google is supposed to, for perpetuity, forward the PR through the 301 redirect to the new URL. Supposedly. Personally, I'd rather not rely on them to keep forwarding that PR and instead get the people to update their links.

However, I haven't been talking about 301 redirects at all in this thread, so your bit "Is this what you are saying" has me concerned.

[DefStatic]

In this world of web design and management, I am simply what a mechanic would call a "glorified wrench turner". I just know a little bit here and there, just enough to get by.

When I got into SEO for my site (after a year of building my community), I saw SEO as a 10,000lbs gorilla that was always going to be there, looming over my goals for my site.

However, I like to think that despite the little SEO I have worked on has been successful. But, I believe it is the result of providing the content to back the justification for achieving one of my SEO goals. If you Yahoo or Google "NASCAR Usersbars" I rank in the Top 5. But I do not attribute it to anything on my part besides actually providing the content to be ranked where I am for that search.

My ultimate goal is to someday be ranked in the Top 10 for searches such as "NASCAR Forums", "NASCAR Boards", "NASCAR Community", and "NASCAR News". Stuff like that. However, I know that right now, if my site was to be ranked in the Top 10 for "NASCAR News", this would be a fraud IMHO, for I do not quite provide the news coverage that other sites do. So if I ranked better than them, there would be no justification for it.

However, my searches for things like "NASCAR forums" do not exactly produce what I would feel are qualified results. Some are, some aren't. Just my opinoin there.

So in the mean time, I work towards not only improving my SEO work for my site, but also backing it up with the content and relevancy. Hope that all makes sense.

[JakeJeck]

I had to install Adobe Reader on a new laptop yesterday so I googled "click here" to get the adobe site (#1 result).

So is it a combination of link text, number of links with that text, and PR of those incoming links + other stuff?