I have only been heavily involved in SEO for the past 2-3 years, so only recently has my soul been consumed by checking rankings for my various keywords on a daily basis. I still remember clearly when Google’s algorithms were but a dark, and mystical mystery.
After discovering various webmaster forums, I quickly began to notice the hype of the PageRank (PR). With this term being tossed around more often than a midget at a student houseparty, I decided to learn more about it. PR is considered a way of rating a website in an easily digestible way, on a scale of 1-10, based on the popularity of the website. PR is thought to consider inbound links, the inbound links of the inbound links, and the inbound links of the inbound links links… and so on.
The absolute misconception, and where everybody seems to have missed the point, is that PR does not reflect search engine rankings directly. Just because a website has a high PR, does not automatically mean it ranks brilliantly for every search phrase under the Sun. Sure, keyword authority plays a pretty big part in search rankings, but you can’t flog a dead horse – I’ve tried it. I’ve tried building hundreds of related links to poorly designed, rarely updated pages, and nothing. Google isn’t stupid – it knows that even if it’s in a room with Bing, Lycos and Ask telling it to eat a delicious-looking pie they baked, it knows the pie may contain poison, so avoids it!
Moving on from my bizarre analogies, PR plays an even bigger part in monetizing a website. Webmasters can sell links on their sites and they know that the higher their PR, the more money people will pay. This will probably have a positive impact on rankings providing they take everything else into account, but too many people concentrate on PR alone. I sure as hell wouldn’t want my link on a PR7 website about penis enlargement…
Posted on August 31, 2009
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