Titus Hoskins has an excellent article on SitePro News, asking us “Is Google PageRank Still a Valid Marketing Tool?”
In the article, Titus explains the confusion of Page Rank, and why there is now so much value placed upon Page Rank (i.e. one of the major factors affecting the cost of a purchased link!), and concludes:
Google’s PageRank system, including the PR Toolbar, is something every webmaster and online marketer should be aware of in their struggle for higher rankings. Don’t become obsessed with it, instead use this system to your advantage to build better pages and sites.
I really think it is well said – the PR system is something a webmaster must know about, but obsession over page rank is unnecessary. In fact, most metrices – Page Rank, Alexa Rank, Technorati Rank and even the number of visitors a month need to be read with caution. A site can have an Alexa Rank of 2000, or have over 50000 unique visitors a day… but what use is this if the visitors are not targeted?
The true value of a website is it ability to perform its intended objective, and value should not only be measured in terms of monetary value. If a website is meant to sell something, the best measure of the site is how much money it makes. If the website’s intended objective is to build a community advocating a cause, even millions of web visitors a day with credit cards ready in their hands might prove to be pointless!
(I’d not mind having a site like that though 😉 )
Hello Kian, good to know you’re from Singapore (I’m here studying currently). The obsession over Pagerank is understandable. Getting the first result of some key search terms can net a person thousands a day! It is unnecessary but we can’t blame people for that.
keep it up! cheers!
Hi Robinson, yes – search engine rankings might mean revenue, but only one section of it. The other very important section is how the site actually sells!
Hey Kian ann,
One simple question to you, once your blog gets to PR5 or PR6 and you’d get at least 5-10 times or more unique visitors a day than what you’re getting now. Would you be happier? If yes, then it proves PR is important 🙂
Hi Ketyung!
Of course I’ll be happier to get more visitors a day! Haha! But Page Rank is not a good indicator of how much traffic you will have, is it?
Yes higher page rank, higher Google traffic and the higher the level, it gets more traffic even in almost an exponential manner. Of course it depends on your content. E.g if you hav a PR4 blog about blog marketing and someone got a PR5 or PR6 also about blog marketing, then the PR5/6 will come out in higher position in Google searched result. Please remember Google traffic has taken up almost 50% of overall traffic :), that’s the survey. If you ever traced for the viewing patterns of your blog pages, you’d have noticed why these visitors are reading your old contents instead of the latest. Trace it deeper down to your web log, it’s becoz they’ve found u from google 🙂
Hi Kian Ann,
yup though Page Rank is not a direct indicator of how much traffic you get, a high PR will most certainly boost your traffic.
Right now most of my traffic are coming from the search engines, Google especially. And I can see the no. of searches directed to my blog increasing each day.
So I’m constantly working on boosting my PR.
Nonetheless, as you said, the true value of a website should be it’s ability to perform it’s objective. So we all have to work on the other elements.
But I’m sure everyone would want their websites to be found and exposed to a larger audience. And having a high PR can indeed help achieve that! 🙂
Hey Calvin,
Haha.. sometimes PR can be misleading actually. A high PR doesn’t mean you get traffic, or have better search engine placements. Well… unless you are comparing a PR8 to a PR1, then that is of course, another story!
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Remember Katie had her photo taken by Rankin for his current massive Rankin Live exhibition a month or two ago? ,