Mike Hagley | September 8, 2010
As agents and consultants it’s up to us to educate our clients about the digital world, but all too often I hear about clients who have “done their research” on SEO and all too often they stumble across an article which suggests that PageRank is the be all and end all of SEO. It’s not. I believe too many site owners don’t understand enough about PageRank and get caught up in its hype. Let’s expel a few PageRank myths before we answer FAQs & explain what it actually is, what it means to you, and what you should be focusing on instead.
PageRank is not a direct measure of your rankings on Google
It is true that pages with higher PageRank are, generally speaking, more likely to gain higher rankings, but PageRank is only one of hundreds of factors which Google takes into consideration when ranking your website for a specific search query. Google states:
“We use more than 200 signals, including our patented PageRank™ algorithm, to examine the entire link structure of the web and determine which pages are most important. We then conduct hypertext-matching analysis to determine which pages are relevant to the specific search being conducted.”
Let me translate that for you: “PageRank is considered when ranking your site but keyword usage is crucial in determining the final rankings.”
Toolbar PageRank is updated sporadically
If you’re busy analysing the PageRank of your site, chances are it’s not even up to date, as the PageRank found in your Google Toolbar is only updated a few times a year, if that. You may also realise that any new pages you add to your site won’t have a PageRank assigned to them until the next update. According to a few sources, the last update was in April 2010, which suggests we’re probably close to another update.
Q: How does PageRank actually work?
Like any Google algorithm, PageRank is a well kept mathematical secret. What we do know is that PageRank is an algorithm based on the “link structure of the web”. Basically, PageRank flows between websites via the links that connect them (PageRank also flows between pages on your own site via internal links). Google goes on to say…
“PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, thus giving the linked page greater value.”
… which gives us the impression that links from higher PageRank sites are worth more (in terms of PageRank value) to the site receiving the link.
Volume, value and relevance are the three factors which I consider to be most important with regard to external links, but I’ll leave that for a specific link building discussion another day.
Q: What does PageRank mean to me?
PageRank should be perceived as an approximate measure of the importance of your site, and it should only be used as a guide to your SEO efforts. PageRank is certainly not something to lose sleep over, and in fact, I don’t even consider PageRank when analysing my clients’ sites and their analytics.
Q: What should I be focusing on with regard to my SEO campaign?
If you are interested in SEO and are concerned about PageRank, I would instead shift your focus to more pertinent SEO items such as keywords, internal linking (site structure) and external link building campaigns. All of which I will focus on in separate posts over the coming weeks.
References
I started writing this post as a follow up to a question posted on Ask Kalena (answered by Peter Newsome). While I agree with Peter’s answer, I felt it was necessary to explain a little more about how PageRank works.
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