Is Google Page Rank Useful to Search Engine Marketing?
So What is Page Rank
Anyone remotely familiar with search engine optimization strategies will come across many references to the term “Page Rank.” Page Rank (PR) is a metric, reputedly used by the Google search engine, to determine the relevance of a site. Larry Page is one of the co-founders of Google and Page Rank was named after him. Page Rank is not used by other major search engines like Yahoo and Bing and it is important to know that.
There’s no way to find out a site’s Page Rank or exactly what Page Rank measures since Google doesn’t release such information. On the other hand, the volume and quality of inbound links to a website matters most for most experts, and they believe that Page Rank gauges those two. If a website has zero links then most likely it will have a page rank of zero. On the other hand, if it has a page rank between 2 and 5, it might have thousands of links. Only major sites such as Google or Microsoft are likely to have high Page Rank values of 8, 9, or 10.
Some Purposes of Page Rank
Gauging a website’s growing importance for Google is usually the sole purpose of using Page Rank. Starting from a Page Rank of 0 to a Page Rank of 3 within six months is a good example of optimizing your website. However, if it goes from a Page Rank of 1 to Page Rank of 2 in three years, your site might not be optimized very well.
However, Page Rank is also used commercially as a means of selling links. Believing in the strategy of getting more 3rd party links can increase a site’s Page Rank, most website owners buy links from other sites. Thus many companies base their charges via “linking rates” which are based on a site’s Page Rank.” For example, it is more costly to buy links from a website that has a Page Rank of 4 or 5 than from a website that has a Page Rank of 1 or 2.
Reasons Why Page Rank Most Likely Isn’t Related to Web Optimization Strategies Any Longer
There are several reasons why many search engine optimization specialists no longer regard improving Page Rank as a useful means of increasing a site’s chances of obtaining quality natural/organic search engine traffic:
1) The Google search engine prevents sites to use and go around its systems for knowing the importance of websites by buying links that optimizes a site’s Page Rank. Therefore, the Page Rank’s of many sites may not be publicly updated for several months, giving Google time to determine which sites should genuinely have higher Page Ranks and which sites are merely trying to “game the system.”
2) In some cases, Page Rank no longer appears to have any bearing on the amount of traffic a site receives from Google. Researches by many search engine optimization specialists show that some websites with low Page Ranks receive good amount of site traffic. On the other hand, websites with high Page Ranks receive low amount of search engine traffic.
3) SEO Perth asserts that controlling Page Rank is impossible because it cannot be controlled by either search engine optimization experts or website owners. A private metric system is being used by Google on determining Page Rank. Even if website owners follow the proven steps on optimizing their websites, still they have no control over the Page Rank Google gives to their sites.
Most of the time Page Rank is used as an informal way of getting a track of a site’s relevance to search engines. On the other hand, using it to check your site’s value in Google’s eyes or using it to know how much you will pay for links to your site must be avoided. ID: mcpmhk21
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