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January 16, 2008
 In my post The Frustration of Trying to Make Money Online, item # 6 on my list is Don't give a hoot about Google Page Rank.
There's a common path that people take as they're learning about doing business on the internet. At some point, they discover SEO (Search Engine Optimization)... the process of making your web site pages rank better for certain search terms. In other words, if you're selling real estate, you want your site to come up in the first page or so in Google (or Yahoo, or MSN) when someone searches on real estate and the city or area you work in. If you're selling custom made baseball bats, you want your web site to come up on the first page or so in Google (or Yahoo, or MSN) when someone searches on custom made baseball bats. The whole process of selecting the keywords that are pertinent to your business and making your pages rank well is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO for short).
There are many factors that affect your ranking in a particular search engine. They all have different algorithms (formulas) that are used to rank web pages. It's difficult or near impossible to rank well in Google, Yahoo, and MSN for the same site for the same keyword phrase. If ranking well in more than one is important to you or your business, then you may need to create multiple web sites.
You can read the various posts about Search Engine Optimization I've made in the SEO category of this blog.
What is Google Page Rank?
So what is Google Page Rank, often abbreviated to PR? It's an algorithm that gives a numeric score between 1 and 10 to a web site. It was created by Larry Page, that's why it's named Page Rank! Its algorithm looks at the number a quantity of links point to a site and a number of other factors to determine the ranking.
It's nice to have a site with a high Google Page Rank; however that should not be your goal. Unless, you're building a site from which you plan to sell links. Now keep in mind that Google frowns on sites that sell links: they say they will remove such sites from their indexes if them. Having a high Page Rank would allow you to charge more for a link if you're selling links.
What effect does Page Rank have on SERP Ranking?
SERP (Search Engine Results Page) is the list of matching sites you get when you perform a search from a search engine. Everyone wants their site to be in the top 10 and would really love that #1 spot. Well, Google Page Rank has little effect on SERP placement. You can do the math on this yourself. If you have the Google toolbar loaded, you can see the Google Page Rank on any page you load. Or, there's a plug-in for the Firefox browser that will add the Google Page Rank to the info that accompanies each listing in a SERP. Either way, do a search on Google and look at the Page Rank of the top 10 results. They're probably greater than 0, but they're probably not in order of descending Page Rank. Time after time I've seen sites with lower PR out rank sites with higher PR in SERPS. I've out ranked higher PR sites with my own sites too.
Why did I think this was Important?
Because if you've been in various Internet Marketing forums you may have read post after post about Page Rank. You may think it's very important. You may be all depressed because your site, that you've spend so much time building and working on, has only a PR1 or a PR2. Well, don't worry about it. If you use some proper SEO knowledge you can out rank a lot of higher PR sites? How? Well, for that, you'll have to stay tuned to this blog (signup using the form below) and read some future posts. As I mentioned earlier, there are some very good SEO pointers in the SEO category of this blog... I'd read those too!
Until Next Time,
Fred
About the Author
Fred Black is an experienced programmer, web site developer, online business operator, systems integrator, father, husband, musician, and songwriter. Visit his Internet Business Blog at: http://www.pqInternet.com.
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Posted by Fred on January 16, 2008 | Printer-Friendly
TrackBack: http://www.pqInternet.com/Blog/mt-tb.cgi/110
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Search Engines: SEO
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Comments:
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Great post! It takes time to get your PR rank up there...but it doesn't take long to get search engine results when you're using the right tool!
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Good article, thanks for submitting it to the blog carnival on web 2.0,.
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Search engine expert James Brausch -- who has performed statistical analysis on Google's Search Engine Ranking Factors (SERFs) -- states that he has found very little support that PR has a strong impact on how Google ranks a site. Interesting...
Cheers,
Jim
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Hi Fred,
Wow, that's a pretty comprehensive response... EXTREMELY interesting... I will need to take considerably more time to pore through all of that detail.
Once again, thanks for that great response to my comment. :-)
Cheers,
Jim
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Great blog! This is so true and I'm glad that I have come across your blog because my site is a perfect example of what you've discussed. My site is the #2 spot for my keyword in a very tough competition of about 1.3 million search engine results in a average month. This happen in less than 24 hours. I am focusing on getting a higher page ranking but when I saw MY SITE at the #2 spot... I just couldn't believe it!! I didn't know what to think! I was thinking of all the reasons why it wasn't true. I literally thought my eyes were deceiving me. Anyway, thanks for enlightening everyone on this.
Jarrod
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This is very true of low competition keywords.
However, when competing for a very tough keyword, keyword optimization is only half the battle in SEO. For instance, my father sells membership to his local business directory at themonadnock.com (the monadnock is a region in new hampshire), but when he tells people to go to his website, like idiots, they frequently only type in "monadnock" into the search bar. I looked at the SERPs for placement of the word, and every single result above him had higher Page Rank than him. There are at least 100 above him in the SERPs despite his keyword optimization strategies.
The only other factor I can think up, is that he needs more high PR back links with "monadnock" anchor text. I have the same problem trying to rank high for other competitive keywords. Everyone's optimized, so it all boils down to link popularity and age of the site. Can't really do much about the age of the site, so link popularity is the only leveraging point.
Hopefully that provides a little more insight into the reasoning behind Page Rank.
Sincerely,
Devin T.
VestRite Internet Practices
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