Google PageRank: What's All The Fuss About

By Gary Finn

Account Executive

There seems to be a fair amount of general misconception and confusion among many webmasters and SEO professionals with regards to what Google PageRank is, and what the fuss is all about.

Considering the importance many webmasters and SEO professionals place on Google PageRank, allow me to clarify to the best of my abilities what it is, and why I believe it should not be used as the dominant indicator of a successful organic search marketing campaign.

According to Google, PageRank can be explained as follows:

"PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves 'important' weigh more heavily and help to make other pages 'important'."

"Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don't match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query."

In my opinion, too many webmasters and SEO professionals are now ONLY concerned with that little green bar increasing week on week, month on month due mainly to pursing an aggressive link building campaign. With this, many expect first page and #1 organic rankings for core keyterms important to their business and industry sector. However, this is not always the case.

The metric webmasters and SEO professionals should concern themselves with is if their site is ranking better organically for your core keyterms than it was before they went about a link building campaign. An increase in PageRank is meaningless if it is NOT accompanied by an improvement in organic ranking for those terms most important to your company. Instead of judging how successful a link building campaign is because of a rise in PageRank, webmasters and SEO professionals alike should be using the improvement (or decline) in organic rankings as the main metric of success. 

For example, if your site was ranking at number 30 before your site began an aggressive link building campaign and is now #1 after implementing the link building campaign (i.e. which could be anything from 6 to 12 months later)….has done its homework. However, if it is still number 30 or lower (for your intended core keyterms) or just went up to 28 or 29, then no real benefit has been derived from the link building campaign.

Does it not make sense to rather have a PageRank of 3 with #1 organic rankings for the majority of your intended keyterms than a site with a PageRank of 6 with poor rankings organically. In my opinion, who cares how buying links does or doesn't affect Pagerank? It is how it affects the organic rankings of your site that matters.

Don’t get me wrong, to check page rank is not a bad idea, but it is not the only thing you should worry about. Although a high Google PageRank can contribute to your good organic rankings, CONTENT IS STILL KING.

A site’s Title tags, optimised content with core terms in header tags, bolded, hyperlinked etc are still some of the major contributors to good organic rankings on Google. However, many companies still fail to implement these factors. In essence, while numerous quality inbound links can get your site good organic rankings, you should consider all facets when fighting to become that elusive #1 ranking on Google! Don’t just think solely of Google PageRank.

In conclusion, the most reliable organic metric is how well your site ranks organically for your core keyterms. Go on….have a look, see where you rank!!