Tue, 20 Nov 2007 14:10:29 by Matt Hopkins
One of our Campaign Delivery Manager's was speaking with a client this
week who was concerned about their PageRank. They were worried that
their PageRank is not high enough when compared to a few of their
competitor's sites. The interesting thing about this conversation was
that their site is getting great rankings for their targeted keywords -
beating many of the same competitors that they mentioned.
And so the question is - how important is PageRank?
We would never argue that PageRank is irrelevant - not by any means.
It is an important attribute that Google uses in its ranking algorithm
based on the strength and importance of a site's links. But the
important thing to realise is that it is not the only attribute used
when Google ranks its search results. The relevance of the content to
a keyword, its page titles, the URL, and many, many more are all
factored into this equation.
Let's take a look at some real examples to illustrate this point. The
tables below show the PageRank (PR) of each search result for a few
highly competitive keyword searches:
Keyword: Mortgage (google search)
-
PR5
-
PR5
-
PR6
-
PR5
-
PR5
-
PR4
-
PR6
-
PR4
-
PR5
-
PR6
(average PageRank: 5.1)
Keyword: Property for Sale (google search)
-
PR6
-
PR6
-
PR5
-
PR6
-
PR5
-
PR6
-
PR5
-
PR3 <- Note the relatively low PageRank
-
PR4
-
PR4
(average PageRank: 5.0)
Keyword: Home Insurance (google search)
-
PR5
-
PR6
-
PR6
-
PR5
-
PR5
-
PR5
-
PR4
-
PR5
-
PR4
-
PR3 <- Note the relatively low PageRank
(average PageRank: 4.8)
As you can see, its not only the top PageRank pages that are in the top
10 - many of the PageRank's are relatively average and some are in fact
pretty low.
PageRank is an important part of the Google algorithm, but you should
not obsess over it. Building your online credibility through links is
part of SEO (aka "off page optimisation") but when combined with
on-page optimisation efforts, your site has a great opportunity to be
successful in the search engines.
Matt Hopkins
Managing Director |
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