Why Page Rank Is Important
Jul 4th, 2008 by admin
I’ve read in a lot of places that worrying about Google’s Page Rank (PR) is a waste of time as it’s not important to your rankings or traffic. One of the main arguments put forward is that the PR displayed to the public in the Google Toolbar is historic in nature and out of date. This may indeed be the case to some degree, but I would argue that Page Rank is important for the following reasons.
Page Rank is Google’s method of indexing web pages and their content based on ”importance”. Therefore the higher your page rank, the more important your content is seen to be by Google. As Google only wants to serve up the best quality content to its users, it follows that high page rank will lead to high rankings in Google!
In general this is true. A page with page rank will rank higher than one without. Obviously, because the PR is a snapshot in time, there will be times when low page rank pages rank higher, but where this is the case, those pages will probably aquire higher page rank when the next updates are done by Google.
No one knows the exact algorithm that Google uses to calculate Page Rank. But it’s generally agreed that the number and “quality” of links pointing to your site is the main factor. Inbound links from other high PR sites will increase your own PR considerably. Google considers links to your site to be a vote of confidence for your content or a recommendation. The more important the site is that sends the link to you, the more value it will have to your own page rank.
So regardless of how and when it’s calculated, the fact that Google publish page rank to the public means that they regard it as a valuable measure of importance. And as it’s a likely indication of how well your pages are going to rank, I suggest to you that it is important and you should do all that you can to increase it for all of your sites, because ultimately you’ll rank better as a result!
It’s also widely considered that other quality factors are included in the PR algorithm.
For example, some people believe that Google measure the time that visitors stay on your site, the longer they stay the better the quality of your content, thus increasing your PR and rankings. I’m sure the quality of your content must be a factor. Therefore, it makes sense that you should work hard at improving your page rank over time, because your PR will be a reflection of the quality of your site.
In general I find that high page rank sites are usually high quality sites, therefore PR is an important indicator to your visitors as to the credibility of your site and its content. Credibility is important. When people see a high PR they will subconsciously associate your site with quality and trust. This is another very good reason why page rank is important to you as a webmaster.
Finally, you’ll find it a lot easier to attract inbound links to enhance your PR when you have a decent page rank. Other webmasters will want to exchange links with you if your PR is higher than theirs, because a link from you will pass on ranking juice to them. Plus the higher your page rank, the more traffic you’ll receive in general, which means more people will see your pages and naturally link to them if your content is good.
So there you have it, why I think Page Rank is important and therefore why you should set aside time to build links to your site and work on the quality of your sites.
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