PageRank: What is it, exactly?
People define PageRank in lots of ways. Either as a probability distribution used to represent the likelihood that a person randomly clicking on links will arrive at any particular page, or as the methods Google uses to determine the relevance of a web page.
But probably the most popular and accurate way to define PageRank is as a flow that happens between documents across outlinks, as Matt Cutts describes it in his article about PageRank sculpting.
And if you are wondering how PageRank is exactly determined, this article will describe Google’s PageRank algorithm and how Google’s PageRank algorithm assesses the importance of web pages without human evaluation of the content.
Everybody talks about it, media publications, marketers and there are some folks out there who still think of it as the most important metric. So let’s destroy some of the most common myths regarding PageRank and at the same time try to understand PageRank as it’s presented to us by Google, which is in the Google Toolbar.
PageRank indicates in a raw manner the link popularity. PageRank doesn’t take into consideration whether the sites are related to each other. It doesn’t matter either if some of the sites may have been flagged for spam or if the page is a pertinent result to the search query. All that PageRank is saying in terms of raw link popularity, is the number of pages that are linked to this and their relevance and, also, the importance they have on the grand scale of the Web. The most important site will have the greatest score (10) and all the rest will fall back from that.
So, that being said, let’s bust some of the most popular myths and confusions surrounding PageRank.
PageRank Myths…Busted!
Sites have PageRank
Websites do not have PageRank. PR applies to each individual page on a website, not to entire sites. One page could have the PR 6, another one 0 and so on. People often talk about the PageRank of their site, but what they are actually meaning is the PageRank of their site’s homepage. It’s good to have in mind that homepages usually have higher PageRanks than other pages within a site, as they tend to have more links pointing to them.
However, there is another popular score, which reflects the importance of any given web page on the Internet – that is MozRank from SEOmoz. Pages earn MozRank by the number and quality of other pages that link to them.
PageRank is related to traffic
It isn’t. Although it doesn’t show the circumstances of the ranking process, PageRank can indicate the potential to rank of a certain page. In order for rankings to occur, Google needs to associate a given page with one or more keywords and it uses completely different algorithms for that. So, don’t be amazed that, for example, a PageRank 2 may get more traffic than a PageRank 5 page, if the former is associated with relevant keywords, and the latter isn’t associated with anything.
‘A PageRank 3 page will always outrank a PageRank 2 page in SERPS’
PageRank doesn’t imply that you’ll rank higher for targeted keywords over pages with a lower PageRank. There are PageRank 2/3 pages that have higher rankings for keywords than PageRank 5 pages. Your PageRank is no guarantee for high rankings, it’s just something that’s good to keep an eye on and see if you notice any changes.
PR is an important factor in evaluating link prospects
Absolutely false. There are cases when people refuse relevant links from big sites just because those pages have a PageRank 0 or 1. For example, if you have the chance to get a link from big and important websites like CNN, Mashable, Techcrunch and the website is related to your industry, you should seriously consider it, even if that specific webpage has a smaller PageRank. You shouldn’t think about PageRank, but rather about things like domain authority, page authority, relevancy, good anchor texts. PageRank shouldn’t be your primary metric for evaluating link prospects. You should check it just to know if Google has penalized it for something or to have an overall idea of that certain webpage.
PageRank is Google’s only link-related algorithm
That is also false. Nowadays Google uses indexation, rankings, keyword associations algorithms, but in its early days, PR was probably the only link-related algorithm Google used.
PageRank is a key metric for reporting
It’s a big mistake to report PageRank as a key metric. It is absolutely useless as a KPI. Google PageRank doesn’t bring you more business, improve your conversion rate or gain you more traffic. You might consider keeping an eye on it just to make sure that you haven’t been penalized by Google, in case you see a significant drop.
Everybody’s focus should be on building compelling content that will attract links, visitors, leads and eventually customers. However we should have in mind that is beneficial to organize links internally for passing PageRank, as it’s proved that it has a positive correlation to ranking.
Everyone should have some knowledge about PageRank and what are the real KPIs to consider when building the website SEO and link building strategy. With that in mind, it should be pretty clear by now that the PageRank algorithm itself is important, but the Toolbar PageRank is useless as an SEO metric.
We’d be happy to hear some other myths about PageRank, so you are more than welcome to comment below!
