Has PageRank lost its importance in search engine optimization?

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Oct 29

Has PageRank lost its importance in search engine optimization?

Google PageRank is one of the most contentious issues right now in the world of search engine optimization. For a long time it has been considered the most powerful indicator of how well your website might perform in searches, but according to Google things are changing.

Google has recently made efforts to reduce the importance that online marketers and search engine experts attach to PageRank. However, just how much Google may have 'detuned' this factor in their indexing algorithms remains a well kept secret.

So if PageRank is not the be all and end all of SEO, then what other factors are considered important by the search giant? Based on research undertaken by SEOmoz, here are the most important indexing factors in their view, along with their % rating:

- Keyword-targeted anchor text from external links (73%)
- Quantity and quality of external links (71%)
- Diversity of links from numerous unique domains (67%)
- Keyword use in the title tag (66%)
- Trustworthiness of your domain (66%)

It's interesting that the top three factors are external and not based on your 'on-page' optimization efforts. That doesn't mean to say you should ignore on-page optimization, but you will have to work much harder on generating quality inbound links to get your site performing in Google search results (SERP's).

Tags: google, pagerank, search engine optimization, serp

5 comments

§ Sheldon (Marketing Consultant, Tauranga) said on : 10/29/09 @ 21:20

Yea, I've been reading a lot about PR lately too. Sad. I like having a simple 1-10 score to measure my websites against. Oh well.

What is "Trustworthiness of your domain"?
§ Wayne Attwell® said on : 11/02/09 @ 08:04
"Trustworthiness of your domain" relates to how highly Google values your root domain. This measure is made up of a range of factors that may include:

- Age of domain
- How long you have had the domain registered to you (a recently acquired domain has less trust than one you have had for a long time, even if domain age is high)
- Links from trusted sites such as academic or government sites
- 'Big' brand name domains have more inherent trust than unknowns i.e.nike.com, ford.com
- Reputation of hosting server (if your server is known for hosting spammy sites then you may be penalised)
§ Jenni said on : 11/05/09 @ 08:12

Trustworthiness of your domain is a new one to me. Does that mean a site like ours that has had the same domain for years but is now a completely new site, automatically gets credit in google for trustworthiness?
§ Wayne Attwell® said on : 11/05/09 @ 09:18
If you have had your domain for a long time and have not recently acquired it, it will have good trustworthiness. It's partly to do with the domain age, but also how long YOU have owned it. An old domain that has recently changed hands does not enjoy the same level of trustworthiness. Google do this in order to prevent people 'buying' trustworthiness.

BTW, rebuilding your site completely under the same root domain won't reduce trustworthiness, however you can lose index position if you have changed your page URL's. If you intend to change URL's without losing SERP position you should use the 301 redirect tag.

Another positive factor for your site is that your domain is .govt.nz which will add significant value to trustworthiness. Non-commercial domain extensions are generally regarded as more credible (for obvious reasons).
§ Apple SEO Tips said on : 07/16/11 @ 14:54

The Page Rank we see seems so inconsistent from site to site it often leaves me puzzled. Clearly it's an _external_ set of variables, rather than something that comes from within and on-page. Age and especially TRAFFIC levels seem to be an important metric. Getting above a PR3 seems to take several hundred hits a day. I just don't see young or low-traffic sites getting high PR regardless of the authority pointing towards it. (But then I never was good at getting PR5+ direct links...)