Those of you who read regularly my Daw Web Hosting Blog, know that when I have time I like reading WebHostingTalk forums. Why? Because you can find a lot of valuable information about web hosting industry there. What WHT members talk about is important to anyone who want to understand and analyze the processes in web hosting industry and the consumer behavior in general. Today i have found an interesting thread. It is titled “Does PageRank Matter Any More?”. Let look over it.
“I’ve read some people say that page rank still matters and matters a lot, and other people say it doesn’t matter at all. Personally I think it is simply one of many factors, and there are other factors that are much more important”, wrote a newbie WHT member nicknamed “ItzGoTyme”. The user also said that some of those factors “include how competitive the keywords you are targeting are”, how well you have chosen them, what your title is, the quality and anchors on your links, and how long your site has been around”.
What is funny is that after the WHT newbie “ItzGoTyme” got to the topic he did something very strange. Read it below:
But actually, you don’t have to answer my question about page rank… in fact I don’t want you to. I have seen many posters here and on other forums that I think are so anxious to spew out a bunch of post replies that they just read the thread title and not the actual post and then reply with a one line sentence. At least, that’s what seemed to happen on a previous question I posted…
So, if you actually read this post, please don’t reply about pagerank. Instead, reply:
My favorite movie is [fill in the blank].
You see, this thread is just a test, and I am curious how many people won’t bother to read my actual post and the thread discussion, and will simply reply with:
yes, page rank is important.
or
no, page rank doesn’t matter.
or something else similar.So let’s see how this “test” goes…
The next two posts on the thread was exactly in the style the member “ItzGoTyme” provoked. “Page Rank means nothing”, said “Xfactorservers” in their 841 post in WHT, while the next on the line “Geekie246” repeated this and added “It’s a useless metric for websites to chase”.
An interesting (or useless… I must admit I can not understand) was posted by “Rainchild”. “Who cares? Posting is about signatures and back links. Back links that will make no difference to our PR which still gets tracked precisely because they know it is worthless. What a strange, strange world we live in.”
The next poster named “Vagassi” said that “page rank is not a matter and this is not even known by everyone”. “Hence instead of worrying about the Page Rank concentrating on the bringing the traffic to the site is more important”, said the WHT member and this I find something very important that many site owners do not understand.
“Moxie Maxwell” a WHt user from Pennsylvania added “My favorite movie is Shawshank Redemption” following the directions of “ItzGoTyme”. “I’ve not yet seen that one”, said “Slitheryimp” and added that his/her favorite movie was a Clockwork Orange. Those two were joined by another one who preferred the movie topic.
The next one “Coolvserver” got back into the Page Rank issue and asked a very reasonable question – “If page rank=nothing, what else is important in SEO?”. “Playing by the rules. Reading the script and link buiding of course”, responded “Rainchild”.
“SEO work overall working on a site from thinking to deliver end user”, said a WHT user named “Seomul”. Three silly posts followed and then “Kitt” said that for him, page rank is still important if anyone is competing for top-level keywords. “Rainchild” who have obviously was interested of the topics asked “Kitt” is he saying that it makes sense “investing” in a few high PR links because this will give anyone edge when they get to those single digits. “If not what are you saying?”, added the WHT member.
The next poster “Trevor Johnson” suggested that anyone shall try to get “do follow” links from high quality sites using their keywords as “anchor texts”. “With a solid backlink base, you will keep making money no matter what page rank your site has”, added Trevor.
“Page rank is pretty important, but the number of back links that you have is very important also. The more the backlinks you have, the higher your site will be exposed, and if your site is lets say on the front of google, you’ll definitely have a ton of people looking and clicking on your site. More exposure= more traffic + more sales= more money”, was the opion expressed by WHT user “Canes1717”.
“I think PR is the way Google sees your sites and it is still a nice way in weighting the value of a site”, said the next poster with a funny name “AirJordansHead”. Another user with a strange nick “This charming manc” said that (it is important to have) “relevant backlinks with good anchor text from pages that rank highly in search engines”. “There is a good connection between these pages and pages that hold reasonable page rank in google, however this connection is not 100% and you can find high pagernak pages that google does rank , and low page rank pages that rank very well”, added “This charming manc”.
“Chauhan” followed him with the comment that PR is “like prestige on internet”. “If you have at least 1 PR means your website has quality content”.
Here came the one who created the opening thread – “ItzGoTyme” – and said “Polar Express, by the way. Because of the time of year and because pagerank seems a bit like Santa. Some people believe and can hear the sleigh bell ring, others don’t believe and can’t. Me… I’m not sure if I hear the pagerank bells or not”.
Being frivolous is provoking. Otherwise a WHt user “Outlaw Web Master” probably wouldn’t say thing like “The only useful thing about pagerank is that it ryhmes with a few words including bank, tank, shank, wank or crank”… and to add “apart from that it’s useless”.
“Pagerank is not important to me anymore. Earning money & supporting my customers comes first. Ok… Its good to have advertising and with PageRank it will be bring however who is ever gonna benefit from it the most. SEO rules change and get updated everyday. Theres no way to have an accurate pagerank”, posted the user signed as “Dom”.
After him came a Malaysian guy nicknamed “Neutron” who judged on the thread “What an absolute waste of everyones time ItzGoTyme, Why not play in your own sandbox?”. Here came “Rainchild” to criticize the “Neutron”. Then “Shaeadams” said “with personalized SERPS now, which are tracked by Google’s history of web browsing cookies and account users with gmail, etc, it may be less and less important”.
“The opening thread was quite provocative and obviously sparked some interest. However i don’t it was a good idea to underestimate the intelligence of the those who participate to the community. You should probably did this in the other forums where members were ignoring”, added a forum member titled HostColor.
“Anyway, now on the topic. Page rank is obviously important… for Google. A high page rank means that the search engine defines any web page as important. Although I have seen some websites and pages, including some web hosts to achieve high ranking through spamming techniques, I shall say that in general the page rank is an objective tool that works. For example it is hard to get a high PR, more than 7 if you do not maintain a popular website of high quality. Having back-links on other high PR websites might help, but the content and quality of the pages are much more important”, said the user.