Is PageRank Useless in Seach Engine Optimisation? - October 31, 2006

There has been a lot of bad press surrounding PageRank recently stating that it doesnt count for anything or help sites’ listings in any way. This is a complete turnaround from a few years ago, when many people viewed PageRank as the be all and end all. Nowadays, people spend a lot more attention to the number of backlinks than the PR, but neither of these give the full picture. Not all links are equal, as some give more benefit than others.

PageRank is useful as it gives a “score” of the total benefit of these links, which can be seen at a glance. Of course, this is flawed because it does not take relevancy or anchor text into account. The best way to analyze a site’s inbound link strength is to visit all pages linking to it and look at the anchor text, strength and relevancy of that site. Unfortunately, this is hopelessly time consuming.

Although PageRank does nothing directly, it is a fairly good indicator for a site’s strength. There is a definite correlation between sites’ PageRank and their listings in Google, and it still has its place in search engine optimisation.

Dave Stewart
SEO Programmer

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