Thinking that Pagerank has anything to do with a sites actual SERP (Search Engine Result Page) position is a common misconception, which is being kept alive by webmasters who sell links. Pagerank we can see in toolbars or with rank checkers is not actually the current pagerank a site has. Google will only update the visible Pagerank 3 or 4 times a year.
It’s pretty safe to assume that most sites you visit, which have a homepage that shows a high pagerank (6 and over) are trusted or even authoritative sites according to Google. I said “most”, because the pagerank metric is pretty easy to manipulate. Lots of high pagerank sites sell links, so that whichever site buys a link will eventually get some of that pagerank. This is because every time a site links to another site, a little bit of pagerank flows into the linked-to site.
Pagerank was cleverly named after Google co-founder and current CEO, Larry Page. And did you know that pagerank is actually measured per page, and not per site? You can have a site with a homepage that shows pagerank 3, but you can have inner pages, that show a higher pagerank. These are most likely the more popular pages on your site, which attracted many links.
Pagerank gives an indication of how trusted your site is in the eyes of Google, but it has relatively very little correlation with where your site shows up on a Google search. Pagerank is not a ranking signal, it’s a byproduct from the total sum of all ranking signals Google uses (200+ seems to be a popular number on most SEOs sites) to decide which sites should show up higher in the SERPs than other. You can test this for yourself. Just do a search on Google for a random keyword combination, and check all ten results to see which one has the highest pagerank. Chances are likely that the top result won’t be the one with the highest pagerank.
If you’re in the link selling business, pagerank is important. If you’re in the other 99% of website owners, don’t worry about it too much. Focus on relevancy and authenticity.
If you have any SEO questions, feel free to email me or call me at 1300 783 301.
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