All over the net - this debate rages on. While officially, Google acknowledges that higher Page Rank of pages means higher importance (Google Tech), there are many webmasters and self-styled SEO experts who vehemently argue that PR is just a number on the Google toolbar for FUN! They say that Google is not serious about Page Rank.

Now I think PR is one of the most important factor that determines Google SERPs. But there are some very important dynamics to it.

1. It is not the toolbar PR of the said site that matters for SERPs. Matter of fact, it has been acknowledged that, Google Page Rank is more than the greens one sees on the toolbar ( PR updates almost daily with newly indexed links that we don’t see) - Google SERPs also changes according to new contents and new invisible PR.

Example- suppose a PR2 site has put up a highly resourceful and valuable article/source - and it received lots of organic links from high Page Rank sites (pages). Its toolbar PR will remain the same - but the invisible PR that Google updates regularly will push SERPs of the site higher with all those high PR inbound links.

Hence, although the toolbar PR of the site is only 2, its actual PR has changed and gone higher than many who ranked ahead of it previously. So it is ranking higher now.

Another important point to prove the importance of the effect of PR on SERPs is a bit dangerous. Just buy one PR8 inbound link ( homepage sitewide) - with your choosen anchor text and kep it for around 2 months. you will not only storm SERPs for that keyword, but most of your ontents will also start ranking as soon as within 48 hrs. This will last untill Google discovers that you are manipulating SERPs with paid links and penalize you.

But Page Rank is not everything that will put your site on top of SERPs. One has to have high quality unique contents in order to make SE bots fall in love with your site and also attract organic links (linkbaits).

It is also important that the site linking to you is trusted ( old and good PR). According to many experienced SEO professionals, a PR1 link from a very old site carries more linksjuice than higher PR link from a new site. It is said that pages carry the weight of the homepage.

There are many factors that influence SERPs and Page rank is one of the most important of them.

Disclaimer:- Views expressed on this article are purely my own.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 22nd, 2007 at 9:00 am and is filed under SEO Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.