How many supposed "experts", crackpots, pagerank "addicts" or just plain unknowledgable folks do I see on this site every day? (sorry to groups all them together but never mind about that...) The answer would be too many if it was just one, never mind the 10 or 15 I see most days in the Relevant Link Exchange forum.

Well here's what we've been waiting for - concrete proof that PR is a waste of time. I've worked on a local business directory for my local town which currently has no PageRank at all. If you do a Google search for "Presteigne", you clearly find the site on the second page - second page? What?! With no PageRank? Yes!

The site actually outranks numerous PR1 sites, and even 2 PR4 sites. I have (regrettably?) taken part in a link exchange from another local community site, but I felt this would benefit the visitors to both sites.

Admittedly, the keyword "Presteigne" isn't very competitive, the town being a small sleepy one in a rural area of the country, but it does prove that PR is worthless and stupid!

More amazingly, I haven't actually added any keywords or a description to the site, yet it's still managed to rank where it has!

The meta keywords don't help you with anything, so don't bother with them ... and the meta description doesn't affect where you rank; it's there to entice people to click you instead of the guy above/below you.

Now, can you do the same thing for me? I'd love to make it to page 2 when someone searches for Seattle.

Congrats - hopefully this brings you traffic.

if you target most competitive keywords then you can understand power of page rank.

PageRank is only 1 of 100+ methods that Google uses to rank it's searches, so PageRank isn't such a "powerful" thing, Davin.

Originally Posted by davin

if you target most competitive keywords then you can understand power of page rank.

PageRank is not that important. Like Daniel said it is only one of the hundreds of methods Google use to ranks its results. Successful websites have high PR because people want to link to them, they don't go round chasing links to boost their PR.

Originally Posted by whym

I have (regrettably?) taken part in a link exchange from another local community site, but I felt this would benefit the visitors to both sites.

I don't think that's regrattable (well, depending on the quality of the other site), and you're right in thinking this kind of exchange would benefit visitors of both sites.

Thanks - the other site is about an annual festival that takes part in the town, so I don't think it's too much of a worry

IMO getting more targetted traffic is more important than investing on PR.

Originally Posted by MrCat

IMO getting more targetted traffic is more important than investing on PR.

Exactly, I wish some of the "SEO experts" from India (sorry to generalise, but there seem t be a lot of them in the relevant link exchange forum at the moment) and similar places who think they know all about Google would realise that, rather than aiming for stupid pagerank goals.

Ultimately, SEO is all about getting quality traffic, not useless pagerank

Guys...

The PageRank you see in the Google toolbar can take up to 6 months to "refresh." The PageRank also is also used to determine the crawl rate of your website not just where it might appear in the rankings. Use it as a general reference and a way to find good sites to try and get link-backs from.

Lastly the description meta tag WILL be used in determining the relevancy in your site AND as a way of enticing a click-through.

Where did you hear about PR and crawl rates?

Originally Posted by imagn

Guys...

The PageRank you see in the Google toolbar can take up to 6 months to "refresh." The PageRank also is also used to determine the crawl rate of your website not just where it might appear in the rankings. Use it as a general reference and a way to find good sites to try and get link-backs from.

Lastly the description meta tag WILL be used in determining the relevancy in your site AND as a way of enticing a click-through.

PageRank is and will probably continue to be useless. You get links for traffic, not for "glorious pagerank". Have you learnt nothing from this thread? PageRank doesn't really matter that much and link exchanges should be avoided unless they are fully relevant and will benefit both sites mutually. The introduction paragraph on the site is fine for a description and the site seems to be doing fine now, so maybe you should rethink things a little?

I think Google PR will die soon.

Originally Posted by whym

The site actually outranks numerous PR1 sites, and even 2 PR4 sites. I have (regrettably?) taken part in a link exchange from another local community site, but I felt this would benefit the visitors to both sites.

One recip link isn't going to hurt anyone..unless its to a p o r n site or a bad neighborhood site. Recip links are discouraged when they are used to manipulate rank. Using them for traffic is just fine. I would limit the amount of these type of links that you have to less than 10% of your backlinks.

Originally Posted by whym

More amazingly, I haven't actually added any keywords or a description to the site, yet it's still managed to rank where it has!

I really think you should write a relevant description for your page. The reasons above are valid ones, and your description tag was rated 2.0/5 important by the contributors to the Search Search Engine Ranking Factors V2 .. I think a very relevant aspect to the description tag is the fact that it is another way to prevent duplicate pages.

--Melanie

Originally Posted by babychicken4u2

One recip link isn't going to hurt anyone..unless its to a p o r n site or a bad neighborhood site.

I doubt that a p0rn site would suffer after getting one reciprocal link with another p0rn site. P0rn sites appear in the SERPs no problem, so I don't think a moderate amount of reciprocal linking (not scheming to manipulate rank) among them would be penalised.

I think you're right about bad neighbourhoods though.

Originally Posted by gringo

I doubt that a p0rn site would suffer after getting one reciprocal link with another p0rn site. P0rn sites appear in the SERPs no problem, so I don't think a moderate amount of reciprocal linking (not scheming to manipulate rank) among them would be penalised.

I think you're right about bad neighbourhoods though.

I was kinda referring to regular sites, but you are exactly right a p o r n site linking to another would be just like the poster...relevant and for traffic.

--Melanie