i think people talk at cross purposes sometimes. Perhaps this will help

PR (Page Rank) = a value 1-10 that is worked out from how many sites link to you and how many sites link to the sites that link to you.

Ranking = what position you appear in the SERPS (Search Engine Results Page).

Ranking on targetted keywords gets you sales undoubtedly. PR is a factor in getting good rankings YES! PR on its own will do nothing for you apart from making it easier to trade and sell links.

Anyone unsure about the process should google for Brad Callens "SEO Made Simple". It's a free e-book that should help to clear up a lot of confusions for some people.

Hello

I think both side make good point in the PR matters VS. PR doesn't matter battle.

to say that PR doesn't matter is very ignorant. You type in a popular keyword in to google and the site will have a high PR (6-10), if you have a pr of 2-4 it is basically impossible to get listed high for a popular keyword. (Example for the term "Web Hosting" the site has a PR of 8, a site with a PR of 4 would have no chance of ranking very high from google)

however just because you have a high PR (6-10), it does not guarentee your site will be listed high or can any traffic because PR (links) is just one of many things google looks into.

Instead of repeating myself I though I'd point to a link that Praveen posted yesterday in this thread.

The link is to an article about Search Engine Ranking Factors at SEOmoz. If you look at the list of contributers to the article you'll probably recognize most if not all of them as very well resepected members of the seo community. I'm going to go out on a limb and say they know a little more about all of this than most of us do. Not necessarily true I realize, but it's probably a safe bet.

If you take a look at the article count the number of times that page rank is mentioned as influencing search engine ranking.

Originally Posted by sports911

Hello

I think both side make good point in the PR matters VS. PR doesn't matter battle.

to say that PR doesn't matter is very ignorant. You type in a popular keyword in to google and the site will have a high PR (6-10), if you have a pr of 2-4 it is basically impossible to get listed high for a popular keyword. (Example for the term "Web Hosting" the site has a PR of 8, a site with a PR of 4 would have no chance of ranking very high from google)

That doesn't prove anything, how do you know it's the PR itself that's making them rank high. It's because they have a lot of links, relavence, content etc they rank high AND have a fairly high PR, NOT BECAUSE OF THE PR ITSELF!

And as vangogh has helped point out, PR has never been mentioned as an important factor. (by a reliable source that is, not some random article somewhere on the net)

if PR was solely important, i think that would be incredibly crap. this is because all PR is a value that's been passed on by links, no matter how relavent the link is. This means poor sites could rank high just for getting links, instead of being rewarded for good content.

PR is a side effect from a good linking structure. It's purpose if for analysis. PR is only important in the essence that it is a reflection of the amount/quality of incoming links. It's the liks themselves (among other factors) that gives the ranking.

Exactly Guerilla. When I say PR isn't important it's in the context that when people talk about it they seem to only consider the PR itself and nothing else. Just look at some of the threads here where people are looking for link exchanges and the only requirement is the PR. That would seem to imply that the links from any and all PR6 sites are going to be worth more in ranking than links from any and all PR5 sites. That's just not true.

Any importance PR has is only within the context of relevance. If two sites are equally relevant to yours then yes the higher PR site is probably a better link. If one site is relevant to your site and the other not then the relevant site is the better link regardless of the PR of either site.

yes vangogh I agree totally with what you say..... However - most of the products i sell are on extremely competitive keywords. The only way i have found to sustain rankings on these keywords is to harvest thousands of incoming links. My obsivations and research over the last couple of years goes to show that having links on pages with a high PR, your targetted keyword variation in body and title and low amount of outgoing external links give the best results. Of course you need on-page optimisation as well.

There is of course the method where you only trade with related sites which can apparently get your site "authority" status. I've tried this for less competitive words which worked ok but not as good as a large amount of links. (I dont have the patience for this method, perhaps i should harder but its sooo easy to just get loads of links and hit top of yahoo and msn and then concentrate on one way links to get good google ranking.

I know what you mean Guerilla. As we've all been going back and forth on this thread I've been spending more time looking at the whole issue. And like everything else with seo it's hard to ever find agreement from the experts.

I've seen forums where people think PR is everything though more where people are abandoning PR in favor of other things.

To me seo seems just as much art as science and the artist in me says not to get caught in the PR trap and focus more on relevance. Eaach new update to the Google algorithm seems to indicate Google is working to change things so that sites with good content that update often are the ones that will rank higher. Seems particlularly true after the Jagger update.

I think part of my sense is that I'd rather be doing what the search engines will be doing a year from now rather than what they've been doing and may currently still be doing. That was the approach I adopted when first learn to develop sites when I abandoned Dreamweaver and tables in favor of hand coding and css. I think that put me in a good position and I'm taking the same approach with seo.

I don't think anyone is arguing against backlinks. It just seems in what's the best way to get those links. One of the hard things is that so many factors can affect your ranking and those effects will sometimes take a few weeks or months to really show. You can update something on your site and see a change and assume your recent update is the cause while it actually be something you changed a few weeks back.

I think with the links from the higher PR sites it can also be that most of the links coming in to that site have had time to age and older links seem to count more than newer links. I still think the PR is the result of other things and not the cause for the rankings, but in most cases it probably will be ok to assume that the PR is a result of things that will also help the link to you.

I'll say though if what you're currently doing is working it only makes sense to continue.

In my opinion what will work a year from now will be 1 way links. As it stands its very hard to manipulate them and each update they seem to become more valuable. I see google improving their filters to detect triangle linking (I know they already penalise if you link from a sub domain from personal experience - i moved all outgoing links onto a sub domain of a popular site and watched my google listing dissapear, and incidently my yahoo rankings rise).

I've never been a big fan of the whole "make a good site and they will come", its all a bit too fields of dreams for my liking *movie reference*. I like formulas that produce guaranteed results.

I have come up with a system that should compensate for the iminent shift away from reciprocal linking but the amount of programming and marketing involved to get it off the ground means it may never arrive. I'm thinking of opening up the source code to speed development but dont want hundreds of clone sites springing up.

I agree about the one way links. What I meant by the 'make a good site' thing is that having one should get other sites to link naturally to yours. If I have good content it stands to reason that other sites will see my pages as useful and link to me.

I think Google has been working to prevent unnatural linking such as link farms and mass reciprical linking from having an influence in the rankings. This is also my thinking about PR. If the sole point of the link is the PR of the site and there's nothing relevant between the sites I think the link isn't going to carry much or any weight.

I still think you need to work to get links, but I also think Google is getting better and better and finding the links that are there only for the purpose of search rankings. I think Google is wanting to see links that have another purpose beyond the search ranking. I can't say how successful they have been or will be, but it seems with each update they are getting closer to this goal.

I think that the formulas are probably still working, but I'm not so sure they will be in the future. Maybe then it will just be new formulas that will be working.

All true... With my new ventures i am trying to create them around free services and try to market virally.

My problem comes making clients understand this and pay for the extra development they need done to their site to make it work like this. Its not easy and i guess if google has their way it never will be.

I know what you mean about making clients understand. I've designed sites for people who then blamed me because they weren't getting traffic even though they never paid me or asked me to do any of that kind of work.

I also see so many people who seem to think any webmaster can just make a couple of minor changes to a site and get it to #1. I guess that would be true if no other site was working on seo.

And then how many people are there who won't let you implement your suggestions for optimizing the page and then wonder why things didn't work.

Yeah, i tend to find that if i explain things too well they think they'll try to save money and do it themselves and if you dont explain it enough then you get awkward clients who think they are being ripped off.

Last week a woman called me and wanted a qote for a site, spent nearly an hour going through a detailed spec and explaining everything thoroughly then she goes and finishes with "Oh, and by the way, ill only go with you in you can guarantee i am number 1 or 2 for the keywords ........ in google". Put me in an awkward situation, I know for a fact theres hundreds of companies out there that will take her money and hide behind their terms and conditions but im not like that. cut a long story short i spent absolutely ages going through how everything worked and loads of marketing and finally realised that the client would be more hassle than they were worth and refused to do the work.

Bottom line ive now reduced the amount of seo clients i take on, only picking people that will embrace the process or are willing to take advice. I like a stress free life

I could share similar stories. The sad thing is I can guarantee people I'll get them listed #1 or #2. I just won't guarantee which keywords I can do that for.

I look at marketing online in a similar way to offline marketing. Both need to be continual efforts if you want them to work. It's not about making a few changes here and there and get to #1 and stop.

For some reason people seem to think marketing online shouldn't cost anything. I don't really want to take on clients for seo who don't understand what it takes to get down or at least are open to the process either.

The best I can come up with is to write articles and blog about it on my site in the hopes that some people will see what the work involves.

good idea.

It may not bring in revenue, but it sure brings in hits.

The higher you are in google the more hits you get. Depending on what you're using to bring in revenue though, it may make no difference to that.

However, if you're large scale, page rank will automatically increase as your buisness does good... remember, page rank is supposed to rank where you're at, not change your rank.

...*groan*................. here we go again

Yes I am agree with your post that PR is not very important for traffic view. But it is a Google's measure of the importance of that page.

But PR is affect is Google Indexing If you website PR is higher your website index weekly bases of daily bases depend on how you update it.

Second one is You can gain PR form eny related website which have high PR then You.

So, PR only show you a how qulity back link you have,.

Originally Posted by Guerrilla

...*groan*................. here we go again

LOL.....HASN'T ANYONE READ THE LAST 2 PAGES???!!