| Ignore PageRank! |
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 published in LED Digest 2258: Rankings Up, Sales Down From: Shari Thurow Subject: Ignore PageRank! > ... why [has] one of my sites retained a Google PR 6 while > falling from #4 to page 40 for an important search term? - Dan Rosenfield, LED 2257 First, and I have to say this, quit using a number between 1 and 10 to determine your site's link popularity. PageRank is not a number between 1 and 10. And quit using that friggin' toolbar. In fact, remove it if you see that you've become addicted to looking at that number. The toolbar has never been accurate, and I doubt it ever will be. I have seen sites with PR0 make millions of dollars in sales, and I've seen sites with PR9 make nothing. It's a bogus number. Quit relying on it. Quit asking questions about it. Just ignore it. Okay, end of rant. All search engine positions fluctuate. It does not matter that a site has retained top 30 positions for over 5 years. It does not matter if your site has a top 10 position and suddenly drops to position 150. All search engine positions fluctuate. Once people accept that simple fact? Life gets easier. Positions fluctuate for a variety of reasons. The main one is that algorithms change. Search engines also hiccup (for lack of a better term). A Web site owner might have done nothing to the site, but the search engine might hiccup. Panicking is not a good idea. Leave the site alone. Positions fluctuate because new sites / pages are added to the Web all of the time, and pages (and the corresponding URLs) no longer exist. Link development is dynamic, too. One good news story can really change the linkage properties of a URL. What I care about is what I see in my Web analytics (site statistics) software. If I see that my or a client's site gets consistent, qualified search engine traffic over time, and through usability testing, A/B testing, multivariate testing, etc. the pages are converting? That's what I want. A search engine "hiccup" is just a glitch. If a site is missing from top search engine results for an important term, don't be afraid to use PPC advertising. It's fast, and you can always turn it off when you don't need it anymore. I also look at search results and turn in any search engine spam. I see if other sites have better interfaces (ie usability) than my site(s), and I also look for high-quality link development opportunities. I usually find some good PR opportunities that way. And I do all of this without giving a hoot about a number between 1 and 10. My 2 cents. Sincerely, Shari Thurow, Webmaster/Marketing Director Grantastic Designs, Inc. www.grantasticdesigns.com Comments (1)
some guy
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| I guess PageRank is bunk and it's the Alexa rank you want to pay attention to! |
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