For a long time there has been an over emphasis on the supposed “must have” of page rank. And supposed “expectations” of achieving phenomenal page rank ~ “next month, I can feel it.” Sorry to be bummer girl here, but The Force won’t help you with page rank either. That’s because, quite frankly, it’s not that important as it’s been made out to be.

Blasphemous statement, I can see the reactions now. Relax. I’ll explain in common sense terms. If you miss those, you really DO need to get out more.

Page rank became the be-all, know-all basic requirement of SEO professionals to prove their worth and for websites to tout their newfound rank above their competitors and newbies alike. Most likely because it was the latest and greatest new toy to play with out of Google Land, and people weren’t exactly sure where it stood in the grand scheme of things or what it’s power was as far as website visibility with regards to the search engines.

Here’s the deal with page rank ~ it’s got nothing at all to do with search engine positioning, which IS how people find your website on any given search engine. Page rank, on the other hand, doesn’t even register on the radar when people are looking for you.

Case in point:

When was the last time you as a shopper searched for a product or service based up page rank?

“Hmm…… let’s see, let me search for a personal trainer with a page rank of 3 or 4.”

I don’t think so.

The average shopper on the Internet who searches for any product or service is neither knowledgeable of nor do they care about page rank, if they even have a knowledge of page rank to begin with, because page rank has zero relevance to them in terms of what they are looking for. Which is to purchase a product or service ~ shop ~ spend money ~ hopefully on YOUR website.

Case in point number two:

Go ahead and check out the top 10 ~ 20 ~ 30 for any given keyword or keyphrase. 90-95% of those in the top 10 ~ 20 ~ 30 do have what’s considered to be great or good page rank. In fact, most of those sites have rather low page rank.

So, what does that tell you?

Page rank is simply an indicator of how well you are doing in Google Land as far as relevant inbound and outbound links, according to the algorithm in use at the time. It’s basically a “how am I doing” thing as far as how many relevant other sites are you linked into. That’s it.

And while quality inbound and outbound links are to be appreciated, check your website traffic stats. Most of your website traffic comes directly from folks inputting keywords or keyphrases into search engines, social shopping sites, or social networking sites and the like. Some of your traffic may come from forum participation where either a post you made piqued someone’s interest, or they got curious about the links in your forum signature. The rest in the lower 50% half may indeed come from links but the traffic that comes from the top 50% of the stats is what you are interested in. Generally that’s your search engine saturation. When that grows, that’s good.

So, for the good of your business and your online presence, what should you be concentrating on so people can find you? (Pop Quiz time)

A) Page Rank

OR

B) Tweaking your website page content and meta tags with keywords relevant to your website products and / or services?

You tell me.

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New Jersey Web Design by Jewelry Collectibles Design, conveniently located in Hackensack, Bergen County New Jersey, is owned and operated by Maureen McCullough. In business since 2000 as a freelance professional and now also an eBay Stores Certified Designer. Our clients receive professional, creative designs put together outside of the typical corporate genre, fully carrying your small business identity through your entire venue ~ website, blog, forum, links management, eBay store and other online venues. Happy to be a woman owned small business.