Google Page Rank?
-
We have had a quality website for 12 years now, and it seems no matter how many more links we get and how much new content we add daily, we have stayed at PR3 for the past 10 years or so.
Our SEOMoz domain authority is 52. We have over 950,000 pages linking to us from 829 unique root domains.
Is this in line with PR3 or should we be approaching PR4 soon?
We do daily blog posts with all unique, fresh quality content that has not been published elsewhere. We try to do everything with 'white hat' methods, and we are constantly trying to provide genuine content and high quality products, and customer service.
How can we improve our PR and how important is PR today?
-
That's a good reminder: that PR is really only a measure of backlinks. I just wonder how many backlinks is the threshold to get PR4? I supposed to can study some PR4 sites and see if I find a pattern there.
894 unique domains linking to me I suppose is qualifying me for a PR3? Almost 1 million links from those domains combined. I'm not sure how I have almost 1 million links from 894 domains. It's possible someone is linking to me from half a million pages somewhere. I'll have to study it more.
But yes, you are right also that my main focus is profit, then sales, then traffic and conversions. It's just that having high PR will bring me more traffic which will bring me more sales, so I'm trying to increase this.
I didn't realize that PR is 1 out of 200 metrics involved. I thought it was more like 1 of 4 or something.
Thanks for the advice.
-
Two things to understand:
1. PR is a page-level metric. Most tools which share PR have no idea what the true PR is for a given page except for your site's home page. If your site's home page is PR 5 then they will often use a formula to guess the PR of other pages within your site. Pages 1 click away from your home page would be calculated as PR 4, 2 clicks away would be PR 3, etc. These are pure guesses and may not have any relation with the page's true PR.
2. The only way to improve your PR is by earning links. Period. How many pages your site has is irrelevant. The quality of your content is irrelevant. You can debate these points. For example, quality content is important to help earn quality links so in that sense it is important, but PR is purely a measure of incoming links. Some SEOs could get technical and share how the number of pages in your site can impact PR based on your internal links, but that really takes the conversation into a deeper mathematical discussion which is not going to help you.
If you provide the best website in the world but have no links to it, your PR will be 1. If another webmaster owns a crappy website but has somehow managed to earn quality links pointing to their home page, they can relatively easily show a PR of 4.
With the above understood, you should forget about PR. You have likely read this advice numerous times and have chosen to ignore it. PR is one of over 200 metrics involved in determining your rankings. What you really care about is your profit. Beyond that, you care about sales. Stepping further back, you care about traffic and conversion rates. These metrics should be your focus, not PR.
-
I'll definitely look into the links you provided. Thanks.
I think the main thing I'm wondering is based on the # of links we have, the constant daily unique content, at what point should we expect to reach PR4?
It would be nice to have some quantifiable number of unique root domains or some other way to measure how 'close' we are. But I understand that there probably is not. I was just wondering what everyone else thought. For all I know, we might be right around the corner for it at the next major update. Hoping so.
Thanks.
-
Hi, Ben, what's sweet FA?
-
Hi, Ryan, that all makes sense. We do have a quality site and with God's help, we have many first page placements for our major keywords. So we are doing many things right and our brand is continuing to grow. It's just the PR3 has been static for about a decade despite continued growth in our site. We have even grown from 5,000 pages to about 18,000 pages over the last 4-5 years. But still remain a PR3. So I am just wondering ... would love to see our site go to PR4.
I keep hearing that content is king, so we are providing great content that has been unpublished elsewhere along with everything else.
-
Hi Applesofgold,According to google page rank is numbered from 0 to 10.Google had given the particular rank to a page & these page rank is given by google according to his algorithm.
Page rank really matters for a website even after several years of doing SEO.
For more information please refer to the Science of Ranking
I hope that your query had been solved.
-
**We have over 950,000 pages linking to us from 829 unique root domains. **
When we talk about PR, the first thing to understand is you only have visibility to "toolbar PR". Google internally updates PR on a very regularly (likely daily) basis. Externally there is an update to "toolbar PR" 3 or 4 times each year. No matter what changes are made, you will only see the results once every few months.
How can we improve our PR and how important is PR today?
You improve PR by earning quality links. PR is calculated on an algorithmic scale which means the higher you go, the harder it is to move higher.
I would suggest focusing on the number of unique root domains and not the number of links. You can obtain a single footer link from a forum site with a million pages and then show a million linking pages. Despite having a million linking pages, the PR value would likely be less then a single link in content from a quality web page.
PR is very important, but keep in mind it is a piece of the puzzle. My recommendation is to first improve your site itself to ensure it incorporates both SEO and HTML best practices. Next, take steps to improve your conversion rate and instill trust in your site. Then focus on providing top quality content. Once those steps are complete, then focus on earning links and promoting your site via social networks.
-
Well bear in mind that (1) PageRank basically means sweet FA, and (2) Google don't update the outside worlds view of PageRank on a particularly frequent basis.
I just wouldn't worry about what your PageRank is doing, I'd keep my eye on traffic and conversions from search and hope they're pointing up.
Ben
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
About porn sites and ranking
Hello, I'm thinking to extend my website into porn. At the moment there is no pornography on it, although we do talk about sex related topics and products (from dating to tutorials, to toys etc.) Would it be dangerous to keep the porn section on the same domain as the rest? Would this negatively affect my non-porn content as Googlebot would "flag" my website as being pornographic (although only a few pages would be)? Or simply Googlebot would leave the current non-porn pages ranking as they are now, just fine, and plus it would rank the porn pages if they "deserve" to? I hope my question is clear. I don't want to create a subdomain.
Algorithm Updates | | fabx0 -
Key webpage fluctuating between page 2 and page 6 of Google SERP
Hi, We have found that one of our key webpages has been fluctuating between page 2 and page 6 of Google SERP for around 2 weeks. Some days it will be on page 6 in the morning and then page 2 in the afternoon. We have recently updated some copy on the page and wondered if this could be the cause. Has anyone else experienced this? If so how long was it before the page settled? https://www.mrisoftware.com/uk/products/property-management-software/ Thanks.
Algorithm Updates | | nfrank0 -
Have AMP pages on Chrome disappeared?
Hi, We amplified our site the other day and Google was quick to find our AMP pages. Today, we can´t seem to find any AMP pages on Chrome and it looks like we can´t find any other pages from sites like Wapo and so forth. They´re still visible on Safari. We are searching from Iceland. Is anyone experiencing this and if so, could you please share a link to the news? Thanks and have a nice day!
Algorithm Updates | | guidetoiceland0 -
Is user engagement a ranking signal?
Read something about user engagement might be a signal that Google uses, along with links and on-site optimisation, to decide if a search result goes up or down. What should I believe and what are the developments in this field?
Algorithm Updates | | MozzieJr0 -
Page rank of 2 with zero SEO and a 2 month old domain?
Hello, I helped work on a website for a friend. We used wordpress, a theme from elegant themes and wrote the content over 4 days. Zero back links, no seo, etc. Well, a little on page optimization and that's about it. Oh, we did ONE back link from a review site. The domain was brand new; never registered before. About a week after it started getting indexed, it jump from no page rank to a page rank of 1. About a week later, it jumped to a page rank of 2. Again, zero seo (aside from above stated). The site is: trade lines review dot com A page rank of 2 is nothing to write home about, but given the circumstances, how is this even possible? Thanks you!
Algorithm Updates | | Friedman0 -
Does anyone know if Google ranks a responsive site, or a specific mobile site higher than each other?
I have heard that Google favors specific .m sites overs responsive designs in it's rankings. Does anyone know if this is true? And, if there is any supporting information. I have been in contact with our account team at Google but haven't had a response on this as yet. I appreciate any help on this. Cheers!
Algorithm Updates | | Fasthosts0 -
Has Google problems in indexing pages that use <base href=""> the last days?
Since a couple of days I have the problem, that Google Webmaster tools are showing a lot more 404 Errors than normal. If I go thru the list I find very strange URLs that look like two paths put together. For example: http://www.domain.de/languages/languageschools/havanna/languages/languageschools/london/london.htm If I check on which page Google found that path it is showing me the following URL: http://www.domain.de/languages/languageschools/havanna/spanishcourse.htm If I check the source code of the Page for the Link leading to the London Page it looks like the following: [...](languages/languageschools/london/london.htm) So to me it looks like Google is ignoring the <base href="..."> and putting the path together as following: Part 1) http://www.domain.de/laguages/languageschools/havanna/ instead of base href Part 2) languages/languageschools/london/london.htm Result is the wrong path! http://www.domain.de/languages/languageschools/havanna/languages/languageschools/london/london.htm I know finding a solution is not difficult, I can use absolute paths instead of relative ones. But: - Does anyone make the same experience? - Do you know other reasons which could cause such a problem? P.s.: I am quite sure that the CMS (Typo3) is not generating these paths randomly. I would like to be sure before we change the CMS's Settings to absolute paths!
Algorithm Updates | | SimCaffe0 -
Bounce rate and rankings
I have believed for years that a high bounce rate (from search) could lower your rankings over time. Makes sense; if users bounce right back to search after looking at your page Google should think that page wasn't very useful and will push your down the SERPs. But, how do they determine this? If a user comes back after 30 seconds that's a bounce? Or is my premise incorrect and Google does not take bounce into account? Erin
Algorithm Updates | | ErinTM0