Google Page Rank?

[applesofgold]

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?

[BenRush]

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

[RyanKent]

**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.

[mediabase]

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.

[applesofgold]

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.

[applesofgold]

Hi, Ben, what's sweet FA?

[applesofgold]

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.

[RyanKent]

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.

[applesofgold]

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.