Remember the days when Google Page Rank meant everything? Oh no...hold the boat! You still think it means something?
The truth of the matter is it does not mean anything. However like anything else in the world, when we have something we've grown to think is important and a reliable gauge of how great we are, we don't want to let go of it for fear of losing that greatness.
This is especially the case with respect to many self proclaimed "SEO Specialists". Search engine optimization professionals are a dime a dozen yet only a few fall in to the upper echelon of true, qualified and talented SEOs. In SEO, "you get what you pay for" is a double edged sword. In one sense it is absolutely true, furthermore, qualifying someone based on their rates of service can be a grave mistake. Not all SEOs operate at the same level.
When considering hiring an SEO agency you first need to get an idea of how well they are doing for themselves. Establish their target market and judge them on how well they've done for themselves in this regard. Then look at references. Linkedin is a great place for finding qualified SEO agents/agencies. It is definitely to your advantage to hire within your geographical location if possible and verify that the potential candidate has a firm grasp on the target market you are after. This can be broad but what I am saying is "geo target" your SEO.
As a professional SEO myself, the vast majority of my time is spent acquiring backlinks for my clients by either link baiting via articles and other content, or by cherry picking links by negotiating with other webmasters. This exposes me to 1-on-1 contact with many webmasters and even occasionally, other SEOs.
Often I come across webmasters that believe they have the knowledge to call themselves professional SEOs however upon opening their mouths, you become acutely aware that they are entry level at best.
One of the most frequent responses I get is this:
We are sorry but at this time we are not interested in placing a link of any kind because our site is a PR4 and yours is a PR1.
This is my favorite example because not only is it so frequent but ignorant also. I mean ignorant in its politest form by the way.
Google said it themselves, "PR is meaningless." If page rank is meaningless then what is meaningful?
SERPs (search engine result pages)
Essentially this is the master gauge of how well your site is doing. Any astute SEO will take the page that ranks best in the SERPs over PR any day. If you are a distributor of a product but no one knows where you are or even heard of you, how do you expect to shift product? This is precisely the case when it comes to PR compared to SERPs. You can have a PR4 site however that site is nowhere to be found in the search pages then what? You guessed it. No one will know you even exist. Again we reflect back to my first statement of letting go of something that we think gauges our greatness.
In order to provide some evidence to support these claims I will present you with not only quotes from Google themselves but also provide PR1 and PR0 sites that appear on Google's coveted Page #1 above PR4 and even PR5 sites.
We've been telling people for a long time that they shouldn't focus on PageRank so much; many site owners seem to think it's the most important metric for them to track, which is simply not true. We removed it because we felt it was silly to tell people not to think about it, but then to show them the data, implying that they should look at it. - Susan Moskwa, Google Inc.
PR1 - Google #2 -By now you may remember my name is Don Halbert. I am a professional online marketer and SEO with a vast array of previous accomplishments to attest to my rightfully earned title. Approximately five short months ago I decided to change my personal site from an Adobe Flash (notoriously nasty for SEO) site to a Wordpress blog. I had a goal I was going after and that was to again, take a site without keywords in the URL and rank it high in the SERPs for my targeted keyword phrase of "Costa Rica Marketing".
Now in a relatively short period of time, I managed to rank a non-related URL to the #2 position in Google for this phrase. Soon enough the #1 position will be mine!
PR3 - Google #2 & Yahoo! #1 - Costa Rica property. Another highly competitive keyword phrase that many top notch SEOs won't even touch due to the stiff competitiveness alone, I am ranking #2 out of 103,000,000 competitors. SEO for real estate sites is difficult to find because many of the best simply do not have the time and chances are, the client won't have the funds required to achieve ranking at this level.
PR0 - Google #9 - CRNS only started about a month ago and is a PR0, however it is currently ranking in the #9 position on page #1 of Google for the highly competitive keyword phrase "Costa Rica news". This is expected to substantial increase as time goes on.
As you can see above, Google themselves say page rank (PR) has no relevance whatsoever and on top of that I've also provided you with some prime examples of what low PR sites can accomplish where it matters most...in the SERPs.
Next time someone tries to 'snub' you off based purely on your page rank; don't waste your time with them. Additionally do not hire an SEO that grants high value towards PR for clearly they lack the knowledge of what any "real" SEO would already know.
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