What is important for page rank?
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I have heard quality is the most important factor for page rank but after the 7 Nov 11 PR update I am no longer a believer. The PR on my home page dropped from 4 to 3 and the rest of my inside pages remained the same even though I have added a significant amount of content since the previous update and kept it fresh. Any thoughts on this most recent PR update?
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Keep in mind that "quality" is a difficult term at best, and even if you could pin down a definition of quality, Google still has to translate that (imperfectly) into code. There are a lot of factors that go into determining the value of a link. Rand had a good post on the subject here:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/10-illustrations-on-search-engines-valuation-of-links
Many of these aren't even quality issues, per se. For example, if you have a blog comment on a high PR page, but you're 1 of 300 comments, that links isn't going to count much. You could argue that's a quality issue, but it's also just simple math - the PR of that page just got split 300+ ways. Even if every single comment was relevant and topically appropriate, it wouldn't count much.
There's also TrustRank (we simulate it with mozTrust), the recent Panda factors, and other quality variables - they all tackle a different piece of the puzzle. Then, you've got user factors, like bounce rate, that are probably starting to come into play. So, I don't think you can just look at it as Quality vs. PR - there's a lot more in play.
Edit: Sorry, I was reading this as "link quality", not the quality of the site itself. There's no either/or - both content factors (including on-page factors like good Title tags) and link factors matter, along with social factors these days. The best approach is going to tackle all fronts.
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There are different viewpoints on outbound links. Reliance on link exchange is outdated, and Google is known to frown on anything resembling a link farm. However, I have seen people cite Matt Cutts (sorry, don't have any links to back this up) as saying it is beneficial to have some outbound links to reputable sites.
To be honest I recommend you focus on site performance rather than PR - are you ranking/getting traffic/converting? PR may slightly increase the likelihood of you ranking but it doesn't guarantee it and it doesn't put money in the bank. I recommend this Whiteboard Friday from August to help you put PR into perspective http://www.seomoz.org/blog/what-is-googles-pagerank-good-for-whiteboard-friday
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I have noticed that some of the sites that I link to also lost some PR so perhaps this is why. I have added links since the last update but most of them had good page and domain authority with average PR. I did also remove outbound links from my home page to authoritative sites on the advice of someone. Perhaps I should add these back? The only other reason I have been given is that google is penalizing sites that have reciprocal links with others sites (just a few) from my home page. Does this make sense?
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PR is not as important as keyword ranking and traffic.
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PR is related to your link profile rather than being a direct measurement of site quality (although better site quality makes it easier to get good links). It sounds as though you have either lost links or some of your links have reduced in value (either by linking domains losing links themselves or by their outgoing links being devalued because the domain has been identified as spammy). Try this for an explanation of Page Rank http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank
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