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
-
Very strange, inconsistent and unpredictable Google ranking
I have been searching through these forums and haven't come across someone that faces the same issue I am. The folks on the Google forums are certain this is an algorithm issue, but I just can't see the logic in that because this appears to be an issue fairly unique to me. I'll take you through what I've gone through. Sorry for it being long. Website URL: https://fenixbazaar.com 1. In early February, I made the switch to https with some small hiccups. Overall however the move was smooth, had redirects all in place, sitemap, indexing was all fine. 2. One night, my organic traffic dropped by almost 100%. All of my top-ranking articles completely disappeared from rank. Top keyword searches were no longer yielding my best performing articles on the front page of results, nor on the last page of results. My pages were still being indexed, but keyword searches weren't delivering my pages in results. I went from 70-100 active users to 0. 3. The next morning, everything was fine. Traffic back up. Top keywords yielding results for my site on the front page. All was back to normal. Traffic shot up. Only problem was the same issue happened that night, and again for the next three nights. Up and down. 4. I had a developer and SEO guy look into my backend to make sure everything was okay. He said there were some redirection issues but nothing that would cause such a significant drop. No errors in Search Console. No warnings. 5. Eventually, the issue stopped and my traffic improved back to where it was. Then everything went great: the site was accepted into Google News, I installed AMP pages perfectly and my traffic boomed for almost 2 weeks. 6. At this point numerous issues with my host provider, price increases, and incredibly outdated cpanel forced me to change hosts. I did without any issues, although I lost a number of articles albeit low-traffic ones in the move. These now deliver 404s and are no longer indexed in the sitemap. 7. After the move there were a number of AMP errors, which I resolved and now I sit at 0 errors. Perfect...or so it seems. 8. Last week I applied for hsts preload and am awaiting submission. My site was in working order and appeared set to get submitted. I applied after I changed hosts. 9. The past 5 days or so has seen good traffic, fantastic traffic to my AMP pages, great Google News tracking, linking from high-authority sites. Good performance all round. 10. I wake up this morning to find 0 active people on my site. I do a Google search and notice my site isn't even the first result whenever I do an actual search for my name. The site doesn't even rank for its own name! My site is still indexed but search results do not yield results for my actual sites. Check Search Console and realised the sitemap had been "processed" yesterday with most pages indexed, which is weird because it was submitted and processed about a week earlier. I resubmitted the sitemap and it appears to have been processed and approved immediately. No changes to search results. 11. All top-ranking content that previously placed in carousal or "Top Stories" in Google News have gone. Top-ranking keywords no longer bring back results with my site: I went through the top 10 ranking keywords for my site, my pages don't appear anywhere in the results, going as far back as page 20 (last page). The pages are still indexed when I check, but simply don't appear in search results. It's happening all over again! Is this an issue any of you have heard of before? Where a site is still being indexed, but has been completely removed from search results, only to return within a few hours? Up and down? I suspect it may be a technical issue, first with the move to https, and now with changing hosts. The fact the sitemap says processed yesterday, suggests maybe it updated and removed the 404s (there were maybe 10), and now Google is attempting to reindexed? Could this be viable? The reason I am skeptical of it being an algorithm issue is because within a matter of hours my articles are ranking again for certain keywords. And this issue has only happened after a change to the site has been applied. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated 🙂
Algorithm Updates | | fenixbazaar0 -
One of my pages doesn't appear in Google's search
Our page has been indexed (I just checked) but literally doesn't exist in the first 300 results despite having a respectable DA & PA. Is there something I can do? There's no reason why this specific page doesn't rank, as far as I can see. It's not a new page. Cheers, Rhys
Algorithm Updates | | SwanseaMedicine0 -
Meta Descriptions - Google ignores what we have
Hi I still write meta descriptions to help with CTR. I am currently looking at a page where the CTR needs improving. I check the meta on Google SERPs & it isn't pulling through the meta description we have - but other info on the page. This isn't ideal - why does this happen? Will Google just make the decision and are descriptions not worth writing?
Algorithm Updates | | BeckyKey0 -
How long for google to de-index old pages on my site?
I launched my redesigned website 4 days ago. I submitted a new site map, as well as submitted it to index in search console (google webmasters). I see that when I google my site, My new open graph settings are coming up correct. Still, a lot of my old site pages are definitely still indexed within google. How long will it take for google to drop off or "de-index" my old pages? Due to the way I restructured my website, a lot of the items are no longer available on my site. This is on purpose. I'm a graphic designer, and with the new change, I removed many old portfolio items, as well as any references to web design since I will no longer offering that service. My site is the following:
Algorithm Updates | | rubennunez
http://studio35design.com0 -
Same Meta description is being shown on Google?
Not sure why this is happening but when you this command into Google site:"mywebsite": + "key phrase" It brings up pages from my website which have the key phrase but I have noticed that Google is using the wrong meta description for all of them even though these pages all have their own unique meta description Does anyone know why this would be happening? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | webguru20140 -
Should social widgets be the kind that shares/likes a page, or the kind that adds followers to a brand social page?
I'm wondering if the social widgets on my blog should create a share/like referencing the page or should the social widget create a follower to my brands page on a particular social network? Any ideas?
Algorithm Updates | | salesduke0 -
Why do in-site search result pages rank better than my product pages?
Maybe this is a common SERP for a generic product type but I'm seeing it a lot more often. Here is an example SERP "rolling stools". The top 4 results are dynamic in-site search pages from Sears, ebay and Amazon (among others). I understand their influence and authority but why would a search return a dynamic in-site SERP instead of a solid product page. A better question would be - How do I get my in-site SERPs to rank or how do I get my client's page to rise above the #5 spot is currently ranks at? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | BenRWoodard0 -
Does google have the worst site usability?
Google tells us to make our sites better for our readers, which we are doing, but do you think google has horrible site usabilty? For example, in webmaster tools, I'm always being confused by their changes and the way they just drop things. In the HTML suggestions area, they don't tell you when the data was last updated, so the only way to tell is to download the files and check. In the URL removals, they used to show you the URLs they had removed. Now that is gone and the only way you can check is to try adding one. We don't have any URL parameters, so any parameters are as a result of some other site tacking on stuff at the end of our URL and there is no way to tell them that we don't have any parameters, so ignore them all. Also, they add new parameters they find on the end of the list, so the only way to check is to click through to the end of the list.
Algorithm Updates | | loopyal0