Clearing up some things about PR and SERP ranking.

[MrE]

PR is more of an afterthought and correlates to the type of links built to your site.

That is why often the top ranked sites will have a good PR ranking, but be clear that links come first, then rankings, then PR.

FIRST YOU GET THE LINKS
THEN YOU GET THE RANKINGS
THEN YOU GET MONEY
and THEN YOU GET THE PR (at next update)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJ7HZATMKBY

However, PR typically correlates to a site with lots of linking power, so for link buys it is the standard of measuring backlinking power.

 

[davids355]

Should be a sticky this one. Clears up slot of things.

 

[GreyWolf]

... it [PR] is the standard of measuring backlinking power.

That pretty much sums it all up in a single sentence. lol

The value of a page's PR is in the power it gives the backlinks on that page.

 

[goldengrahams]

Also to note than PR is important if you own a larger site with constantly updating content so you don't have to build links to each new page/keyword. That's how amazon ranks well for products even if the product page has no offsite backlinks. You summed it up pretty well, I'm guessing you just forgot that part .

So you dont just need money to have all the power, PR is the new king! lol.

 

[sfidirectory]

That clears up alot of things I have been thinking about increasing rank of my sites. I thought for a long time thay the PR of any page on your site was the only thing that mattered but in the last few months I have learned that keywork ranking is far more important as if you rank high enough for your chosen keywords, you are more likely to get website visits and even some paid conversions.

Also I know that Google uses around 200 factors for ranking a given website/page and from my memory I think keyword ranking as described is one of the most important. This thread is worth bookmarking if some of you need a reminder, it can be easily confused for those who are just starting out or a new to the SEO game. 2+ rep given .

 

[ipopbb]

Greywolf is correct, although his choice of wording could have been better. Mixing an SEO concept with SEO advice is often confusing as well.

I think a better way of stating what I think GreyWolf is saying would be:

The Concept:

For a given keyword search the total PR of the URL in the SERPs does not correlate with where the URL ranks in the SERPs in most cases. This is because only a portion of the URL's total PR is applicable for the keyword search at hand.

The Advice:

Don't waste time and energy on your URLs' total PR value. A much more productive use of your time would be to get more High PR back links for the keywords you are trying to rank better for.

My Disclaimer. (Not GreyWolf's)

There are exceptions to this concept.

If 100% of the URL's back links were crafted by you and they use link text exactly matching the given keyword search then total PR for the URL is applicable, but the total PR for the other competitors in the SERPs won't be applicable so the practicality of comparing your PR to theirs probably won't be very useful for determining anything.

Statistically, there appear to be "tiers of advantage" in total PR. In the past I have noticed in my research that there is a theoretical ranking bonus at total PR3 and then again at PR7. Where my advice diverges from Greywolf's is that I tell people to stop caring about total PR after PR3 unless they have a viral strategy to break the PR6 ceiling. For most websites this just isn't practical.

My personal favorite metric for looking at SERPs is what I call "PR efficiency" which for the top 10 results for a given keyword search is the ratio of (11 - SERP result number) versus the number back links to the URL. This gives me an rough idea of who got to page 1 with the least amount of effort. I like these "efficient" URLs because they not only tend to have the best quality back links to clone, they also tend to have the best on page content tuning for the current Google algorithm. It is still far from obvious why everything ranks where it does... and about a third of the time this approach isn't helpful for a number of reasons, but when it is helpful... woah dog! Time saver! Not perfect but continues to be my favorite source for empirical hints.

You can swap URL Total PR for (11-SERP result number)... It tends to produce different leaders. When one doesn't produce hints I usually try the other. I'm always fascinated when both produce the same site. I'm also surprised how frequently the the winners are #3-6 on page 1. But sometimes it does feel like staring at white noise.

So, in summary, I agree with GreyWolf's concept and recommendation that time is better spent elsewhere.

Hope this helps! Cheers!

Ted

 

[GreyWolf]

Greywolf is correct, although his choice of wording could have been better. Mixing an SEO concept with SEO advice is often confusing as well.

Well my choice of wording in this instance was intentional. The normal ways in which this concept is explained tends to get people all worked up over focusing on the PR itself, instead of on what the PR is a result of.

You can focus too much on PR, and still never rank well for many particular keywords, or you can focus on ranking for specific keywords in the SERP and the PR will just naturally follow. If the PR goes up, great!! If it doesn't so what, you've still ranked in the SERP which is what will get you the traffic.

I think the advice and the concept go hand in hand. By understanding the concept, people can realize why the advice matters. :cool2:

BTW ipopbb, I haven't caught you in many threads lately. Thanks for the contribution here. irate:

 

[localjam]

Thanks for clearing up the confusion about PR. I was unclear about this but your explanation makes sense

 

[Yukinari84]

This whole post is a great learning tool for anyone that is confused about that Google PR is and how it can be used effectively which is summed up in Grey's statement:

...
The value of a page's PR is in the power it gives the backlinks on that page.

Once you learn the overall value of PR and understand how it works, you can effectively use it to funnel PR to whatever page you want(internally through your own site's pages and externally via feeder sites).

 

[GreyWolf]

madoctopus started another thread which I think compliments the info in this thread as well.
He has diagrams and charts explaining how powerful backlinks are worth depending on the PR of the pages you get them from. I think the charts apply to this thread as well so I'm quoting them here. I don't know how accurate the charts are, but they give a good idea of the comparison between links from pages of various PR levels.

If you like these charts be sure to check out his thread and leave him some thanks.
PageRank Illustration - Now You Know Why It's So Hard
Here's one of the charts:

Here's the other one:

If I have interpreted this correctly, I can see why getting 1 PR10 backlink is more efficient than trying to obtain 10,000 PR 0 or 1 backlinks. It would be easy enough to get PR 0 or 1 backlinks but to get a few PR 8 - 10 backlinks would require alot of effort and patience.

1 PR10 link equals roughly 2,800,000 PR1 links. See below:

When looking at these charts, remember what was said earlier. This isn't about increasing the PR of your pages, the value is in the power those high PR pages give to the backlinks you get from them.

Check out that second chart. One backlink on a PR2 page is the same as getting 101 backlinks on PR1 pages. Even more impressive, one backlink on a PR4 site is the same as getting 3044 backlinks on PR1 pages. That doesn't mean getting backlinks on PR0-PR1 sites is bad, just that the higher the PR of a page the more valuable a backlink on that page will be for your site.

The only problem is it's not always easy to get backlinks on a lot of high PR sites. That's why it's still good to get backlinks on PR0-PR1 sites. Since those comprise the bulk of all pages on the internet, the PR0-PR1 sites are also easier to find and get backlinks from.

 

[IamNRE]

I would say getting your PR up is important and will help you rank better.

Lets you have a site and no intention of selling LINKS or ADS.

Tell me, would you rather have a site that was PR 6 or a Site that is PR 1??

Also lets say you get High PR do follow links to one of your keywords/url, and at the next update your site goes up in the SERP. If you have your site well interlinked the all the PR will be distrusted to your site, and it WILL make your site authority and rank it better.


Otherwise why do sites that have High PR domains rank for keywords they have not targeted on purpose .. they have just mentioned the keyword here and there in a article. Its because they have high pr and authority.

So I would say having a domain with PR WILL help you rank your site better and not just good for sells ads.

 

[GreyWolf]

Tell me, would you rather have a site that was PR 6 or a Site that is PR 1??

Also lets say you get High PR do follow links to one of your keywords/url, and at the next update your site goes up in the SERP. If you have your site well interlinked the all the PR will be distrusted to your site, and it WILL make your site authority and rank it better.

Well I'd rather have a PR6 of course, but not because of the PR itself but because it represents a lot of backlinks to my site. I know those backlinks are targeted for keywords and so I should be ranking pretty good in the SERPs for those terms. If I were to make a choice between ranking for desirable keywords in the SERPs or having a high PR, I would choose a good position in the SERP for a low PR page over a bad SERP position for a high PR page.

You're other point is pretty valid though. The link sculpting that can be done on a high PR site is one thing that does make a high PR valuable on your own site, but even then that's still a factor of the linking. It's just internal linking rather than external backlinking. So the value is still in the power of the links on high PR pages (in this case they just happen to be on your own site). Another thing about link sculpting for internal links is that it can loose some effectiveness if there's too much linking or linking the wrong pages. I think for most people their site is getting much more value from the external links than it does from it's internal links.

Otherwise why do sites that have High PR domains rank for keywords they have not targeted on purpose .. they have just mentioned the keyword here and there in a article. Its because they have high pr and authority.

Well first it might be good to note that a lot of low PR sites also rank well in the SERPs for keywords they didn't target on purpose.

The reason sites that have high PR (or even low PR) also might rank for keywords they didn't target on purpose, is because among the cumulative total of all their backlinks they've also accomplished ranking for some of those unintentional keywords. This is in part because of the anchors and partly because of content on the pages. In other words the high PR isn't the cause of the serp ranking, the PR is just a result of the same factor that's causing the SERP ranking. That factor is the amount and quality of the backlinks.

I'll give an analogy that points out how causal relationships can be mistaken.

Years ago there was a study done in a major U.S. city. In the study they reviewed some statistics and found that on days in which ice cream sales were at their highest, the crime rates in the city were also at their highest. If you look at just that data then statistically you could draw a conclusion that there's a causal relationship between high ice cream sales and criminal activity. But of course we know that isn't the case - high ice cream sales don't affect the crime rate in a city, (and neither does criminal activity cause people to buy more ice cream. lol.) The actual cause of both statistics was that those were the days with the highest temperatures. When the temperature becomes hot a lot of people like to eat ice cream, and when it's hot a lot of people leave windows and doors open, (as well as more people are out and about) giving a lot more opportunities for criminals.​

Just as the ice cream sales and crime rates in that analogy did not affect each other but were rather a result of the same factor which was high temperatures - The PR of a page and the SERP position of that page aren't affecting each other, but they're both caused by the same factor, which is the backlinks.

So while there is nothing wrong with wanting to have a high PR for your site, that shouldn't be your goal. The goal should be for building keyword anchored backlinks (especially on quality high PR sites) in order to get a good ranking in the SERPs for those keywords. The SERP position is what will get you traffic to your site which should be your main goal. If you get enough backlinks doing that then the PR of your site will most likely increase as well, but getting a high PR shouldn't be the goal, but rather be a byproduct of your real goal which is to rank in the SERPs for your keywords.

 

[ipopbb]

Also lets say you get High PR do follow links to one of your keywords/url, and at the next update your site goes up in the SERP. If you have your site well interlinked the all the PR will be distrusted to your site, and it WILL make your site authority and rank it better.

You are describing Link Juice... unfortunately it isn't as potent as it used to be. Before the Caffeine update you could link "Home Page > Category Page > Product Page" and see benefit all the way down to the product pages. Very little "link juice" gets to product pages now. The sites that tend to do well know go as horizontal as possible in their structure. Link juice only appears to effect 1 tier noticeably anymore. Most large online retailers (25k or more SKUs) lost most of their long tail search traffic from this change. Pretty much all your pages have to stand on their own merit now especially with Google Instant quantizing long tail searches into fewer variations of higher competition keywords. So even if you kept your long tail rankings they are only a tiny fraction of what they used to be.

 

[madoctopus]

@GreyWolf

There are some aspects I don't agree with you on. While building 10k links for one keyword will increase the relevance of your page for that specific keyword, having extra 40k links for other keywords will increase the trust and link juice. In the end that means even having links that don't have anchors for your keywords will still get you rank for the keywords that appear on your page. More than once I've been ranking pages with just links with generic terms like "read more" or URL as anchor text.

Taking that one step further all the links you get regardless of anchor text will increase your domain PR and trust rank, after some point making your domain rank for anything even without links. I had sites on 1st page in Google for ANY keyword related to the root keyword and if I created a new page it would be on 1st page in Google within 15 minutes (with no external links built to it).

The whole thing escalates when you build a site network made of many sites. As I was saying in this post when building parasite pages you can boost their effect a lot by building lower quality links to them. Anchor text is not that important. Also, for lower quality sites in a network, sites that would not pass human inspection, it is important for them not to rank well but only pass on juice to main sites.

There's also the aspect of your site's inner link architecture so if one page has high PR and you link from it to other page, you pass some of that PR to the other internal page.

While I think I understand what you had in mind, I'm not sure the way you chose to explain and exemplify it is the best. Or maybe about certain details we happen to have different opinions. While I also think PR is one of the factors that make a page rank high in SERPs, but not the only one, I also think this is NOT true "A page's SERP position is based only on the backlinks targeting a keyword.". I have a big problem with that yellow "only". I think there are other factors (including, but not limited to trust rank) that have to do with SERP position.

 

[GreyWolf]

While I think I understand what you had in mind, I'm not sure the way you chose to explain and exemplify it is the best. Or maybe about certain details we happen to have different opinions. While I also think PR is one of the factors that make a page rank high in SERPs, but not the only one, I also think this is NOT true "A page's SERP position is based only on the backlinks targeting a keyword.". I have a big problem with that yellow "only". I think there are other factors (including, but not limited to trust rank) that have to do with SERP position.

Actually that statement needs to be taken in the context of this thread and specifically my first post. In that first post I included this statement: (Of course there are other factors affecting your sites position as well, but this explanation is only regarding PR and backlinks.)

So the statement, "A page's SERP position is based only on the backlinks targeting a keyword." Is only talking about the relationship between PR and serp position. What I mean by it is that the PR of your own page isn't a factor for it's ranking in the SERP, the only factor PR plays in your SERP position is what PR the pages with your backlinks have. While it's true that sometimes a high PR page seems to have some advantage in the SERP, but that is easily explained by the fact that the same backlinks that affect the SERP position also affect the PR of your page. Basically the PR of your own page is a result, not a cause.

So that statement is correct within the context that we're talking about in this thread. When you get into the context of all factors that affect a SERP position, there are of course many other factors besides PR. Onpage factors like keywords, tags, title, etc. Domain factors like keywords in url, domain age, and other trust factors, and various other factors as well. You've read enough of my other posts and threads to know I certainly wouldn't want to give anyone the idea that backlinks are the only factor for ranking in the SERP. LOL.

As I stated in the original post the point of this thread is to strip everything else away and look at just the specific factor of PR and when it comes into play for affecting your SERP rank.

I guess the statement would be more complete like this.
When considering the importance of PR as a factor, a page's SERP position is based only on the quantity, quality and PR of the backlinks targeting a keyword.

 

[madoctopus]

@GreyWolf I have re-read all posts you made (haven't read them all initially) and I think we see the situation very similar. However what you did in the first post (isolating one factor) is very against my usual way of thinking. The example with ice cream sales and crime rates kinda made me click about ho you looked at the whole thing. I'm not sure if the perspective you explained things from is very clear to a newbie though. I mean you did got me wondering and thinking there lol.

When I think about PR I don't think just about the PR in a way I think about what produced the PR because I get value from that too in the end. Looking at PR just as PR... yeah I think I can see your point there.

Also, lately TrustRank is starting to be of more importance to me than PR. Even more important is topicality of the source page, pages hub (think category) or entire site. How related to my keyword family are those. One link from a high topicality site can be of greater value than many identical PR links (even with keyword anchor) from an unrelated site. Thing is, thinking even further you can distinguish some extremes like links that pass lots of TrustRank but little or no relevance/topicality, links that pass little TrustRank but lots of relevance/topicality and links that pass lots of both. That's why having targeted site networks has huge benefits - you get best of both.

 

[GreyWolf]

Yeah, the problem with discussing any seo factors is that so many things are interrelated. For people who already have a good understanding about how the different factors work, an explanation like I've given in this thread might seem to be confusing or misleading. But I think by limiting the scope of the discussion just to the specific factor being discussed it may actually make it easier for people new to the concept to understand it.

To really understand how a single factor works you need to strip away all other factors to prevent confusion. Once you understand how an individual factor work by themselves, then it might be easier to understand "the big picture" of how each factor is interrelating with others and how they all work together.

That's why I tried to make it clear in the first post that the scope of this thread is limited to just the factor of PR only. I've explained the same things about PR before many times in many different ways. I still see posts in which people obviously misunderstand how PR works, so I thought I'd try a completely different approach. lol.

This time I was making an attempt to limit the scope completely to just the effects layed out in the thread. I think for the people that don't understand PR, (or confuse it with TR (Trust Rank) which I've seen a lot more of lately), it might give them a better way to understand what PR actually is, and what it's benefits are.

The normal way of dicussing many different factors together seems to lead to a lot of confusion about what each specific thing is accomplishing. So I discussed in this thread about only the factor of PR and it's relationship to ranking in the SERPs. Of course in application you need to consider "the big picture" and look at all the combined factors.

 

[MichealWigham]

This is smart idea... Great...

THX
Michel

 

[jonnymch]

Interesting post but the value of internal linking surely increases with pr so indirectly it must help ranking of other pages?

 

[GreyWolf]

Interesting post but the value of internal linking surely increases with pr so indirectly it must help ranking of other pages?

If you read through the thread you'll find that was addressed. If you're internal links are done correctly with link sculpting in mind then yeah it will help. But even in that case it isn't the actual PR that's causing it, it's the value of all the external links you have passing juice to you're site.

The PR number for any page is just an indicator of all those backlinks. Also the displayed PR is only a snapshot from a single date, so it isn't even always accurate. The point of the thread is that PR of your page is just a result of you're backlinking efforts. The SERPs don't care about what you're PR is, they just care about the same backlinks that are causing it.

In other words the PR and the SERP position are both results, but the backlinking (internal or external) is the determining factor.