4 Good Reasons Why PageRank is Dead

By Justin Palmer

Yes, you read that right. I'm beginning to believe PR is a thing of the past. Maybe I'm simply venting my frustration at the fact Google seems to be updating the Page Rank in the Google toolbar much slower than they used to. Regardless of the reason, this article will discuss 3 reason why I think Google Page Rank is becoming less important.

1. Long Tail Search

   Terms: There has been a huge shift in the SEO industry in the last few years. With increasing competition in nearly every online market, it's becoming much harder to rank for high volume, high competition keywords. In addition, online marketers are realizing that the better performing keywords are the unpredictable, multiple word searches known as long tails. Because of this, many are finding that their PR 0 article or product pages are bringing in more traffic than their homepage or other SEO landing pages.

2. Original Content Beats PR: Contrary to popular belief, Google prefers rich, useful, and original content more than dozens of links pointing to your landing page. Yes, anchor text is still important, but without something to link to, countless links are worthless. On page SEO is still very valuable.

3. Aging: While it's well know than Google loves sites that have been around awhile, they are also just as fond of fresh, new content such as blog posts. I've found that many of my blog posts rank for their keywords within hours of the initial post. Obviously, they haven't had time to gain a single backlink, let along Page Rank.

4. Home Page Links: Traditionally, the highest Page Rank of any page on a site is the homepage. Unfortunately though, home pages do not always contain specific enough information to be link worthy. For this reason, many websites receive inbound links spread out throughout the site to specific topical content.

While the term PageRank may someday fade into the distant past of SEO, the concept of link value and authority it represents will probably always be around. The metric, however, may eventually become irrelevant due to the reasons listed above. Remember, don't panic if your Page Rank isn't as high as your competitor's. As long as you've done your keyword research, are focusing on niche terms, and ensuring your site is crawlable and optimized, you'll see the better results.

Justin Palmer's company, Palmer Web Marketing specializes in offering inexpensive SEO pricing and Church Search engine optimization. His current project is C28.com, a Christian music CD store that also sells men's and ladies Christian t-shirts.

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