SEO Tycoon

**CSS4Life** · 08-23-2007, 03:49 PM

How many supposed "experts", crackpots, pagerank "addicts" or just plain unknowledgable folks do I see on this site every day? (sorry to groups all them together but never mind about that...) The answer would be too many if it was just one, never mind the 10 or 15 I see most days in the Relevant Link Exchange forum.

Well here's what we've been waiting for - concrete proof that PR is a waste of time. I've worked on a local business directory for my local town which currently has no PageRank at all. If you do a Google search for "Presteigne", you clearly find the site on the second page - second page? What?! With no PageRank? Yes!

The site actually outranks numerous PR1 sites, and even 2 PR4 sites. I have (regrettably?) taken part in a link exchange from another local community site, but I felt this would benefit the visitors to both sites.

Admittedly, the keyword "Presteigne" isn't very competitive, the town being a small sleepy one in a rural area of the country, but it does prove that PR is worthless and stupid!

More amazingly, I haven't actually added any keywords or a description to the site, yet it's still managed to rank where it has!

**ForrestCroce** · 08-23-2007, 09:22 PM

The meta keywords don't help you with anything, so don't bother with them ... and the meta description doesn't affect where you rank; it's there to entice people to click you instead of the guy above/below you.

Now, can you do the same thing for me? I'd love to make it to page 2 when someone searches for Seattle.

Congrats - hopefully this brings you traffic.

**davin** · 08-24-2007, 03:15 AM

if you target most competitive keywords then you can understand power of page rank.

**CSS4Life** · 08-24-2007, 04:27 AM

PageRank is only 1 of 100+ methods that Google uses to rank it's searches, so PageRank isn't such a "powerful" thing, Davin.

**hamesy** · 08-24-2007, 04:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by davin

if you target most competitive keywords then you can understand power of page rank.

PageRank is not that important. Like Daniel said it is only one of the hundreds of methods Google use to ranks its results. Successful websites have high PR because people want to link to them, they don't go round chasing links to boost their PR.

**gringo** · 08-24-2007, 06:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by whym

I have (regrettably?) taken part in a link exchange from another local community site, but I felt this would benefit the visitors to both sites.

I don't think that's regrattable (well, depending on the quality of the other site), and you're right in thinking this kind of exchange would benefit visitors of both sites.

**CSS4Life** · 08-24-2007, 07:02 AM

Thanks - the other site is about an annual festival that takes part in the town, so I don't think it's too much of a worry

**MrCat** · 08-24-2007, 07:13 AM

IMO getting more targetted traffic is more important than investing on PR.

**CSS4Life** · 08-24-2007, 07:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MrCat

IMO getting more targetted traffic is more important than investing on PR.

Exactly, I wish some of the "SEO experts" from India (sorry to generalise, but there seem t be a lot of them in the relevant link exchange forum at the moment) and similar places who think they know all about Google would realise that, rather than aiming for stupid pagerank goals.

Ultimately, SEO is all about getting quality traffic, not useless pagerank

**imagn** · 08-24-2007, 01:30 PM

Guys...

The PageRank you see in the Google toolbar can take up to 6 months to "refresh." The PageRank also is also used to determine the crawl rate of your website not just where it might appear in the rankings. Use it as a general reference and a way to find good sites to try and get link-backs from.

Lastly the description meta tag WILL be used in determining the relevancy in your site AND as a way of enticing a click-through.

**Learning Newbie** · 08-24-2007, 03:06 PM

Where did you hear about PR and crawl rates?

**CSS4Life** · 08-24-2007, 03:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by imagn

Guys...

The PageRank you see in the Google toolbar can take up to 6 months to "refresh." The PageRank also is also used to determine the crawl rate of your website not just where it might appear in the rankings. Use it as a general reference and a way to find good sites to try and get link-backs from.

Lastly the description meta tag WILL be used in determining the relevancy in your site AND as a way of enticing a click-through.

PageRank is and will probably continue to be useless. You get links for traffic, not for "glorious pagerank". Have you learnt nothing from this thread? PageRank doesn't really matter that much and link exchanges should be avoided unless they are fully relevant and will benefit both sites mutually. The introduction paragraph on the site is fine for a description and the site seems to be doing fine now, so maybe you should rethink things a little?

**x3mario** · 08-24-2007, 03:14 PM

I think Google PR will die soon.

**babychicken4u2** · 08-24-2007, 03:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by whym

The site actually outranks numerous PR1 sites, and even 2 PR4 sites. I have (regrettably?) taken part in a link exchange from another local community site, but I felt this would benefit the visitors to both sites.

One recip link isn't going to hurt anyone..unless its to a p o r n site or a bad neighborhood site. Recip links are discouraged when they are used to manipulate rank. Using them for traffic is just fine. I would limit the amount of these type of links that you have to less than 10% of your backlinks.

Quote:

Originally Posted by whym

More amazingly, I haven't actually added any keywords or a description to the site, yet it's still managed to rank where it has!

I really think you should write a relevant description for your page. The reasons above are valid ones, and your description tag was rated 2.0/5 important by the contributors to the Search Search Engine Ranking Factors V2 .. I think a very relevant aspect to the description tag is the fact that it is another way to prevent duplicate pages.

--Melanie

**gringo** · 08-24-2007, 04:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by babychicken4u2

One recip link isn't going to hurt anyone..unless its to a p o r n site or a bad neighborhood site.

I doubt that a p0rn site would suffer after getting one reciprocal link with another p0rn site. P0rn sites appear in the SERPs no problem, so I don't think a moderate amount of reciprocal linking (not scheming to manipulate rank) among them would be penalised.

I think you're right about bad neighbourhoods though.

**babychicken4u2** · 08-24-2007, 04:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gringo

I doubt that a p0rn site would suffer after getting one reciprocal link with another p0rn site. P0rn sites appear in the SERPs no problem, so I don't think a moderate amount of reciprocal linking (not scheming to manipulate rank) among them would be penalised.

I think you're right about bad neighbourhoods though.

I was kinda referring to regular sites, but you are exactly right a p o r n site linking to another would be just like the poster...relevant and for traffic.

--Melanie

**Learning Newbie** · 08-24-2007, 04:17 PM

Me tink trouble comes when me site trade links wid porn site like PotternBarn.org

Okay this gangster talk is annoying. But it's a point no one considers when they trade links. A site doesn't have to have big bouncing lady flesh to be a spam neighborhood. A link from one of these places won't hurt you, but a link out to one will. And it's harder to tell how a site does its marketing, than what it's content is.

**vangogh** · 08-24-2007, 10:58 PM

John to answer your question above about crawl rate, Matt Cutts has said on several occasions that PR does influence crawl rate. More PR tends to mean more and deeper visits from Googlebot.

PageRank isn't really useless. It is one of the many factors involved in ranking. It's probably more important than some things and less important than others. The problem with it is that too many people obsess about it to the exclusion of everything else. People treat it as the end game when they really should be focusing on other things.

Low PR pages outrank high PR pages in the results all the time. And a PR10 page is no guarantee that page will ever make a dime for the site.

**bzimage** · 08-28-2007, 10:33 AM

I think we already kind of knew that PR or page rank is a waste of time. But its not a waste for those of us who sell high pr links. For us its our bread and butter!

**CSS4Life** · 08-28-2007, 10:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by theseokit

I think we already kind of knew that PR or page rank is a waste of time. But its not a waste for those of us who sell high pr links. For us its our bread and butter!

It's true that the sorts of people who will post in this thread probably already knew PageRank was mostly a waste of time already - it's the people in the link exchange forum that need to learn this.

It's also unfair and deceitful for people to sell high PR sites to gullible newbies that think this will guarantee them fame and fortune - whether it's your bread and butter or not, it's not fair to be exploiting people