Is Page Rank Overrated?

More and more web experts and SEO practitioners seem to think Google's Page Rank is becoming less important in the overall search engine scheme of things. The new rallying cry is "relevance". Create relevant content, get relevant inbound links, link to relevant sites in your area of expertise.

The simple fact is no one (including, I suspect, Google) knows exactly what relationship the Page Rank of a given page has to its likelihood of scoring well in specific searches. People ("experts" and otherwise) talk as though they know, but unless they are talking from actual experience they are just blowing different colours of smoke.

For instance, I recently had someone tell me they had heard that two domains placed on the same server, sharing the same ip address "will not get the credit of two sites but something between 1 and 2". This sounds marginally plausible until you think about it for a minute or two. Whether or not it is true, the bigger question remains the same: namely, "what good are these "credits" anyway?" What are they supposed to do for you?

Well, two things, I suppose:

1. Improve your Page Rank (or potential Page Rank), and
2. Improve your SE rankings for your most important keywords.

But both of these things beg the more fundamental question about traffic generation. Namely,

"What does any of this have to do with generating traffic or making sales?"

We assume that answer to this question is obvious. Higher PR means more traffic. But this presupposes traffic in itself is good.

It's not, unless you're selling advertising.

Traffic is only good if it is correctly targeted, and if your content can "convert" enough site visitors into readers, buyers, ad clickers, or whatever it is you're trying to get them to do.

I know it is a cliche, but it really does all come back to content. Websites or blogs that are devoid of meaningful and well constructed content turn out to be pointless -- PR or no PR. You may get visitors, but they will not buy anything, or stick around long enough to click on your Google ads.

Carefully crafted content, on the other hand will do well on all counts. The Search Engines will (eventually) start to recognize your greatness. Other webmasters will want to exchange links with you and send traffic your way. And site visitors will appreciate the information you provide and buy your products.