With the impending PageRank update we thought we would help our readers out
in the understanding of ranking, the algorithm and Google in general.

Among the most anomalous of Search Engine Optimisation considerations is Google
PageRank (PR). Those new to Search Engine Optimisation get too heavily involved
in tracking their PageRank and lose sight of the real goal, which is generating
more traffic to a web page. In reality, the PageRank that is displayed in the
Google toolbar and is used in Search Engine Optimisation software, is virtually
useless as any form of Search Engine Optimisation measurement.

Infrequent Updates

Google Toolbar PageRank is updated infrequently, with the shortest gaps between
updates usually being around 3 months. This means that any time, the PR that
you are seeing for your website could be up to 3 months old. In some cases,
it can be considerably longer between updates.

No Account For Page Relevancy

However, this isn’t the main problem with trying to use PR as an indicator
of your site’s search engine performance. PR is a numerical representation
of your overall link popularity. It doesn’t take relevancy into account. Regardless
of your PR, if Google does not deem your site to be relevant to a particular
search term or keyword then your page will not rank highly.

When PR Matters

PageRank truly only becomes relevant if you intend to sell your site or, in
some cases, if you are looking to sell advertising on your website. Webmasters
do use Google PR as a guide to generate prices for a sale and for paying for
advertising on your pages.

There Are Better Things To Obsess Over

In a lot of respects, Google’s PageRank can do more harm than good. Some webmasters
spend a large amount of time trying to fill the green bar rather than drive
more traffic to their website. Unless you intend to sell advertising space
or sell your entire site then you are better off avoiding the temptation to
obsess over PR.

Effective SEO needs to be an ongoing process. Monitoring, maintaining, and
optimising your campaign will help to ensure that you get the best rankings
and that you retain and improve the levels of traffic you enjoy. In order to
do this effectively, it’s vital that you have good analytics in place from
the outset.

Search Engine Traffic Analysis

An analytic package will monitor the visitors to your website. It will track
information such as landing pages, referrer, the most popular pages, and even
those pages where visitors most often enter and exit your site. By compiling
this data into a legible and understandable format you can improve on any existing
marketing.

Search Engine Visitor Statistics

One of the most important features of an SEO analytic package is that it will
track visitors that have come through the search engine result pages. This
will tell you which search engines are diverting traffic to your site and the
keywords those visitors used when searching. It will also let you know in which
countries your pages are performing particularly well or particularly poorly.

Keyword Performance Evaluation

Tracking keywords helps in a number of ways. Primarily it will indicate how
well your keyword research is standing up to practical scrutiny. Are the keywords
you expected to perform generating good levels of traffic? Are some keywords
generating less traffic now than when you first started your SEO campaign?
You can also view the long tail search terms, those terms that rarely come
up in keyword research and individually generate little in the way of traffic,
but combine to provide a good proportion of targeted traffic.

SEO Performance Monitoring

Monitoring SEO performance enables you to improve on your results, and as
far as possible prevent any major drops in traffic. Keywords rise and fall
in popularity, and some keywords perform better in some countries than others.
By monitoring your search engine results, specifically by considering your
traffic, you can maintain an effective SEO campaign.