Every 4 months or so, the Internet is hit with a flurry of posts and articles all with the same headline, more or less: “Google is Updating PageRank!” This sends thousands of webmasters into a frenzy as they try to track their PageRank and guess what it will go up to next.
Just stop it, already! So many people seem obsessed with it to a fault. They worry all day about how to increase their PR and they do not have any time to post good content on their blogs.
Don’t misunderstand me, PageRank (PR) is important because Google says it is, but it is not the only thing to consider when trying to get good rankings. Instead of fretting over PR, you should fret over writing quality content to benefit visitors to your site or blog.
If you write good content, your visitors will subscribe to your blog, bookmark your site, return often and will tell others about “something they read” on your site. Readers of your blog will leave comments, write posts on their blogs that refer to a post on your blog and other blogmasters will add you to their blogroll. What does all this mean? Backlinks. Backlinks are one of the best ways to increase your PR, if not the best way.
A backlink is a vote for you from another site. You want LOTS of votes, right? Then concentrate on writing good content worth voting for. Ignore your PR, it will take care of itself.
You remember as a kid when your Aunt Grace came over, the one with the huge mole on her face? Your mom would tell you ahead of time, “Don’t stare at Aunt Grace’s mole.” As Aunt Grace was walking up the sidewalk to the front door, you were repeating that mantra – Don’t stare at Aunt Grace’s mole. Don’t stare at Aunt Grace’s mole. Don’t stare at Aunt Grace’s mole.
The whole time she was visiting, you had to control yourself. Maybe you snuck a peek every so often, but you didn’t stare. Try that with your PR. Don’t stare at it. Sneak a peek every so often if you must, but don’t obsess over it. Concentrate on writing good content.
Check out this post by Jessica of Search Engine Journal and see her take on PR.
If you want to get into the nitty-gritty of Google PageRank, you should check out this article by Phil of Webworkshop. It will give you plenty to chew on.
In a future post, we will talk about how to write good content that will get indexed by the Search Engines. I hope you will check back for that. And I hope you will leave some comments on this post :).
