PR and Perception
I have been thinking a little about the Google Page Rank phenomenon this week and how it affects blogging.
Many people say that they ignore PR and that it is worthless (oddly enough this seems to be limited to people who already have good PR for their sites).
Others take it as an indicator of a blog’s popularity or prestige and some even base business models on selling links from high PR sites.
While PR certainly shouldn’t be the endgoal for a site or blog (unless your only monetization strategy is to sell links from your site), it is still something to keep an eye on - to a point.
Now, let me say that you do not need a high PR site to rank well for certain keywords. I have very low PR sites that rank at the top of the search engines for the terms for which I optimised them. On the other had, having high PR doesn’t hurt either and will certainly be necessary for the more competitive keywords.
But what about what other people think? I know when I come accross a site or blog that I haven’t seen before, I will generally steal a glance at my Google Toolbar to see what page rank they have. I suspect a lot of other webmasters are the same. And yes, it does have *some* effect on my decision to return to that blog, albeit a small effect.
But that’s just it. We are webmasters.
Most internet surfers are not webmasters and many can’t even tell when they are on a blog so are unlikely to even know what PR is! That should say something to you!
Now, if you are optimising you pages for visitors, then PR really shouldn’t really be a driving concern.
In the long run, it will obviously benefit you to have a higher PR, but you should be actively engaged in improving your site primarily for human visitors, rather than aiming at PR specifically. Create a lot of link bait with good content and PR will follow naturally anyway.
You can still adhere to the general rules of good SEO - it would be foolish not to, but in the scheme of promoting a site, attaining a good PR should be down the list, well behind developing good content and other human visitor focussed tasks.
Don’t ignore PR, but don’t let it dominate your efforts eaither.
I definately agree!
I believe that blogging is about CONVERSATIONS!
This is very important and I hope that others begin to think the same as well. A blog is a tool to reach customers and start conversations, not necessarily to make money or become famous.
In fact, I have been troubled with the many PR firms/bloggers who care mostly about making money from their blog and promoting a product on their blog for their interest only. I just posted my thoughts about this and I would love to hear from you!
“Blogs are really a reality check for PR firms” http://ebizz.wordpress.com/2006/05/01/blogs-are-really-a-reality-check-for-pr-firms/
Let me know what you think! Thanks!
May 1st, 2006 at 6:23 am-Chris