Many webmasters still care about the PageRank that is displayed in Google's toolbar. It's not wise to focus on that metric. Some days ago, Google published another official statement that made it clear that you should focus on other things than PageRank.

Also in the news: Google's +1 button is now available in other countries, Google removes all co.cc domains from its index, Google highlights content creators in search results, Google's +1 network and more.

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• Facts of the week
• Search engine news and articles of the week
• Win a $100 Amazon gift card
• Previous articles

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Many webmasters still care about the PageRank that is displayed in Google's toolbar. It's not wise to focus on that metric. Some days ago, Google published another official statement that made it clear that you should focus on other things than PageRank.

What does Google think about PageRank?

Google's blog post about this topic is very clear:

"The Webmaster Central team has been telling webmasters for years that they shouldn't focus so much on PageRank as a metric for representing the success of one’s website. [...]

PageRank may have distinguished Google as a search engine when it was founded in 1998; but [...] we’ve had a lot of opportunity to augment and refine our ranking systems over the last decade. PageRank is no longer—if it ever was—the be-all and end-all of ranking. [...]

The PR you see publicly is different from the number our algorithm actually uses for ranking. Why bother with a number that’s at best three steps removed from your actual goal, when you could instead directly measure what you want to achieve?"

If PageRank is not important, what is important?

Google's blog mentions three examples of metrics that are important:

1. Conversion rate: the percentage of visitors to your site who convert (buy something, fill out a form, etc.).
2. Bounce rate: the percentage of visits to your site who leave your site immediately.
3. Clickthrough rate: how often people click on your site out of all the times your site gets shown in search results.

These are only a few examples. There are many things that you can do to get better results with your search engine listings.

Make a plan and set the right goals

It's very likely that a high PageRank is not what you really want. You really want to make more money with your website. You want to generate more leads, more newsletter sign-ups, etc.

Do the following to achieve that goal:

1. Choose the right keywords: it's not important that a keyword has thousands of searches. It is important that a keyword delivers the right kind of visitor to your website. Choose targeted keywords that deliver visitors that are ready to buy.
2. Get high rankings for these keywords: PageRank is not important. Having high rankings for the right kind of keyword is very important. If your website has high rankings for the right keywords, it will get many new visitors who are ready to buy.
3. Get good backlinks: good backlinks will help your website in many ways: you will get direct traffic through the links and the backlinks will positively influence the position of your website on Google.

Google uses many different factors to determine the position of a website in the search results. Analyze your website with the Top 10 Optimizer in IBP.

The Top 10 Optimizer analyzes many different factors that influence the position of your web pages for your keywords in Google's search results and it gives you concrete advice on how to change your pages so that they get higher rankings.