This Just In: PageRank MATTERS!

I guess I should share the blame here: I’ve been saying "PageRank
doesn’t matter" for some time now. I remember the old days (2003). The
toolbar had made us all obsessed with green; in fact, we were fixated
on it, when we should have been looking at other link metrics along
with it.

And thus started the myth that "PageRank doesn’t matter". I’ve heard
pretty much every expert weigh in on the issue, and make the same basic
point. Mike Grehan is only the latest to do so.

What’s more, one question I was asked last week had me slightly
dumbfounded for a moment: "If you’re saying I can’t value links that I
buy based on PageRank, how do I value how much I’d be prepared to pay
for them?"

This is the stark reality: People still actually buy and sell links valued against Google’s PR score. Which is ridiculous.

Let’s step back a bit. Is
PageRank "ridiculous" as a useful link popularity metric? What is a
better metric to judge "rough" link popularity/power? Yahoo backlink
count? That says nothing about the importance of a page’s backlinks; it just gives you a count, and the sites themselves. Of course, you could go to each of those sites, and count their backlinks. But that’s just a recursive link popularity algorithm–umm, PageRank?

I’m not saying PageRank is the end-all or the Holy Grail. It isn’t.
It’s just a starting point. After checking out a page’s PR, I look for
authority backlinks (.edu, .gov, DMOZ, topical authorities), I look to
see if the backlinks are mostly on-topic, I look to see whether or not
its links have been obtained organically vs. rented or traded, etc. But
I do start with PageRank.

Let’s be honest: PageRank still matters. And it will for a while–unless, of course, Google stops showing it

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More on TrustRank and Directories

There’s been quite a bit of hoopla about TrustRank [PDF] lately. In my opinion, this hoopla is much deserved, and in the coming months we will see TrustRank more heavily integrated into Google’s algorithm.

How does it affect link building? Well I can think of a couple ways that TrustRank will affect my link building strategy:

1) Links from "trusted sources" such as DMOZ (or DMOZ-listed sites, or .gov’s, etc.) will become more important than ever.
2) Links from low-quality sites that are heavily integrated into spammy SEO link networks may not only not help your site but could possibly hurt your site.

Many directories that are favored by SEO’s to inflate link popularity are heavily integrated into spammy link networks; they often lack any sort of "trustworthy" inbound links, and, conversely, they tend to link out to sites that also lack "trustworthy" links (a double whammy!)

Aaron Wall, besides being a Leonardo DiCaprio look-alike, is a pretty darn smart SEO. He talks about how links from spammy directories could hurt a site in his new article, TrustRank & the Company You Keep.

You are the company you keep. this means:

• their inbound linkage data will likely come from many low trust sites
• many sites which have limited trust scores (a disproportionately large percentage) will be included amongst their listings.
• too many links from these sites may thus pass AntiTrust (or a negative TrustRank score) to listed sites.

Now, my own qualification: TrustRank will devalue many spammy directory links, but high quality directories may be closely linked from the couple hundred "seed sites" Google uses. Here is my short (and by no means comprehensive) list of directories that I think will help a site’s rankings via TrustRank. I am listing those directories that I think have a high percentage of "trustworthy" incoming links, and that have a high percentage of outbound links that are to "trustworthy" sites.

The obvious suspects (mentioned by name on Google’s Webmaster Guidelines page):

1) DMOZ
2) Yahoo! Directory

The less obvious suspects:

3) JoeAnt
4) Gimpsy
5) GoGuides  
6) Uncover the Net (a W3C member!)

When you are considering paying for that directory listing, you may want to ask yourself: is this directory making an honest attempt to categorize high quality Web sites? Or is it just listing any random www.viaga-viagra-mortgage-mesothelioma.info site that’s willing to pay $20?

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