The myths and facts about Google Page Rank

This is probably one of the subject which carries intense debate. Higher page rank, which essentially is a result of number and quality of links that a page has, is any webmaster’s dream. There has been intense debate on it whether it does translate into money or not. I have seen many parked domains with PR 4 or 5, and if such domains can get this PR, obviously most webmasters would think that then why not their site which, obviously is better than parked domain. Common experience is that higher page rank may not mean higher traffic too.

Google has not declared much about the algorithm that governs page rank. It is mostly out of the experience of the webmasters shared over various forums that some consensus is emerging that besides links, other factors as keyword density and placement helps getting higher page rank.
Is it Relevant any more?
The chase for page rank is old school thinking. The chase for steady, return customers and readers, which slowly builds a solid audience, is the modern thinking. No doubt that Page Rank does not ensure website ranking and thus traffic, but as a web user what do we want; whether the results should come sorted in order of relevance of content or the page rank?
Page Rank is not more important than focusing on long term shifts in the internet industry. Industry is not short of examples where webmasters with great page rank abandoned their existing design to come out with latest php or word press driven design only to be proven correct later on. Needless to add, they all ended up with higher rankings, traffic and earnings.
Then how Page Rank is important?
To the question, that page rank does not guarantee traffic, answer is should search engines rank the result by page rank or the relevancy of the page to your search query? I am sure most will tend to agree that it is the search term that should be more important.
And yes, with in the search results, given the similar data, the results do get sorted secondarily in order of age of the content and PR of the site. If a webpage does not have any relevant data compared to, it stands no reason to appear in results merely o strength of its PR. Thus to my mind, those cribbing about PR does not bring traffic, tend to forget the importance of content and even url in getting traffic.
For ranking in search results, apart from page rank, other factors as font size, title, headings, anchor text, word frequency, word proximity, file name, directory name, and domain name play important role.
Those who tend to spend on exchanging and acquiring links for the sole purpose of increasing PageRank may better spend developing content for their website. A good content would automatically work to get to inbound links and consequently higher PR too. While writing content think of how you would pen your query in a search engine and then make your content relevant, adequately keyword rich on the given keyword and phrase.
In fact, Page Rank is a great indicator of site worth in a sense that it tells about traffic on the page, how much traffic each page gets as well as the overall site, user behavior, how long visitors stay on your site and from what pages they exit your site, domain registration information and you also get points for users bookmarking or adding your sites to the favorites. Google also rewards you for use of good server and if your site happens to be hosted on a server shared with a spamming site, your site would too get punished in terms of lower page rank.
Yes, for those who want to adopt shady methods to increase the page rank may well understand that the folks at Google are often a step or two ahead, and may be sometimes a step behind, but nevertheless, constantly analyzing all of the gaming techniques. They are always quick to figure the same out and fix it.
Google is perhaps the only engine that is known for its consistent, predictable crawling. Since we are unlikely to get a definitive answer from Google as to how its Page Rank affects the ranking of the results, can we afford to ignore the Page rank?
A site with high page rank is quite likely to get higher ranking where keywords match. The cure for cancer might already be on the web somewhere, but if it's on a new site, you won't find it.
Page Rank is definitely very important as it signifies a welcome byproduct of your hard work.
About Author: R S Chawla is a Chartered Accountant based in Canada. He also manages sites www.b2blounge.com and www.canadaupdates.com