PR vs Increased Traffic

[MtraX]

A 'friend' has a PR 6 site with 400k+ pageviews. We're having a friendly debate. What would you say is more important, trying to increase pagerank or let it be a by-factor while optimising and increasing traffic? Got over 2500 backlinks in Google already. There is allot of room for improvement on the SEO side...

I'm hammering on about getting the SEO up to scratch for maximum results. He's on about trying to increase the PR for better results.

To be honest, is PR really important at all? (Hope I'm not opening a whole can of worms again...)

[Deliguy]

Sounds like a fun debate among "friends." All me and my friends ever argue about is who has the ugliest girlfriend. No one knows for sure how big the logorithmic jump is from a PR6 to a PR7, but we have a good guess that it's four times as hard to go from a PR5 to a PR6. So we can assume the jump would require at least 16 times the amount of work from PR5-6.

Sounds like a lot of work.

Eitherway it sounds like he's already doing a pretty good job on the SEO side. The only next step I can see that would have the largest affect on his rankings would be to take the neccessary steps for Google to consider his site an Authority Site.

To shoot for an authority site status he will need to improve these areas in the necessary order.

1)On site- For an established site with solid backlinks and a good PR; fully optimizing the entire site will make the biggest immediate impact on whether or not his site will become considered an authority site. This will let the search engines KNOW that his site is of an on topic theme. For instance if his site is on car parts. Every page of his site should reflect that theme in some way.

2)In bound links from other authority sites- This is a given. It is tougher than it sounds though. For a good starter you can read my post on my blog about it http://www.bluehatseo.com/bluehatseo...r-competitors/.

3)Directory Placements-Believe it or not this is pretty important, because SEs look at big directories like DMOZ to decide if your site is listed under the LOWEST level for your topic. He may want to review through the directories that link to him and see if he can move down directories. For instance, on dmoz if he is listed under shopping/cars/car parts/sales. Put up some articles and try to get listed under shopping/cars/car parts.

To chime in on your friendly debate, IMO I don't think it really matters. If you raise your links, it will inherantly raise your PR. However to raise your PR doesn't necessarily mean you raised your inbound links. So stick with your point of the argument and you both will win. To answer your question is PR important. I don't even want to open that can, but you can read my post http://www.bluehatseo.com/page-rank-is-not-dead/ that may suffice for an answer.

FYI if he is interested in raising his PR he can also check out my post on raising your own PR
http://www.bluehatseo.com/blue-hat-t...your-own-site/


Hope this helps

[Mel]

IMO you are going in the right direction Mtrax.

IMO All the PR in the world is not going to have a direct affect on traffic, and only a slight effect on rankings. If he is ranking #1 on his search terms already then he should be looking for other sources of traffic and better conversions for what he has.

[fire_lady]

I agree that PR does not affect much in your ranking. In my case getting a high PR is second to my priority. I'm focusing on getting quality traffic and to convert it into sales/sign ups.

[fire_lady]

I agree that PR does not affect much in your ranking. In my case getting a high PR is second to my priority. I'm focusing on getting quality traffic and to convert it into sales/sign ups.