Over the course of yesterday and today Google updated it’s Toolbar PageRanks for websites. I would like to say that’s awesome, because BarryWise.com is now a PageRank 5, but the truth is I really don’t care. When I first started working on this blog in May of last year the PageRank was Zero. That was a little less than a year ago; I said I would raise the PageRank and I did. But the truth is the traffic and exposure which this blog has gotten over the course of the past year has not correlated with the PageRank increases.
The way I have generated traffic has been a direct result of one of two factors; content which is popular and which people want to read (admittedly, I don’t produce a lot of that), or links from sites which are popular and which are getting a lot of traffic on their own merits. A couple such projects I’ve recently worked on are Tweet Wasters and Check Usernames, both of which went viral on social media sites and as a result attracted a lot of visitors.
So what good is Google PageRank? It seems to only serve a purpose as a self-perpetuating myth. Some SEOs think they need to get links from high PageRank websites, so they come here and comment on my blog posts with a link to their site. Which in turn drives traffic to my site. Which is what I want – so did the Google PageRank increase my blog traffic, or did the myth do it? Some SEOs want to advertise or buy links on high PageRank websites in order to increase their own PageRank, so they come to a blog this and ask to buy links. So did Google PageRank just make me money? It would if I sold links, but I clearly do not, otherwise you’d see some banners or even some Google AdSense on here.
So the myth continues – even though Google PageRank doesn’t really mean anything, as long as people think it does it will continue to generate traffic and income. So should I educate everyone with blog posts like this, or should I just let the traffic and money come rolling in? Please answer by leaving a comment, and in the process you’ll give yourself a PageRank 5 backlink – which is why you came here in the first place, wasn’t it?
The post The April Google PageRank Update and Why I Don’t Care (But You Do) appeared first on Barry Wise NJ SEO and Marketing Consultant.