Yes, PR Matters

Less than a decade ago if you mentioned the term “PR” to mostly anyone they would have thought you were talking about public relations or perhaps a press release. Today, PR is used widely by those of us who have our own websites and are actively seeking to build them up by bringing in more traffic. We understand PR to represent the term “Page Rank” as in a system invented by perennial search engine king Google to measure our site’s performance.

Recently, I read a thread on a webmaster forum where someone stated there was too much emphasis being put on PR. Immediately, I responded to his comments by writing back to tell him that PR is very important and for the following reasons:

1. Your Page Rank tells visitors to your site how important your site is.
2. You can charge advertisers more for ads placed on your site. Advertisers want to know that they are getting the maximum bang for their buck — why would someone want to waste ad money on a PR3 site when a PR7 site can give better returns?
3. Certain “pay per post” schemes value a blog based solely on page rank.

One thing to know about page rank is that it is simply a snapshot in time meaning that Google will pick one day to visit your site, assess it, and assign it a rank that it will keep for two or three months time.

So, if you are concerned about page rank get your site in order as the next Page Rank update should occur around the first of the year.