Is the importance of page ranking ranking lower than it used to? Yes, according to Google’s Matt Cutts. The holy grail of search marketing used to be figuring out which phrases ranked highest so that you garnered the most clicks with the least effort. But times have changed. In a recent interview, Mr. Cutts reported, the challenge is not to pay so much attention to ranking, pay attention to traffic, pay attention to conversions and keep building good content and don’t worry about ‘can I show people that I rank number one for my trophy phrase.”
That’s not to say that page ranking isn’t an important factor. It still is. But just because someone clicks over to your site doesn’t mean diddlysquat. Is that visitor converting? Is a sale happening? In the non-pixilated world, putting a “sale” sign on a retail storefront is enough to get people to take a peak. But that doesn’t mean the gawkers are going to buy whatever it is you’re hawking. Other factors come into play; the quality of what you’re selling, the price, the way it’s displayed, etc. The list of factors goes on and on. And so it is in the wonderful world of online retailing too.
“Paying attention to the content on your site, building good stuff, those are the things that will help. Not “can I get my PageRank higher with one more sprinkle of green fairy dust?”, says Mr. Cutts. But then again, there’s no real data on the effectiveness of green fairy dust. Or maybe there is; Matt’s just keeping it to himself.
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