In a recent post on the Google Webmasters Blog Susan Moskwa, reminds us that PageRank is not a relevant performance indicator, and hasn’t been so for some time. Ms. Moskwa goes on to state that though Google has made this point clear on multiple occasions, webmasters and SEO “experts” continue to use PageRank as a means to judge the success of their site.
Back in the pre-millennium days of search, the PageRank algorithm set Google apart from the rest of the pack by introducing the idea of “popularity” into search results. Borrowing from the theory of citations in the world of academia, Page and Bren saw inbound links as being indicative of a site’s importance and authority on a particular topic. In essence each link to a page counted as a vote of confidence on that pages authority and relevance for a particular keyword.
When looking to understand SEO it is important to keep in mind that sites are judged by search engines based on two overarching criteria: Is the site relevant to the search term & is the site popularly cites (linked to). Ms. Moskwa states that too often webmasters and peddlers of search, get locked into focusing on PageRank as “it’s easy to graph your PageRank over time…not so with relevance.” Often we as online marketers can get distracted tracking one metric which can lead to missing out on what is SEO is really about: Appearing in front of searchers at the moment they are looking to engage with your offering.
Its important to remember that there is no one metric that is going to tell you how your website is performing. Ms. Moskwa suggests using Clickthrough Rate, Bounce Rate or Conversion Rate to help determine the health of your website. Remeber every website is different, and each one will have various metrics, segments, and goals data that act as key performance indicators. Work with the your analyst, webmaster, consultant and the various stakeholders in your company to come up with a some benchmarks to help measure the success of your SEO, Conversion and various online endeavors. Remember you can’t improve what you fail to measure, so take some time and find what the keys to your online success are.