Check out this video from the Search Engine Strategies (SES) conference where Andy Steggles of SitePR Tracker talks about the true value of PageRank, and what it should and shouldn’t mean for your site.
Andy stresses that PageRank in and of itself is not a tool for boosting search engine rankings. It is, however, a good barometer to gauge how Google perceives the quality of your pages, an issue that is becoming increasingly important as Google tweaks its algorithm for calculating quality score, and consequently adjusting minimum bid values based on the findings.
One of the major PageRank killers is duplicate content. If your site’s content is mirrored in a good number of other online sources, your PR will drop faster than Kevin Federline’s net worth. Therefore, it is vital that webmasters pay as much attention to the originality of their content as possible. If you have other users that submit content to your site, encourage them to put their own spin on things instead of simply scraping text from one site and pasting it on yours.
Above all, however, don’t invest the majority of your time obsessing over PageRank as the end-all, be-all of tools for achieving high search rankings. PR is only an indicator of quality, and therefore is just one cog in the wheel that drives the machine of search engine optimization.
