In spite of the Google Webmaster team’s repeated appeal to webmasters asking them not to focus too much on Page Rank, the entreaties seem to have fallen flat. For many webmasters, it continues to be an important benchmark and an imperative statistic that needs to be achieved, at all costs. Even site owners that aren’t too aware about the ins and outs of search engines and website optimization show concern for their PageRank.

PageRank is important, but it’s time that you started looking at various other actionable options that are more relevant and better placed to improve your website’s search engine ranking.

PageRank – A part of a much larger system now!

When PageRank was first introduced as a part of Google’s ranking algorithm, there was no doubt that it was its backbone. It was developed by Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the founders of Google. But, back then, the search engine system was much smaller compared to what it is today. There are many other actionable metric that make up the exhaustive and comprehensive Google system, today. In 1998, when Google introduced PageRank it was what helped this search engine stand apart from the rest of its competitors. But, as competition increased, new improvements were made to the ranking systems. Close estimates suggest that up to nine improvements are being made on the search algorithm every week. You can imagine the rate at which Google, ranking system has grown over the years. What this means is that PageRank is no longer the be all and end all of ranking.

Relevance is Now King

It’s surprising that even though Google has made no bones about the fact that it considers relevance as the key quality needed for great search results, people still focus on PageRank as that one ingredient that will guarantee top SERPs. The reason behind this phenomenon is not very hard to find. PageRank has a number, while you can’t quantify relevance. Both, PageRank and Relevance are based on factors such as popularity, reliability, context, and searcher intent; but because you can quantify PageRank, it becomes easier for webmasters to create professional documents that can be presented to their clients. PageRank is easier to track that is why it’s popular.

But, is this what you really need?

The answer in clear terms is No. It’s important not to see PageRank as an end goal. The fact that a good PageRank helps a website make more money is based on a whole list of assumptions First, you need to assume that a high PageRank means, better ranking, then you assume that this will drive traffic to your site; after that you need to assume that visitors will come to your site and do whatever it is that they are supposed to be doing on your site. The problem in making these assumptions is that Google only updates the PageRank that is displayed on the Toolbar, a few times in a year. So, what you see as a high PageRank might not necessarily be the PageRank that the Google algorithm is looking at.

So, it’s far better that you search for those metrics that have a direct bearing on your business objective and further your goals.

Metrics that should be Tracked

There are plenty of other metrics that you could track. Choose those that offer maximum meaningful gains for your website. Don’t just focus on ranking signals, and consider the kind of metrics that are updated on a daily or weekly basis.

• CTR (Click Through Rate)

In organic search results, the click through rate is the amount of times people actually click on your website, when it’s displayed on the search engine results page. If your website has a high CTR, it means your site is getting visitors, but a low CTR means that visitors are not clicking on your site in spite of it’s rankings. This problem can be sorted out by ensuring the site’s titles and snippets are compelling enough and that they are an accurate representation of the content of each URL of your website.

• Conversion Rate

If a visitor does what he/she is supposed to do on your site, then it’s called a conversion. It could be anything from buying a product or service, downloading brochures or even signing up for mailing lists. This is one of those metrics that directly helps your business goals. This is because when there is a conversion, your business is experiencing a quantifiable benefit from the same, as opposed to your PageRank, that cannot be measured accurately.

• Bounce Rate

Now here’s a situation that you don’t need. A visitor does come to your site but doesn’t do anything meaningful. So, a bounce rate is actually a percentage of those visits to your site where the visitor does not perform any constructive activity and just bounces out of your site. They just visit your site, have a look and leave. By checking the bounce rate, you can analyze the reasons for this occurrence and update or modify the underperforming pages of your site.

These are just three web metrics that are far more action centric than PageRank. Digging deeper into the benefits of these and other metrics will definitely give you a fair idea as to why its time to move beyond PageRank. This does not mean that you don’t consider PageRank at all, but make sure that PageRank does not form the foundation of your search engine optimization efforts.

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