Recently in search engine optimization marketing, there has been a lot of fuss over Google’s PageRank (PR), mainly due to sites having a decreased PageRank. Google has its reasons for this, which can be found on his blog or on my article, ‘Paying the Price’.

For those who aren’t search engine optimisation specialists, PageRank is a collection of factors which judge your website on a scale of 0-10 of how important it is and one of the more powerful factors is inbound links to your website. Because the linking patterns hold so much weight, it means people are trying to increase their PR by paying for links and using other ‘below the belt’ methods.

Speaking with experts in search engine optimisation Hampshire, it seems many concentrate too heavily on PageRank and think it is one of the more important factors in the Google algorithm; the truth is nobody knows. Some even go as far to saying it is marketing strategy from Google and is only a myth or conspiracy and is to keep search engine optimisation specialists talking about it and bigging up and promoting Google without knowing it.

However, it surely must be important if Google invests so much time and money in to punishing paid links and apsning time depleting websites PR. The word ‘importance’ is key here; PageRank obviously is a piece of the ranking factor, but how much and how important is it? Google itself, even admits PR is one of many factors that is used to rank pages.

What search engine optimization marketing strategists need to focus on are good content, relevance in link building and the core rules of SEO. PageRank is not the be all and end all, but is a worthy indicator of what Google thinks of your site. The end all is how much traffic you have and how well you can convert this traffic. Look at PR, but stay focused on the end game, and that’s your bank account; don’t treat PageRank as some magic pill.

After speaking with other experts in search engine optimisation Hampshire, it has been agreed that the infamous DMOZ directory is extremely hard to get listed in. It is a system where it is moderated by volunteers and as search engine optimization marketing has grown in popularity and need, so has the people submitting to the directory.

After speaking with Dave Waldren, a search engine optimisation Southampton specialist, agrees that it can now take months or even as long as years to get accredited, but also thinks that the DMOZ directory is not as much as an important factor when getting ranked in the search engines.

It is still worth submitting too; it only takes a minute or too and if you are lucky enough to get in there!

Google have announced they are going to punish any businesses that purchase links on the Internet, whether it be paid submissions, deep links or sponsored listings, in order to influence and increase rankings in the SERPs. However, quality bought links from sites such as Joe Ant and Yahoo, for example will not penalised.

This is a well known fact, but Matt Cutts of Google has really made a point of stating that fact. The reason people don’t take it more seriously is because they think Google has no way of knowing and if they do find out the ‘Google Slap’ isn’t that bad!

Google has a reporting tool that angry and annoyed white-hat SEOers can report these paid links, as well as other more high-tech methods; Google is currently one of the biggest companies in the world and will not be fooled so easily.

Search engine optimization marketing guru’s and search engine optimisation specialists – be warned!

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