I agree – PageRank is definitely another signal people have historically paid far too much attention to. I don’t ignore it completely – no PageRank on an established site, especially if it’s got plenty of backlinks, is a good signal that the site has been slapped by Google for selling or buying paid links – but overall it means little else.

No shame in your game, (LOL!).

Got what you were trying to say and the point behind your post..

Just wanted to reinforce it with my own sort of “captain obvious” logic (LOL!).

I just find it hard to get the point you make below – to some people that I know..

“The bottom line here is that rankings themselves never amounted to much more than a pretty report and boasting rights. Sure, you got that #1 position you were gunning for – but did you earn anything other than pride from it?”

And pride does goeth before the fall!..

Great blog Mike..

Robert The Wholesale Products Guy

Traffic stats and, ultimately, measuring how it all ties in to sales and actual revenue of course should be the focal point.

I will take a pagerank of 1 as long as the keywords I was focusing in on converted to dollars. I really don’t place much emphasis on the number of long tails either, unless it is a competitive niche or I want to build a large site.

But, in terms of just marketing an affiliate product or one of my own making, if I can find just ten keywords – or keyword phrases that were “money” I would be satisfied.

Another interesting article along the same lines is this from DoshDosh.com..

Google PageRank Doesn’t Matter. Can We Stop Talking about it Now?
http://www.doshdosh.com/google-pagerank-doesnt-matter/

Robert C. – The Wholesale Products Guy

it’s been one of my observations lately that fewer web users search on broad general terms. As more people become web conversant it’s vital that businesses focus on the business available on their doorstep.
As a result, for quite some time I’ve begun to ignore pagerank in favour of targeted traffic and I’ve been suggesting the same to my clients. I’m glad you’re helping to spread the word.

Cheers,
Karl
Training in the Midlands UK

p.s. I enjoyed your article in Sitepro News about CMS, I build all of my sites using Drupal.