Recently I visited a webmaster forum where everyone was obsessing about Google’s recent update to the PageRank system. Quite a few people saw a drop in their site’s ranking including me. This site dropped 1 point to a PR5. At first, I was upset and wondered what I had done wrong. Then I decided to check my site’s stats. In September and October, my site’s traffic increased. I’ve acquired some new clients, and new subscribers to this blog. So the lower PageRank did not affect me adversely really and I was upset for nothing.

So what is more important than PageRank? Here’s what I think is crucial:

• Consistently updated quality content to attract return visitors
• Proper use of keywords in titles and content
• Placement: how many of your pages are in the top 10 search results for targetted keywords so that people find your site?
• Your traffic stats tell a story: number of unique visitors increasing.
• Implementing off-line advertising methods.

The bottom line is this, don’t get caught up with all the hype of the latest and greatest SEO craze, including PageRank. There are plenty of other ways to be productive and more important areas to focus your attention on.

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