Getting from PR4 to PR5? Stuck at 4.

[miracle]

My site has been stuck at 4 PR for nearly 3 years. I've been submitting links to other high pr sites throughout the years. Is the gap a lot bigger than going from 3 to 4 PR? Please share your experiences. Thanks in advance.

[CainIV]

Hello miracle. According to the principles of the formula for (the original)calculation of pagerank, the more websites introduced into the equation, the less pagerank each website will receive, all other items being equal.

However, they are not equal, and in this new day and age, there are many other factors, such as the limiting of pagerank passed over time, the ability of Google to prevent pagerank passing, and many other factors.

I won't say that pagerank is not important - more that is the result of a well promoted website.

In this day and age I would be shooting more towards traffic and conversion than looking at that specific number.

Has you overall website traffic increased over the 3 years? If so, that is definitely a good KPI to congratulate yourself for.

[tedster]

Is the gap a lot bigger than going from 3 to 4 PR?

The PR scale is approximately logarithmic, with each number or step being around six times as intense. And even though PR is displayed on the toolbar as eleven possible numbers (plus no number at all, or a gray bar) Google actually calculates PR to many decimal points on their back end.

So odds are, if your back links are growing - and especially if they are growing faster than your competition's - you are not "stuck" at PR4. Instead you're growing from 4.00001 to 4.20003 to 4.58223, etc.

[johnnie]

I know this doesn't answer your question, but who cares about PR these days except linkbrokers? The value is in trust, authority and thematically relevant in-content links. I've seen PR2/3s outrank PR5s on very competitive keywords. Ranking nowadays is a matter of getting your internal organisation straight, as well as getting connected within your niche.

PR is sooo 2003 ;)

[dstiles]

Page Rank is of no value at all as far as I can tell.

I accidentally discovered yesterday, and confirmed a few minutes ago, that a 13 year old domain name, superceded for 10 years and entirely 301-redirected to another domain for 6 years has a PR of 5. I doubt it's anything to do with back-links - google only gives about 35. On the other hand, the site it redirects to also has PR 5, also with 35 links.

Mind you, the primary domain does come in the top three for at least two of its key phrases. Which is surprising, as no changes to the site have been made in five years, it's a framed site, and well past time it was rebuilt.

[BillyS]

When we were PR6 we had about 10% of the traffic we have today at PR4. That said, PR is like the Richter Scale.

[sem4u]

I have a PR0 site that gets plenty of seasonal traffic. It ranks in the top 5 on Google for its main keyphrase. All it lacks is quality links really...and I do aim to gain these naturally as the site expands.