Many, many web and SEO experts are obsessed with Google’s PageRank and the factors that contribute to it. After all, if you have a higher PageRank, you get better organic search results over other websites.

However, its important to remember that PageRank is a link analysis algorithm, that primarily serves the purpose of validating your “popularity” based on incoming links. It is not the only criteria, and I do not believe it should ever be the most important criteria for getting good organic search listings on a search engine result page (SERP).

Nonetheless, I believe that too much focus on PageRank is bad practice in search engine optimization because, as it stands today, its not as authentic as it should  (and I hope it one day will) be.

Google’s Algorithm assigns various weights to different factors of a website’s inter-connectedness to the rest of the ‘webisphere’ to determine its popularity, and therefore PageRank.

Personally, I do not think that the weights and importance assigned for PageRank are at the point where it should have enough importance in Google’s overall indexing algorithms to deliver the best possible content for a search query.

For example, over 40% of the weight of the algorithm is said to be assigned to external links coming into your site.

According to SEOMoz, the anchor text of external links to a page equates to about 20% of Google’s algorithm and the link popularity of a specific page (measured by incoming links) equates to about 22% of the page rank factors.

Though I believe external inbound links should be an important part of ranking, the weight assigned to it is by far to high in my opinion. Here’s why: It is the most abused and under-regulated criteria.

Link baiting, link farms, link directories, and many other techniques are used to ensure one-way inbound linking to websites. In my opinion, any technique that is used to only effect page rank, degrades the purpose of the search engine, and is unethical, ie: black hat techniques.

There is much debate as to whether it is or not, but I would like to see less weight put into this factor in PageRank because of the abuse that is out there.

In my opinion, Page Rank should be used as maybe 10% of Google’s overall algorithm to evaluate the relevancy of a website and match it with a user’s query.

I believe the largest weight that should be assigned to the indexing of a domain are in the following descending order:

1. Depth and Breadth of Content (Relevancy) 40%.

   Content should always be the largest weight. After all, that is what people really want, content that relates to what they are looking for. This would include meta optimization and content that is optimized, but also meets industry standards and doesn’t ‘over do it’.

2. Site Architecture and Internal Links 30%.

   I believe this needs to be a higher weight because its the most useful factor for usability and finding relevant content on a website. Google should give more weight to clean, well designed sites by giving more weight here. This would really help to “Clean Up the Web” and reach many more sites that are standards compliant.

3. Recency of Content 10%.

   I like the fact that blogs get indexed high because of their recency of postings. Social media has pushed the envelop of real time search even further. I do not recency should outweigh the type of content however.

4. The Rest of It (less than 10%)

   All the other factors here that currently have way to much weight in the algorithm including: external inbound links, traffic volume, age of site, etc.

I doubt that Google is listening, but I can always dream for a day when the algorithm cannot get abused as much by seo hacking techniques and content can really be measured and given the weight that it deserves.

Yesterday’s blog post on SEOMoz about the lack of penalty lately in Google for “Webspam” prompted me to re-post this article, as it seems to be a growing concern that “Webspam” and link issues with websites are not being regulated as much as the rest of us “white-hat” marketers would like.

I find that helping clients achieve thier business goals, without obsessing over page rank and hacking the system produces more authentic websites and better leads.