I remember a few years ago when PageRank was the talk of town. Folks were literally stay up late at night, kept loading up their pages with Google Toolbar on to figure out whether their PR was moving up or down. Of course, PR has changed since those days, and the update cycles are longer than just a few days. So, if your PR is currently 2, there is a good chance it will stay on that number for the foreseeable future.

Google just updated the PR a few weeks ago, and all of sudden we had folks jumping up and down, claiming glory or foul. I am still amazed by the number of folks who believe PR actually matters. If you are a SEO, you want to pretend it does matter. But in reality, I haven’t paid attention to my PR for as long as I can remember (and why should I when Google keeps slapping my pages ).

PR still does matter if you are planning to sell your domain. Domain brokers still pay attention to your PR, and you can get some nice compensation for PR 4,5 domain. That doesn’t mean PR 1 domains are not great to own, but in reality, if some-one’s starting a business, and they want to turnaround your domain, they rather get it when it has a high PR. But if you are not planning to sell your domain anytime soon, just ignore PR. Get back to the basics: Great content + On page factors + Links. PR will usually follow naturally.

I remember the day I heard about Text Link Ads a few years ago. I was surfing a couple of popular blogs and I saw an ad about Text Link Ads and how they can help you rent link on high PR sites. That’s way before Google decided to obliterate these guy on the SERPs. But it has been quite sometime since these guys got ranked for their own name.

Google does allow them to advertise (which is so nice of them as Google still wants your cash even if your service can’t get ranked high on the SERPs), but it has gone way overboard trying to stop these guys from selling links. I am not a link buyer, and I never recommend buying links (even though in some cases it makes sense). But I strongly believe that Google will penalize sites that talk about Text-Link-Ads in a positive manner. I knew the risks before I ran my story a few months ago, and it seems I have finally gotten what I was hoping for. A Google PR slap.

I am a SEO guy. I don’t like to be paranoid. But it is mind boggling to me to go from PR 3 to 0 on this site even though I have not done anything Black Hat. All my blogs, even the ones I don’t pay attention to, have gained PR with the latest Google PR update, but this site has been dropped dramatically. Does it matter? Not really. I don’t have much respect for Google’s algorithm and their ways of milking the consumers for money any way. And to be honest, PR doesn’t matter these days as it used to. So I am at peace with this whole thing.

For Google to slap sites for discussing things they don’t like is incomprehensible. Google has been milking us marketers by introducing bogus factors, but how dare them take my PR away What’s your take? Did you manage to improve your PR with the latest update?

Press releases are one of the best ways to get incoming links to any website. Along with article marketing, PRs are the probably one of the most consistent ways to help folks get media coverage and traffic to their sites. But I am still surprised by how folks go after free press releases and looking for bargains on PR sites. Don’t they get that you get what you pay for?

A couple of years ago, it would’ve been possible to use a free press release to get decent coverage on the search engines. But now PR companies realize that press releases are more important that once though, which is why you’d be hard-pressed to find free press release sites. They are out there, but they are either of low quality or they don’t provide you with the ability to add your own link. I don’t believe in any coverage being good business when it comes to SEO. Let’s not forget that you do PR to get media exposure and back-links. Anything less than that is not satisfactory.

A lot of folks ask me why they don’t get coverage on sites such as Reuters. The truth is you’ve got to work with the big boys and pay the bucks to get coverage on those sites. PRNewsWire and PRWeb are two great PR services to work with. You will probably have to pay at least a hundred bucks to get the full coverage that can put your business over, but it’s all worth it.

At the end of the day, you want to make sure that your PR is interesting and unique. I hate PRs that put me to sleep, personally. Using the above two services is just one step along the way. You also want to make sure you submit decent content and include your link and accurate company information to get a bigger bang for your buck. Free press releases? Forget about them. They are not worth anybody’s time anymore (unless you value your time less than $7/hr).