PR is not an accurate measure of a companys success, as they may have other sources such as word of mouth etc.

Also how important should pagerank really be as a measure of SEO success?

We are a web design company offering web design and SEO services for msll businesses. Our domain name is fairly new, about 7 months old so we only have a pagerank of 3 to 4 for our website pages. Considering our domain name is fairly new and we have not yet received a DMOZ listing, will our pagerank of 3 really be a measureof our true abilities?

Inspite of our page rank we have page1 rank in bit Google and Yahpp searches for about 4 or 5 keyword phrases and receive on an average 3 clients a month purely fro, Google searches.

As we only have a page rank of 3, does this still imply that we lack SEO skills?

Some very interesting comments on here. We also would like to be added to your SEO list.

Thanks very much,

Judith
owner/seo & internet marketing specialist

Knowallmedia have a server that has been hosting websites since 1998 (Colbalt blue thing). Its IP address has never change. Just hosting any website on the server automatically (within 3 months) gives it a page rank of 2.

Its my opinion that Google started Pr as a serious way of ranking websites and then had to alter course as blogging took off to such a large way that it had to rethink the whole process of judging a website by links to

cheers

Many thanks

Melissa

Hope you’re doing well. Perhaps you could add us when you get a mo? It’s http://www.rapidblue.co.uk :-)

PR and Alexa ranks are indicative of how well ranked an SEO firm is but, the true test is to run is a SERP report for the companies listed. There’s not much point in having a high PR if you don’t list on page-1 of Google for your services.

See – BigMouthMedia – the reason they do well in business is because they rank well for phrases like ’search engine marketing’ and ‘online marketing agency.’ Punters that need SEO don’t necessarily type ‘SEO’ into a search engine….

…..think about it….. & optimise your web business to what your prospects are after. It works for us.

Just a little bit of fun, winner will be decided on 1st December 2007

I know what you’re saying about SEO firms needing to get a high PR and all that but I would argue that these firms are more interested in their own ego’s rather than their clients needs

http://www.digeratimarketing.co.uk

Also i have : http://www.websitedevelopmentcompany7.com

Scott :)

We are a UK based SEO specialists.

Many thanks in advance, Lee

Finally found http://www.webpresence.tv, would reccomend them. Just very honest, unlike others we have tried

Got to agree with Matt, regarding his point on hiring an SEO company based on their Alexa ranking.

Word of mouth in my opinion is one of the best ways of generating business, outside of online sources, as well as thorough evaluation of practises, reviews etc.

Just to join in the discussion – I certainly wouldn’t base a decision to hire an SEO company based on their PR/Alexa ranking etc.

If you’re looking to hire an SEO ask for the ranking of current clients, and call the clients up to make sure they’re happy and that they were delivered what they were promised. Any company with nothing to hide will be quite happy to hand out a couple of current client numbers (with their approval of course!)

However, I will be doing an update where I will list all UK SEO companies with the updated PR.

People reading this post should realise the data is out of date.

Thanks for the update – much appreciated – just one more wee tiny thing we have a PR of 5 not 4.

Thanks Again,

Paul

I keep meaning to get round to building a Directory of SEO, yeah I know, ironic as I have just slagged off old skool directories.

I do have some ideas about giving it a little web 2.0 magic

Paul well done, you are 2nd for seo company in Google UK

What’s the chances og having my company added to the list, I noticed that you said web designers will not be added but I have driven the company to offering SEO and SEM as a proper service and our business model is now seeing these ourselves offering seo friendly websites.

Plus over the last 3 months I have worked my butt off to see us gain top ranking for the following keyword phrases:

seo company
uk seo company
seo company scotland
seo evaluation

Still, I like looking at my own Alexa ranking. Coupled with other data it has its use.

It’s getting to be a cliche, “but Alexa Data can be skewed.” Sure it can, and if you know that you can apply it to your assesment of the data and come out with something useful.

Personally I wouldn’t get too hung up on Google PageRank or Alexa. In the end its the value of the traffic you generate for your clients that really counts.

I definately think there’s room for almost market place of SEO consultants, where there can be a sort of peer review so potential clients can see who the UK industry highly regards and who they think are scamsters a bit like the http://www.whoisagap.com but for SEO.

Well Volunteered though…

I would also like to apply editorial controls and weed out the ones I feel are offering a poor service. I might start a UK SEO directory, but a straight directory would be boring and I am sure has been done elsewhere.

It does mean more work though, megh!

Will someone please design a widget I can add a bunch of urls to and it spits out the PR and Alexa instantly, add backlinks, whois and age and it would be a winner.

I mean it can’t be hard to do, if you are one of those hairy programmer types.

is not a UK company

All domains were checked on the same tool, the Google toolbar and the Search Status tool.

These say it’s a PR 3.

For purposes of the test the data produced is a result of the same method.

I leave it to you to interpret the data how you will.

http://livepr.raketforskning.com/?u=www.searchlatitude.com/

If they are not on the list that only means they were not within the parameters I set. It in no way suggests they are crap SEO, it just means that they are not on the list and nothing else should be infered.

I’m intrigued who you wouldn’t touch with a barge pole. There are some “BIG” companies who I think fit that bill. If you want to tell me msn me at lyndonantcliff at hotmail.com ;)

If I could afford Mr Naylor, then he would be my top pick too, but for different reasons. He is a name I know and his reputation preceeds him; his writings have been of great help to me in the past and I know (without resorting to manipulatable statistics) that he is very good at what he does.

It is not a coincidence that David Naylor has a good PageRank, but I doubt he spends much effort in getting it; his PR value is ‘honest’ if you like, in that it comes to him rather than him seeking it out. Some companies on that list take some interesting measures to get the PageRank that they have.

There are a couple of companies in the top five that I wouldn’t touch with a barge-pole. There are also a few companies that I would consider (by reputation) in the bottom 30% or that aren’t listed at all.

I am not saying that these statistics are irrelevant (maybe I should have been clearer); what I am saying is that reputation speaks louder than numbers and that people shouldn’t be put off by an SEO company that doesn’t have the best-ranking website out there. David Naylor has the reputation and the numbers; many others have one but not the other.

To me, a website of an SEO company is part of it’s brand. No matter what of our opinion of PR and Alexa, they are metrics that are freely available to the public.

When that metric is applied to the brand it has an effect.

If you are of the opinion that the list makes absolutely no sense then answer me this. If you could have any of the companies work on your website for free who would it be?

My hunch is that it wont be any of those in the lower half. Personally, I would chose Dave Naylor.

Is it a coincidence that he has a high PR and a high Alexa. Does he spend all his time on beefing up his own ranking, or is he that high because he is bloody good at what he does?

Would you employ a mechanic whose car always broke down?
Or a plumber whose house was always flooded.

I stand by what I said, if you cannot get a good PR and a good Alexa rank for your SEO company, then that reflects on you.

Of course, 50% of SEO companies will be in the lower 50% of any top list, so I would expect 50% of SEO companies on that list to disagree with me.

Have you noticed when people don’t get invited to the party they always say it’s rubbish anyway. :)

There are many SEO companies that use their client’s sites to link to their own without the client knowing. Others just spend extraordinary efforts in gaining links to boost their PR. I would rather they spend that time on my site as their client.

Any SEO company worth employing should have a reputation for success. This reputation is not dependant on their website, but the work they do with their clients.

I presume a lot of SEO companies get their clients from personally networking, pressing the flesh at Chamber of Commerce Thai Food nights. And of course the cold call. Brrrrr.

I won’t link to them, but the site is smart-traffic.co.uk.

They’ve been going 6 months and their excuse was that they’d been so busy working on their clients’ websites that they hadn’t had time to optimize their own.

But even the on-page optimization on their site seemed pretty poor.

For example, the title tag was the same on every page and they had the following in the meta keywords tag (give that that won’t have much of an effect anyway).

CONTENT=”get more customers to my website,get more business to my website,increase sales online,smart traffic”

One other site which should be listed is Freshegg.

Most of the sites not to produce fresh information, which is why I suggest that all SEO companies should have a blog producing interesting and useful articles.

I know some of them appear to producd news, but it’s of the, “yeah so what” variety that does not attract links.

A lot of the sites are more like glossy brochures designed to attract dim witted corporate types. Most of these sites do not even have blogs let alone any social media optimisation element.

SEOmoz and SEObook both run blogs and they are both at PR 7. I wonder if a lot of these companies are scared of giving away the golden goose so to speak. They may think if they give away “free” information no one would pay for their services.

Very short sighted.

SEOmoz and SEObook also indulge in the black art of linkbait, hmmmm and they have a PR7. I wonder if there’s a connection?

Also, the leap from PR 5 to PR 6 is a lot longer than from PR 4 to PR 5. Going from 6 to 7 is an incredible leap and is demonstrable of dominating your industry.

Of course this is all theorising based on my experience as Google does not release much info regarding PR.

It is interesting though, taking a look at enterprise search engine optimisation companies and see that a lot of them are just not up to scratch.

I’m surprised the PR of companies like Neutralize is so low. I’m a web designer that knows a bit about SEO, but makes no claims to be an expert, and I’ve never really made a concerted effort to raise my page rank – and yet I’ve got a page rank of 5 on portfolio site, Web Design Cornwall, which has only been up for a year.

Neutralize have been up since 1999, I think, and yet they’ve only got PR 6. How is that possible?