Does PageRank Matter?

Google's PageRank, the little green bar that appears in the Google Toolbar for every site, garners a lot of attention. In days gone by, search engine optimization (SEO) was largely about getting a higher PageRank with 10 out of 10 being the best rating. Overtime, the importance of PageRank has diminished, which isn't to say that it doesn't matter anymore. Rather, it is now seems to be just one factor among many factors that is used by Google to determine what sites to show in response to search queries.

Still, even with it's diminished value, you would think that a PageRank of 0 would result in poor rankings for keywords with even just a little competition. However, that's not the case. A co-worker of mine pointed out to me that for the term "search engine optimization", it is still possible to obtain a first page ranking. At the time of this writing, SEO Inc. held the #10 spot and according to the Google Toolbar it has a PageRank of 0. On the second page of results, at position 12, we have Jill Whalen's (a well known and white-hat SEO) site, HighRankings.com which has a PageRank of 6.

Now I can't answer how an SEO company that has been in business for years and has had a site that archive.org shows to have been around since at least 2002 has managed to obtain a PageRank of 0 (I guess they're not friends with Matt Cutts), I think this is strong evidence that if all of the other SEO cylinders are firing, there is still opportunity to obtain impressive rankings.