Interestingly enough, the need for mod_rewrite, html extentions, and PR are all becoming devalued in all the newer SE algorythms. 6 months ago a PR 7 would get you super high rankings because PR was so heavily factord into rankings. Up until a few months ago having clean URLs was extremely important. Now, anchor text is huge- links from quality related sites (or even unrelated if you use good anchor text) tells all the major SEs what your site is about. It is called "Offpage SEO". A good example of this can be seen on google by doing a search for miserable failure. Although that text is nowhere on that top page of the SERPs, apparently enough people have links from their sites that say this page is the most relevant for that keyphrase.

Dani has done an outstanding job in link building, which probably has a lot to do with this forum's popularity. I know since I started my campaign I have probably run into her at least 5 times in different places online in the past 2 weeks.

Do you think that those old techniques will eventually become important again? I remember reading somewhere that the reason that Google doesn't like query strings in URLs (despite its ability to correctly parse them) is because in infinitely large dynamic sites, the spiders and crawlers tend to get stuck in infinite loops reaching the same pages over and over again. I'm sure that Google has implemented algorithms into its spiders similar to BGP (the way that network packets travel through various routers of the Internet to reach their destination, without getting lost in loops).

So you're saying that PR is becoming devalued in the newer SE algorithms? Does this mean that it is not money efficient to spend money on PR and backlinks right now? Isn't PR Google's trademark search algorithm? I would think that Google would simply just make it consistantly harder to obtain a high PR.

Perhaps if Google rotated the weight of each constituent of its search algorithm, it will ensure that high ranking sites have a bit of everything.

The term "devalued" was incorrectly used- I meant "depreciated". Just like the good ole font tag. Google still does rather parse a clean URL, especially ones with less than 3 variables, but it is much less important than it used to be. Google, Ink, and Yahoo all have no trouble if there are querystrings.

Dani you are definitely not wasting money by link building. In fact, you are doing a great job at it. Offpage optimization is bigger than ever for all SEs. You tell the SE what you are about by the links from other sites to yours almost as much as you tell them what you are about with your copy. Building links is a wonderful thing, because it helps your offpage optimization, increases PR (which impresses link traders more than google), and most importantly... it creates way more ways for actual people to find you.

PR is not as important as it was prior to the florida update (the big shakedown this past Fall) but it still plays a role in Googles algo. They won't lose it entirely for a lot of reasons, one of which the marketing and another is the proliferation of the google toolbar.

A good example of why PR is less important is my site. I have a PR7 on the home page and lots of healthy PR 6 pages, and my main keyphrase is [Arizona web design]( <-**example of a google bomb) places me at number 33 in the SERPs currently. But the top spots are all sites with PR4s and PR5s, and a few directories that control your link text and force you to reciprocal link.

I don't know if G will re-preciate the mod_rewrite clean URLs or Page Rank, but you have the right idea to be pulling out all the stops. If all factors are equal and one page ranks exactly the same as you, and you have a higher PR or the cleaner URL, you get the higher slot. However, having a higher PR won't get you to the top on PR alone, and clean URLs are just less important than they used to be. It would be silly for advancing technology to force developers to revert to old methods, and I am sure the folks at the big three have all figured that out by now.

This article will help clarify what I meant about the PR thing.

http://www.axandra.com/news/newsletter111.htm

As I had expected, PR is less important than some think.