Is page rank useless or important?

"Got spanked", this is the term some bloggers and website owners use to describe their web sites and blogs which have been penalized by google. Bloggers whose sites have been "spanked" either lost or decreased their page ranks and usually attribute this to the practice of selling of links from their sites.

A site's page rank is supposed to show how a search engine, google in particular, values a particular site based on the number and quality of links that it receives. Unfortunately, following the "page rank dances", many web site owners and bloggers now consider page rank as an unreliable and useless site ranking system.

Question: Is the page rank system already a thing of the past or is it still important and bloggers should improve and "take care" of their page ranks?

Some blog sponsorhip companies like payperpost and sponsoredreview have their own means of ranking sites. It is evident though that site owners still prefer to get links from older sites with higher pager ranks. As such, web site owners who are selling links from their sites should really be cautious about their page rank or risk losing potential link buyers. Therealstats.info can provide useful tools for web site owners who would like to check out their page rank online as well as the age of their domain. The SEO tools are free but Professional Evaluation Reports can be availed for a more thorough information on improving a site's performance.

Fortunately, web site owners can do something about page rank penalties by learning and applying SEO in their websites. I have read several posts on the web saying that the higher a site's page rank is, the more likely is its post to appear in the first pages of the SERP. Based on my experience with several of my sites however, higher page rank does not necessarily mean more traffic and for those bloggers and websites who earn from their sites by selling products or offering services to their visitors or through pay per click programs, traffic, not the page rank is the key.

So is page rank useless or important? Yes or no. It depends on how you want to use or monetize your site. As for me, I have been focusing on my traffic lately and not on my page rank and it is quite obvious why, my site got spanked and I am not yet sure when google will bring me back some page ranks again.