PageRank alternatives

I used to have a stock answer of don't worry about it, worry about your site. Page Rank obsession reached near hysterical levels a few years ago, and Google has publicly been playing down it's importance ever since. They now state it is just one of over 200 signals that decide on where you end up in the index.

Matt Cutts stated recently there wouldn't be a tool bar pagerank update for ages, again confirming it's decline, then out of no-where we get a Pagerank update, and everyone wakes up again and starts obsessing

I wish they would either scrap it, or stand by it. Having a visual indicator of a sites standing is useful, but is pointless and dangerous if there's no consistency or reliability behind it.

I agree Moz domain authority is a better indicator, but for those who don't want a Moz subscription, I'd still say don't worry about it.

Use free tools like WMT to track your indexing or flag any issues. Use your analytics to monitor traffic and analyze your strong and weak pages.

Our directories bounce around from PR3 to PR 4's to PR3's, but actual traffic volume and conversions remains constant. When we did dip in traffic last May after a penguin update, the PR stayed the same, and has when the traffic came back.

For vanity, I want to be a PR9 site, but financially I only care about revenue, and when that dips, thats the only indicator I need that something needs fixing

Unfortunately, it's our fault, too. We've been so obsessed with keyword density, backlinks, posting everywhere our website, doing everything we could to get better pagerank.

On the other hand, the spammy websites, clogging up search lists have in most cases gone and we need to show some more effort to promote our businesses (it's positive, after all).

Google claims that Social Media play vital role in rating the page under the new scheme - it worked in my cases, have you thought about that?