Don’t Just Go For High Page Rank Links
We as humans always want the best… the top… the supreme… but in link building, that doesn’t always matter. Yes, if you can get some good PR 6+ links, it’s going to help you out in a pretty tough niche. But, if you have a fairly uncompetitive niche, then go for any backlinks. As many of you know, I am anti-Page Rank and I find it pretty useless.
But, just as you shouldn’t worry about your own site’s Page Rank too much (unless you are selling links), you shouldn’t worry too much about the PageRank of the page you’re getting links from. Here’s why… PageRank is fluid… just because the toolbar PageRank changes only every 3 months or so, Google has said that PageRank changes multiple times a day. A PR3 page that you hunted down may become a PR4 next update, or may go down to a PR2 at the next update, you never know. Many people don’t go for links on PR N/A or PR 0 pages… they think it’s a waste of time. But, you never know what those links will become at the next update. But, most likely, they will get a higher PageRank.
My buddy over at BlogBadly, wrote an article (based on an idea he “stole” from me) about How to Find High PageRank Dofollow Blog Posts. I used to use this method, but then realized that all of the new posts on a blog since the last PageRank update, will not show up using that method, yet those very well could get higher pagerank at the next update. Why should I pass those up… everyone is passing them up. Which means, when it does get a higher pagerank, more of that authority and more of that pagerank will be passed onto my site since there will be less links on the page to be divided among.
I’m not saying that going after higher pagerank links to your site is bad, but don’t make that your only focus. There could be some hidden goldmines… some hidden gems just waiting to be all polished up.
Tags: Link Building, page rank, seo
And by “stole” he really means “used a tool I found in his own original post idea without knowing I was going to do the post later but then didn’t because it would be too similar so instead he just gave me backlinks in the post.”
D:
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agreed that people place too much emphasis on page rank!
I fully agree, I typically shoot for sites that have high traffic because it means they will eventually be getting good PR by natural links (and therefore will have even better Google love).
Like you said, high page rank links are great for making money, I’ve actually made 120 in 1 day from my own site, my website died to a pr 0 because I didn’t build links for my arcade, but hey I made money when I had the chance
I completely agree with you… sometimes I search for blog posts that haven’t been given a pagerank yet… but the domain has a high pagerank or something like that… I know that later on down the line it will go up and be beneficial to my site
Most blog posts never get toolbar PR.
I think people get confused sometimes between the PR of the home page pf a site, and the page which their actual link appears on.
I couldn’t agree more, I am so sick of the so called “experts” out there advising people to carefully screen where links come from, how low pr links are worthless, I can guarantee you that if you compared my sites with theirs, I will always beat them – JUST BUILD LINKS EVERYDAY!! One-way, recips, directories, articles, social- JUST BUILD!
I’m still going to get those links from my daughter (and her friends) when they all start college in the fall. Rule of thumb is one “.edu” link is worth 100 (or maybe 1000) “com” links.
Until my EDU goldmine starts paying off, I’ll continue to build links!!!
I totally agree with this – the key is how to recognize those blogs that are new but have high potential. Any secrets?
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I could not have written this better. High toolbar PR means nothing in the link building scheme of things. Even “dofollow” isn’t that important if you go for ALL the search engines instead of just Google.
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I hate to say it, but I think I got lost in the hype (no pun intended, but that is totally my favorite phrase) somewhere with hunting for high pagerank links.. but it wasn’t until I wound up collecting lots of links from blogs that were so well linked that their pagerank shot up that it hit me. It’s nice to read a gut check like this every once in a while.
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Maybe because you sold links… Google gives people penalties for selling links.
Awesome… thanks man… you’re a good writer so your compliment means even more to me! Maybe let your readers know =) I could use some good exposure, even if it’s nofollow. I need to break the 300 subscribers mark.
Don’t worry. I can’t break 300 (at least not for long) either.
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It’s crazy… i just cracked 300 finally… i guess I just needed to speak on it publicly for it to happen….
yeah I have friends who get caught up in the PR game. I just tell them if you can get a good PR link then great, but don’t spend your time chasing PR links.
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Well, I didn’t really care about the sites’ PR and I will do the comments, if I think I have something to say about it…
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Glad to know that – I was turning into a pagerank snob! Ha, ha.
Thanks!
I agree that people overrate page rank way too much. Unless you’re selling links page rank isn’t going to get you lots of money, serps do!!
Pagerank means nothing to me in fact in my industry relying on placement in search engines is too large of a crapshoot there are many other ways to drive quality traffic.
I’d have to say that link building was rarely about Google placement for me. Yeah, I’d occasionally toss something in a directory and I did make sure I was in all the search engines. But I found that getting people to visit my blog through a natural link (rather than natural Google listings) did more.
I focused on putting links where people might actually click on them, regardless of what Google thought. Apparently Google liked it but readers liked it more.
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very true. many people go on link hunting without using their brains. many many sites use over linking for very small niche.
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you said you are anti-page rank but you talk about how to increase it
@daredashi – agreed, but link hunting isn’t bad if yuor trying to make a little cash fast.
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Is there a point to building links on personal webpages with 0 PR? A tad off topic but how many of you actually build backlinks on your clients site? Is it ethical?
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Wow! I just found your site browsing online here. What awesome info you share. Thank you so much!!!
Dude, I agree. I am a Tampa web designer. Lately I think too many people have focused more on the links and not enough to the content on the site. Provide valuable content and the hits will come.
As for finding the high pr links without the . I use google, quake vi and grep. Find all the high pr, then parse out the , whats left LOL is for me : )
I think the effectiveness of these links is all but gone anyway. To many people on to it.
I have a few other tricks up my sleeve for that : )
Any link is better than no link so I agree, there is no reason to say no to a link. It is als very true that the page rank varies but the link remains.
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i dont think page rank is so important…
i think more imporant is the post
Agreed.
Sometimes, I feet it’s better to have a page of “tight” links going out, this way G knows that your in this or that niche without a doubt as opposed to having inbound links that less “tight”.
By tight I mean more focused in your niche.
High pagerank of links doesn’t seem to play a great role in getting PR to the parent website. I read in a report that getting a link from a website with PR 4 with 25 outbound links is important that getting the link from a website with PR 7 with 200 outbound links. Does that make sense?
But,to have good PR you must have good High PR backlinks..
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I just compiled a list of thousands of directories, galleries, forums, article directories and other places to get links that will be published on our new blog. I got alot of the information from existing lists and some had the site PR marked down too. These lists were generally less than a year old and the PR on 90% of all sites had gone down. And others I found by organic searchs weren’t mentioned in any lists but had higher PR.
So basically your PR 1 link might be worth alot more than your precious PR 6 link a few months down the line.
So basically, agree with this post 110%. Sure, get the high PR 6 links but don’t not bother with a site just because it has low PR.
@Glenn Paul – The less links a page has the more juice is flowed through its links. So if a page has 200 links its juice is shared equally between the pages. But no-one knows the reall juice numbers and does 1/200th of a PR 7 count more than a 1/25th of a PR 4? I would say the PR 7 link would be ALOT more valuable even with its juice diluted.
And really, it matters not and that is what this article is about. That PR 7 might be a PR 6 soon and that PR 4 might be a PR 5. I’ve been heavily involved in link analysis lately and I have seen sites with 50,000 incoming links with PR 3 and sites with 1000 links with PR 5. The PR of the linking domain is a huge factor on the PR of the target domain. But it’s a fluid situation that can change at any time. Hence just build links because in the end QUANTITY is also counted in the Google algo as well as quantity.
I agree with you, it is many times a nice surprise to see that the lower rated links are growing in importance. Finding these links can be tricky business. However, if you comment on a blog because you really have something to say, it is a sign that the blog has valuable content. That could be a good sign for the future as the probability of the site being succesful is higher. Hence, lesson is to comment on blogs with valuable content.
You brought up some good pointers that I never considered, such as not knowing what the PR update might bring in.
It does make sense to post on low PR pages, as you said, you never know what the future will bring.
Obviously backlink from a high PR page definitely helps in improving SERP, but most of us forget that those pages reached to that PR starting with a “-” or no PR. There would have been a gradual increase in the rank and it didnt attain that stage all of a sudden. Likewise try to get backlinks irrespective of the PR. When google caches and recaches the pages there would definitely be a PR update and your link still adds value to your SERP. I remember reading somewhere.. “A link is always a link, no matter from where it comes” I stick on to that principle.
Regards,
Mack McMillan