Search Engine Optimization

Are You Hung-Up on Page Rank and Back Links?

It's unfortunate that many website owners are so hung-up on Page Rank, they'll rarely if ever, link to a site with a page rank lower than their own.

I'm frequently approached by other website owners who it's clear want to exchange links with one of my websites for no other reason than its Page Rank and so they can get more back links to their own website.

That's my experience with quite a few of my own websites. It's not until you get around a Page Rank 4 do back links come without you having to go and find them.

Back link requests tend to come more from sites with Low Page Rank wanting to improve search engine ranking by getting back links from higher ranking websites. They're also frequently from websites that offer no relevant content to your visitors and are from totally unrelated areas.

Many website owners have read a little about why and how to gain back links, then set about gaining as many as possible from any site that will give them one in return. They know it's important to gain back links, but what they forget or never knew, is it serves little purpose if they're of poor quality.

Poor Quality Back Links are from Unrelated Websites with Low Link Value.

I was reminded recently of the Google Page Rank obsession by one of my linking partners. I had advised them that because of some necessary changes to my website I had moved their back link to another page.

The website owner quickly emailed to tell me they had checked the page rank on the new page and finding it to be lower, advised me there was little point in them continuing to have a back link to my site.

Although we had been linking for over a year, it only served to prove they were not linking to my site because of its great content or because of its value to their visitors, but just for the Page Rank. When I advised them that their Page Rank check must have been in error because the page was the same PR as the previous one, they retained the back link to my site.

The obsession with Page Rank and how many back links a website has, led Google to put limits on this information.

For those of you obsessed with back linking by Page Rank you probably know that it only gets updated about every 3 months. Google also no longer reveals the true number of back links to a web site. Limiting information about back links is also something other search engines are starting to do.

An article of mine published on over 17,000 Websites

Gained only 4 back links in any of the major search engines.

I recently proved the limits placed on information about back links and the discounting of back links, after one of my articles got taken up on over 17,000 websites. Since the article has a back link to my website, in theory that should mean 17,000 back links to my website.

A popular tool for checking back links among other things was a software tool called Optilink. Its popularity became such a problem for Google that they set about trying to detect its electronic signature and then blocking it when people used it.

It looks as if in the past months, that Google have been successful, because Optilink has been disabled by the developer from conducting queries on Google for back links. It's also no longer able to do queries on back links with MSN or Yahoo and the only one left now is the minor search engine Hotbot.

I'm only telling you all this, because it proves how obsessed many website owners have become about checking for back links to their websites and checking Google Page Rank of potential and existing link partners.

But are these web site owners right to be hung-up about

Page Rank and Back Links and are you one of them?

What if I could prove to you that the value of back links from another website is not just about Page Rank. That in fact back links from Low PR sites could be of more value to you than back links from High PR sites. Would you believe me?

No, well if you want the proof you'll need to read another article called "How Low PR Web Sites Can Improve Search Engine Ranking" by Andy Theekson who advises on Search Engine Optimization.

The article shows how the value of back links from other websites is not just about Page Rank but also how many other outbound links there are from the same page.

It was possible to show how a back link from a PR 2 web page can be of equal or greater value than a back link from a web page with a PR 7, 8, 9 or even 10.

The article should be read by anyone who only looks for back links from High PR sites.

It's often said that people don't value what they get for free and only value what they have to pay for. This may also be true of back links since the website owners who value them the most will often buy links.

Many website owners who have the cash will buy links, or to be more correct with terminology, buy text links from websites with High PR pages. Some people would argue this is cheating and trying to buy links to improve search engine ranking.

The cost to buy text links varies widely from $5 to $30 per month for a PR 4 link up to $50/mnth for a PR 5 text link. They become progressively more expensive up to PR 8, when in some cases, you can expect to pay several $100's per month.

So why would people pay these prices to buy text links on high PR pages?

Is it for the traffic they expect to get by being on a high ranking and assumed high traffic page, or is it to gain from an improved search engine ranking for their own website?

If they want traffic there are cheaper ways, even if you include Pay Per Click where even at 50 cents per click your $1000 would give you 2,000 targeted visitors per month.

When you buy text links there are no guarantees you'll get traffic and you're paying for the text link not by the click but by the month, regardless of what traffic you get.

So I would suggest that someone who is going to buy text links obviously believes they're going to improve search engine ranking for their website.

But are people who buy text links getting value for money?

For the answer to that question you'll need to read the continuing part of this article "Can You Buy Text Links And Get Value for Money?"

Tony Simpson, advises on website design, promotion and optimization; in particular website automation for the one person operator. The continuing part of his article is at: Can You Buy Text Links And Get Value for Money?