It is a well known fact in the world of webmasters that you need lots of links in order to rank well in the search engine results pages. But no all links are worth the same, you can have 3000 links and rank higher than someone with 20,000 if your links are from sites of a better quality.
There are many things that affect how much a given link is worth but the main one that holds the most weight is the Page Rank or PR that Google has assigned the page youre receiving the link from.
Google basically gives every page it finds a rank from 0 to 10. This wont happen straight away because Google only reviews Page Rank (PR) every six months or so. The highest rank is of course, 10 and lowest is 0 however there are some pages that simply have no PR (the PR just reads as n/a) and these will probably be new sites that Google hasnt found yet, or a fairly insignificant page deep in the site, or in the worst case scenario it could mean that Google has blacklisted that site. PR 10 sites are very rarely seen (except google.com) as there are only around 9 in existence.
So what benefits does a high PR present? Well, if you can get a link from a PR 6, 7 or even 8 site, then that will have a much bigger effect of your sites results ranking than a link from a PR 1 or 2 site. PR is basically, how valuable, important, up to date and genuine Google thinks the content of a page is and links basically count as votes to say that a site is worth visiting. So if youve got a PR8 site telling Google that your site is worth visiting (i.e. linking to you) then Google will start to favour your site much more.
A common misconception in the SEO world is that Google PR directly helps you get higher in the results rankings. The truth is it doesnt. It is extremely valuable however because once you start achieving good PR, people will want links from you, and because the link you will be giving them is of high quality, you can request a high quality link back.
There is almost a catch 22 situation when you first start trying to get your site some PR in that the main thing you need in order to acquire a good PR is quality links. The problem with this is that before you have any PR, people are going to be unwilling to give you a quality link because you wont be able to offer them one back. There is a way around this, but it takes time.
A good way to start your campaign for high quality links is to find sites like yours, not necessarily theme related (although this does help) but sites that are relatively new and are eager to get links. These sites will be a good starting point for your linking because in six months to a years time these sites will have some PR (probably no more than 2 or 3 but thats still well worth having) and so in the long term will be highly beneficial to your sites search engine rankings, and your PR, meaning you can start exchanging links with higher and higher PR sites.
Links are not the only thing that count when building PR, something else that we know counts towards it is how often the content is updated. Content that is updated on a regular basis hold far more weight with Google than content that is left the same.
This is because the content will appear to have gone stale after a while; after all, news wouldnt be news if it was old! Google likes to be able to give its searchers the most up to date and relevant information it can, and so sites that are regularly updated will be given preference.
There are many things that affect how much a given link is worth but the main one that holds the most weight is the Page Rank or PR that Google has assigned the page youre receiving the link from.
Google basically gives every page it finds a rank from 0 to 10. This wont happen straight away because Google only reviews Page Rank (PR) every six months or so. The highest rank is of course, 10 and lowest is 0 however there are some pages that simply have no PR (the PR just reads as n/a) and these will probably be new sites that Google hasnt found yet, or a fairly insignificant page deep in the site, or in the worst case scenario it could mean that Google has blacklisted that site. PR 10 sites are very rarely seen (except google.com) as there are only around 9 in existence.
So what benefits does a high PR present? Well, if you can get a link from a PR 6, 7 or even 8 site, then that will have a much bigger effect of your sites results ranking than a link from a PR 1 or 2 site. PR is basically, how valuable, important, up to date and genuine Google thinks the content of a page is and links basically count as votes to say that a site is worth visiting. So if youve got a PR8 site telling Google that your site is worth visiting (i.e. linking to you) then Google will start to favour your site much more.
A common misconception in the SEO world is that Google PR directly helps you get higher in the results rankings. The truth is it doesnt. It is extremely valuable however because once you start achieving good PR, people will want links from you, and because the link you will be giving them is of high quality, you can request a high quality link back.
There is almost a catch 22 situation when you first start trying to get your site some PR in that the main thing you need in order to acquire a good PR is quality links. The problem with this is that before you have any PR, people are going to be unwilling to give you a quality link because you wont be able to offer them one back. There is a way around this, but it takes time.
A good way to start your campaign for high quality links is to find sites like yours, not necessarily theme related (although this does help) but sites that are relatively new and are eager to get links. These sites will be a good starting point for your linking because in six months to a years time these sites will have some PR (probably no more than 2 or 3 but thats still well worth having) and so in the long term will be highly beneficial to your sites search engine rankings, and your PR, meaning you can start exchanging links with higher and higher PR sites.
Links are not the only thing that count when building PR, something else that we know counts towards it is how often the content is updated. Content that is updated on a regular basis hold far more weight with Google than content that is left the same.
This is because the content will appear to have gone stale after a while; after all, news wouldnt be news if it was old! Google likes to be able to give its searchers the most up to date and relevant information it can, and so sites that are regularly updated will be given preference.
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