Backlinks: What to consider, PR of Home Page or Link Page?

[blitzen]

Hi,

When we transferred our site to a new software platform, the PR and other ranking stats plummeted (e.g. Alexa from 100k to 1.1M, Google PR 5 to zero). Another more important indication of loss of ranking is that our sales declined while keeping prices steady if not lowered ("cut in profits").

Our old site was the good-old manually created static HTML pages. The new site is now dynamic with it's own database.

After modifying the new program for SEO strategies (better meta tags, keyword density, remove session ids from the URL, W3C compliance, etc.) and adding mod-rewrite to generate SE-friendly pages, the Google PR is slowly creeping up from 0 to 2,3 (depending on the G data server and whether G is dancing) and other SEO tools are showing a slow recovery.

The old static site had no backlinks and fared better than the new one in the collection of ranking tools. The daily traffic (equate to "sales") was much higher with the old site than the new.

I'm thinking that the new site may need some valuable backlinks and am working on that now. I have a few questions to ask.

(1) My first question is what to look for in the other site where my link will be added. I look at the PR for the home page and it can be, say 6-7. I look at the PR for the links page where my link will be and it's zero.

(1a) Some have their links page linked on their home page. But when you try to find the actual links, my site could be 2,5,10 pages beyond the home page. Should I ignore these sites as potential backlinkers?

(1b) Should I disregard the websites that put my link on a page with a zero PR (or has another indication of a low ranking)?

(2) My second question: In lieu of trying to get the hundreds of little backlinks, would it be more valuable in the long run (i.e. sales) if I purchase an ad in 2-3 popular publications ($1k+/- each) that will include a link to my website on their website?

(3) Third, how valuable are links from webrings?

(4) Finally, I noticed that I have more links to my website that Google shows. Is it worth the time to submit these pages with my links to search engines?

Thanks for your valuable input!

[stymiee]

Originally Posted by blitzen

(1) My first question is what to look for in the other site where my link will be added. I look at the PR for the home page and it can be, say 6-7. I look at the PR for the links page where my link will be and it's zero.

Ignore the pagerank and look at the quality of the link instead. Is it from an ontopic page? Does the anchor text contain your keywords? These two factors far outweigh pagerank in terms of link quality.

And it is the PR of the page with the link that counts. Even then, ignore it, because that changes over time plus other factors affect how much pagerank you get. It's not worth worrying about.

Originally Posted by blitzen

(1a) Some have their links page linked on their home page. But when you try to find the actual links, my site could be 2,5,10 pages beyond the home page. Should I ignore these sites as potential backlinkers?

Take every link you can get. They all have value. See my above answer to decide on what is a quality link.

Originally Posted by blitzen

(1b) Should I disregard the websites that put my link on a page with a zero PR (or has another indication of a low ranking)?

See above.

Originally Posted by blitzen

(2) My second question: In lieu of trying to get the hundreds of little backlinks, would it be more valuable in the long run (i.e. sales) if I purchase an ad in 2-3 popular publications ($1k+/- each) that will include a link to my website on their website?

Maybe. Not all links are created equal. Links from on-topic pages that rank well for your terms that use your terms in their links are the best. Seek links that fit as much of that criteria as possible. But take every link that meets at least some of that criteria.

Originally Posted by blitzen

(3) Third, how valuable are links from webrings?

Virtually worthless. Webrings are "trash" and the sites that use them usually have little value from any perspective. I wouldn't waste my time with them.

Originally Posted by blitzen

(4) Finally, I noticed that I have more links to my website that Google shows. Is it worth the time to submit these pages with my links to search engines?

No. Google knows about them, They don't report all links they know about on purpose.

[Saurabh Uttam]

Originally Posted by Saurabh Uttam

This would help your query.

Hello,
As with my experience with search engines,

There is little use to get link from Links page for page rank improvement prospective. Search engines for identification purposes use links from directories and link pages even of high page ranks. Getting link from these directories help search engines to get information about new web sites, to identify their theme categorization purpose only. It is very important to select the most relevant categories, while submitting websites to directories.
For ranking purposes search engine takes lot many things under consideration. The best option is to get links from high page rank pages with very few outbound links. A high page ranked page have some credibility and it gets divided among the outbound links according to the placement of links, and relevancy of the links according to the field or subject of both sites. So its better to get a link from a PR 4site with few links than a PR 7 page with 50-60 outbound links and from website more relevant to your website.
Also try to be away for any techniques that are just meant to fool search engines, wont help now.

Try to get links from variety of websites relevant to your websites. You get most link benefit only when you have link from a page with its own PR, your link look natural and stays there continuously without deletation and look usefull to the visitors of that page. This is reason why google doesnot show all your links, till it confirms that your link is not a purchased ones and is not getting omitted from the page in due time.
It’s always suggested to shift site slowly not in one go. You disturbed your hard worked link structure, which were created naturally and with time.Now Its important to re- write your dynamic urls to Link friendly as well search friendly links which look like more natural to be linked or reached to.



(2) For your second question: Definitely.
This make more sense as these sites will have much more traffic than all the traffic combined from small sites. Would definately help in sales as well for boosting your search engine results and alexa ranking even.


I think if you go through my reply above, you get answers to all your queries as per my knowledge and belief.

[incrediblehelp]

Just one question from me, did you 301 redirect the old pages to the new ones?

[hhheng]

Only the page linked to you will help your PR. But the problem is that if a page has PR4+, most likely the webmaster will not use this page to link with others. So your choice will be only those higher PR homepage but lower pr link page, sooner or later, homepage will pass some pr to the inner page. Only takes some time.

For long term, you shall try to rank at the top in google instead of Ads. Forget my suggestion if you have a lot money.

[ctabuk]

I am slowly drawing the conclusion that many of you do not bother reading other posts on PR - you just have the GREENLINE GOD in your heads - well I suppose it keeps you happy - uninformed but happy.

[blitzen]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

Just one question from me, did you 301 redirect the old pages to the new ones?

During the site transfer, there were no redirect in the mod-rewrites - just the rewrites. About 2 months later, yes, 301 redirects. It's been about 3 months the 301's have been in effect.

Originally Posted by ctabuk

I am slowly drawing the conclusion that many of you do not bother reading other posts on PR - you just have the GREENLINE GOD in your heads - well I suppose it keeps you happy - uninformed but happy.

Be nice. I've been watching this forum for a while and know about your opinion.

I agree with you, not specifically about PR, but in a more generic way: No one should rely on only one (1) piece of data to make important business decisions. If you re-read my post, you'll see that we use other indicators of a problem.

The first problem was a drop in sales. The traffic stats also showed a decline. THEN, other data were compiled and analyzed (e.g., PPC maintained the same keywords and positions). PR was mentioned herein because you folks are familiar with PR.

Data from many sources were compiled to determine success of the website. PR was only one indicator - "profits", "daily traffic", and "sales" were also part of the equation. That wasn't all, but I didn't think I needed to go in depth when I was asking advice about the value of different backlink strategies to get better ranking.

I look forward to receiving more important advice from this informative forum.
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If I had one piñon nut in one hand and another piñon nut in my other hand, do you know what that's called? A difference of o'piñon.

[ctabuk]

I'm always nice - it's my trade mark - now that the two forums mine and here are reciprocating - we went into this in some great detail. Here it is http://davidcastle.org/BB/seo-tools-vt2198.html