Google and Back Links

alpha3m · 03-26-2004, 09:01 PM

Interesting question, im sure most of you have dealt with this before.

Ive been establishing backlinks for my newest site, http://www.alpha3media.com

when i do a backwards links check, it shows 0. however when i do some different queries, i see anywhere from 17 - 49 links. I know at least 4 of these are pr4+

Now, its my understanding that google counts pr4+ sites as backlinks. My question, why hasnt google recognized these sites as backlinks.

I, Brian · 03-27-2004, 01:25 AM

Google is always slightly out of date, so my suggestion would be that either these pages aren't PR4 anymore - or else Google simply hasn't updated its index to take these pages properly into account. Either way, don't worry too much about PR4 links specifically - just getting links itself is useful and good practice. Personally, I don't give a particular monkeys about PR anymore - link numbers has become more of a concern. I've seen plenty enough sites ranking well on few PR4+ backlinks. For example, before they were bought up by iNet, I once ran a link check on WebHostingTalk and found it had barely any PR4+ backlinks - yet its index page was PR8 on the toolbar.

alpha3m · 03-27-2004, 01:38 AM

interesting. so you suggest focusing on quantity rather than quality.

compar · 03-27-2004, 03:35 AM

I'm not even sure if you can call links, from pages with high PR, quality links.

Remember that the name of the game is to get ranked in the SERPs. The PR of your page has very little direct connection to where you are in the index.

Your position in the index is Googles judgement about how relevant your page is to the search. The way Google measures relevance, as far as we can tell, is from the anchor text of your backlinks. There is absolutely nothing to suggest that the anchor text from a high PR page contributes any more to the relevance score that the same link from a low ranking PR page.

PR has absolutely nothing to do with relevance. So the answer is get as many links as you can using your most important keywords as anchor text.

schmeg007 · 03-27-2004, 07:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by alpha3m

interesting. so you suggest focusing on quantity rather than quality.

If you can get someone to link to your site in a "partner" box, that appears on every single one of their pages that also would pay off.

I, Brian · 03-27-2004, 07:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by alpha3m

interesting. so you suggest focusing on quantity rather than quality.

Both.

IMO, SEO requires a strategy that utilises a range of tactics, to achieve a primary objective. Various methods will be involved, some of which involve a focus on quantity, and other methods focus on quality. Quality will always be a person judgement, but in my call good quality links are on topic and have good PR. However, all have their uses. In my book it's not just about increasing the number of links to a page, but also the number of IP blocks linking to a page.

alpha3m · 03-27-2004, 10:42 AM

points very well taken.

compar: ive been looking at competition sites, all of them that rank within the first 5 pages of google's search, have a min pr5. This leads me to believe that their is a LITTLE weight added to SERP with PR. Im probably not right, but this is what my eyes have gathered.

Schmeg: Already in the process

Brian: i couldnt agree with you more. Thx for the comment.

compar · 03-27-2004, 07:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by alpha3m

compar: ive been looking at competition sites, all of them that rank within the first 5 pages of google's search, have a min pr5. This leads me to believe that their is a LITTLE weight added to SERP with PR. Im probably not right, but this is what my eyes have gathered.

Well those are unusual results. I posted the top 20 PRs on another thread in this forum for a very popular search term and I believe there was a PR2 in the top 20.

But your reasoning is backward on this. The sites aren't in the top 5 pages because they have high PRs. They are in the top 50 because they have a lot of backlinks. And if you have a lot of backlinks regardless of the PR of the pages that link to you, you will have a high PR.

It is a chicken and egg argument. Pages do not rank in the SERPs for their PR value. Pages rank in the SERPs for the number of links and the anchor text used -- relevance. However pages with a lot of backlink will usually have a higher PR value than pages with few backlinks. Therefore pages that rank well tend to have high PRs. That is very very different than saying high ranking in the SERP is determined by the PR value of the page.

alpha3m · 03-27-2004, 09:07 PM

i see where you are coming from. i guess ill let my backlinks build up a bit more before checking again.