25 replies to this topic

[Scottie]

[Jill]

I was under the impression that links back to your site only help with PR, but have no influence on your SE ranking.  Is that correct?

No, it's not correct. Links back to your site can help your SE rankings a whole bunch. Especially links that use descriptive anchor text.

[Karri]

Jill - In one of your archived articles you explained that PR is a subset of Link Popularity. Can you boil this down even further? I want to make sure I get this right so correct me puleez if I got it wrong: PR attempts to "rank" a site strictly in terms of how many incoming links a page has compared to other pages. Link Popularity, however, does this but also factors in the "quality" or "relevance" of those incoming links.

Am I even close?

Also, here is another good site for finding both paid and free directories. Again, some of the directories I would not go near, but there are lots of good ones also and they are categorized which helps.

Karri

[Jill]

PR attempts to "rank" a site strictly in terms of how many incoming links a page has compared to other pages. Link Popularity, however, does this but also factors in the "quality" or "relevance" of those incoming links.

Well, they're very close, and I think these days they mean almost the same thing as other engines have taken a page from Google's book.

The extra ingredient in link pop is anchor text, which PageRank doesn't figure in. PR does factor in both the number and popularity of pages though. Just has nothing to do with the words on the page.

Unfortunately, neither one seem to really compute relevancy very well. I think it was wishful thinking on my part when I said relevancy mattered in the past!

I think relevancy definitely matters in terms of making your pages useful, and I think in the future the engines will get better at detecting it, but right now, it really doesn't seem like it plays a big factor in how the links are weighted.

[Karri]

I have definitely read in more than one place that anchor text is very important.

Why do SEOs say PR is not that important? Is it b/c the PR showing on Google Toolbar is often so outdated?

Karri

[AaronNimocks]

Why do SEOs say PR is not that important?  Is it b/c the PR showing on Google Toolbar is often so outdated?

Main reason I think is because it does nothing for you. Higher PR does not sell your product/service for your site or make you have higher rankings for keywords.

I have said this here before but I will say again. I DO BELIEVE that PR is very important in SEO. For the only reason of link building. Almost everyone (except the smart ones) base a link exchange request soley upon what PR the link will be on. So the higher your PR = the better links you will get place on other sites. Not always, but most of the time.

[Randy]

Why do SEOs say PR is not that important?

Because the representation of PR you can see in the Google Toolbar has little or no bearing on actual rankings.

Easy test. Go do a few searches on Google with your Google Toolbar turned on. Click through to several of the sites in the top 20 or so.

If PR, or more specifically the PR you can see, were a governing factor one would logically expect the sites to rank in order of Hghest PR to lowest. Or at least be close to that.

This is simply not the case. #1 may be PR6; #2 may be PR4; $3 may be PR7; #5 may be PR5; #6 may be PR3; #7 may be PR7, etc.

The randomness of it all would logically tell us that the PR that is reported by the Toolbar is not the end-all, be-all that some would have you believe. If it were, you simply wouldn't see what we see in the SERPs constantly.

[Jill]

PR is important only as 1 factor out of 100 in terms of rankings. It can certainly help, but PR does not equal rankings in any way shape or form.

[ADACProgramming]

I found this link lists a whole bunch of directories and whether they're free or not (there are some errors but hey, it's free).  I'm working on a new site and submitted it to all the directories listed above in the link before I've even finished the site.  The good news is that it is being spidered now because of those backlinks.
Good luck,
Lise

If you read through Googles new patent you will find that Google will penalize a site that gets a sharp increase of back links. This especially seems true of new sites. They're trying to cut down on the spamming sites.

It is best not to do a marathon submit to the directories. If a new site goes from 0 to hundreds of links in a few days your very likely to get sandboxed. Just a few at a time is better.

Should you ever get bored enough, this is some useful reading to get an idea of what they're up to.

http://appft1.uspto....&RS=20050071741

[Jill]

If a new site goes from 0 to hundreds of links in a few days your very likely to get sandboxed.

New sites will be affected by the aging delay regardless of how fast or how many links they get. Lots, little bit, none, whatever. You WILL be put into the sandbox via the aging delay if your site is new.

[theduke56789]

I used free and paid directories to accumulate 100 backlinks in a short period of time. After this most recent updat, I have a PR 5, but still don't rank for any of my keywords in Yahoo or Google. Just goes to show you how important PR is in ranking.