If you shudder every time someone asks to please pass them the juice over the dinner table, consider visiting the GP. You might be showing the symptoms of a serious disease that has been spreading around quickly.
The name of this ailment is B.O., also known as backlink obsession.
Since the advent of Google with its revolutionary Page Rank system, people who have been overusing its carriers, links, experience various acute conditions, feel unquenchable thirst for new links and sometimes even act inadequately forgetting about all the rest of daily concerns.
So why are links so addictive?
These days every SEO is born with the knowledge that the quality and quantity of inbound links to your site are the major variables in your success equation. It is the link flow that gives you the power of an authority, and the authority in turn brings you visitors, conversions and money in packs. As a result, webmasters often look forward to the quarterly Google dance as if it were the first ball for a young lady to come out into society, determining her future “career” as a bride. And then – oh, Heaven, the 3 month delay, and Matt Cutts says they simply forgot about the update.
If your heart skips a beat at reading this, too, it might be a good idea to have a look at the following 5 common facts about PR which we’ve marked as True or False.
1) Page Rank is a value that shows how popular your site is. – False
PR only refers to a certain page within your site, and so when you need to direct the juice flow to it, do state the exact url of your landing page (e.g. links to http://copywriting911.com will be of no value for the PR of http://www.copywriting911.com). However, internal linking may help pass some energy around your site as well, so links from a PR5 homepage for example could translate into PR4′s for second level pages.
2) High Page Rank automatically brings you to the top of SERPs. – False
If you look at the 1st page of search results, you’ll see that sites with lower PR sometimes rank higher than their competitors with “greener” PR display. It is so while PR is the last one of ranging factors which becomes decisive only when the rest of parameters coincide. Before launching your hunt for PR, make sure you’ve done the on-page optimization, including the keyword research, content creation (!) and overall site structuring.
3) The more links point to your site, the better for its Page Rank. – False
Hundreds of backlinks from spammy directories will not help you promote a resource though they won’t probably hurt you, either. While it is theoretically impossible to control who links to you, there’s such a notion as “bad” or “good” neighborhood. When you’re looking for linking partners, better choose those who wear white hats. Don’t make Big Daddy suspicious.
4) Paid links are evil for your site. – True. And False.
To tell the truth, this issue is a controversial one. Recently there’s been much fuss about devaluating sites that trade links via TLA. However, TLA itself seemed to stand up to the update without any losses, just like a number of splogs and scraper sites monetized with Google Adsense/Adwords. And yeah, do you know that the second largest SE, Yahoo, actually allows buying and selling links?
Though we can’t decide for you here, if you still choose to try, at least make all you can to ensure your paid links look natural.
5) Network interlinking will not help improve your Page Rank. True and False again.
There are two main types of networks: ones owned by a single person or a group of individuals and hosted on the same server with identical IP C classes – and these are really a waste of your time in terms of SEO; and secondly, niche communities connected through business ties and spreading valuable editorial links (b5media), which is perfectly ok with Google, as that’s a part of standard commercial promotion. One more thing to take note of, reciprocal links are yesterday’s hit. They hardly rock any longer. They are so likely to be forgotten tomorrow.
That was it. At least now you know what direction to move in. Hope this dose of anti-B.O. vaccine relieved your pains for a while, and should you need a professional consultation on SEO, we are here to help! Please also feel free to comment with more ideas about Page Rank importance, and we’ll reply.
P.S. Content is king!