What to do when... Boss's Friends Backseat Drive Your Link Development?

And their information is wrong...

[David Bruning]

I am in the processing of crippling my link efforts thanks to the helpful advise of a friend of the boss's.

These friends have advised her that all PR0 links just leech PR away from the site, and therefore should be removed.

It may be too late for me ;) but make sure you educate your employer about the current TBPR value in google's algorithm's.

Just from the perspective of the time it takes to find decent link partners, this is painful.

[grandpa]

... the helpful advise of a friend of the boss's. These friends have advised her that all PR0 links just leech PR away from the site, and therefore should be removed.

Utterly ridiculous. As far as I know, only linking to bad neighborhoods will have an adverse effect on your own site ranking. The truth about PR, that you should advise your boss of: that little green bar in the browser is not accurate and has not been accurate for some time now, and therefore is unreliable for decisions about whom you should link to, (Not ending a sentence with a preposition) dagnabbit.

There is, AFAIK, no ability for a PR0 site to leech anything. An example: my directory pages have good ranking in the serps,and decent PR on most of the pages. They link to all manner of pages with all sorts of PR. Not one of the lower PR pages removes any 'status' from those directory pages.

If the boss doesn't trust your judgement, turn over the link management to the 'friend'. Better yet, find a thread here at WW that discusses this topic in depth, print it, and give it to your boss and her friend.

this is painful

I feel your pain.

[diamondgrl]

This is not a difficult problem. Simply print out some relevant threads from Webmasterworld, as well as Google's own guidance that there is nothing any other site can do to bring down your rankings and that should be a convincing case if presented well.

If not, well, get a new boss.

[GranPops]

At the ripe old age of 75 I no longer have such problems, as I was taught long time ago not to join in a discussion with a person who has his or her nut frozen with the concept of, "Don't confuse me with the facts, I have already made up my mind."

[vertronics]

Granpops, that's funny.. LOL!
Your are correct.. some people on bent on believing their own version of truth, not The Truth!

~vertonics

[Wlauzon]

If the PR0 idea was true, then www.microsoft.com would be at the bottom of the list in google.

[amznVibe]

Just make sure the removal of those links is well documented as NOT your idea so you don't take the fall in a few months.

Email a summary of what you have done and/or save/printout the directive you were given to remove them, don't fall for simple verbal instructions.

ie. Per your request I have removed the following links (blah blah) though I feel I must point out again that this contradicts documented SEO techniques.