Homepage links - how important are they

Links of people's homepages

[webconnoisseur]

How important is a link off someone's homepage? For example, a popular site has a links page with hundreds of links on it, but a less popular site puts a link to you on their homepage which doesn't have a ton of links. Which one is better for popularity results?

Most people would say the popular site, but it seems like getting homepage links are pretty important. What is your experience?

[Birdman]

I'll take 'em all, but homepage links are probably better, since the homepage is usually has the max pr(pagerank).

[Mohamed_E]

I very much agree with BirdMan's comment:

> I'll take 'em all

This is not an either/or proposition, take all the non-penalized links you can get!

The actual value to you of a link is the (real) PR of the linking page divided by the total number of links (internal and external) on that page.

Since toolbar PR is on a logarithmic scale rounded (or truncated) to an integer it is very difficult to compare the relative values of links unless the difference is very large.

[DrCool]

Be sure not to fall in to the "I only want high PR links" trap. Links (esp. from a homepage) can be great generators of traffic, even from sites with low PR. Becuase of that I always look for homepage links if possible.

[webconnoisseur]

I agree - all links are good links. I was just trying to figure out the best use of my time.

Out of curiosity, what links are penalized? I imagine links from banner and link exchange programs, but what other links should Webmasters avoid?