Links: Quality vs quantity

[mfishy]

Hi All,

which would gain more PR? One link from a pr 8 home page or 1000 from pr 5's. Any guesses? Thanx

[Terry_Plank]

Little broad range there. :-) A link from a PR 8 that is an authority site, one that has more in than going out, would have pretty good clout.

Why would you want to limit yourself to one link? Get a respectable number primarily for the value of driving pre-qualified traffic to your site and secondarily for PR.

I suspect that if you truely got 1000 with PR of 5 you would certainly get some favorable impace in PR. But better than that is 1000 Web sites sending you traffic and allowing you to present yourself favorably for making a sale.

[troels nybo nielsen]

Welcome to WW, mfishy

I completely agree with Terry_Plank

The really important thing with incoming links is if they supply you with motivated visitors. Take PR as an extra.

[fathom]

I variety of perspective is good, so here is my value of the latter.

1000 links is alot and alot can change in 2 months, 6 months, a year and so on.

Forward thinking means believing today's decisions are in the distant past, so...

My question is... what is the likelihood that the single link from a PR8 page:

Will sustain you in the far distant future, where many things can happen, new strategies, domain change, out-of-business, and about 1,000 other negative potentials

On the plus side... a single PR10.

or...

1000 potentials that could have the same negative or positive effects.

Diversification means that you have a strategy and contingency plan, a one hit wonder isn't a strategy and doesn't offer any contingencies.

It will hurt alot if losing 1 from the first and you will not even notice if losing 1 from the other.

[mfishy]

I understand this completely, but in strict terms of PR calculations, how many PR 5 6 or 7 is equal to one 8 or nine. Just out of curiosity :)

[przero2]

I don't think anyone can quantify that .. :)

Also just having 1 PR8 or PR9 link could be viewed suspiciously. Or having 100s or 1000s of links from only one site. These are perhaps not part of the algo yet but who knows that the algo will not be refined to take these factors into consideration in a month or two!

Anything that is "unnatural" can only work for two or three months IMHO!

[duckhunter]

I try to maintain as much category relevancy as possible too. Hairdressers linking to football players won't score as well as hairdressers linking to shampoo.

[mfishy]

Actually, I was just, like everyone eles, looking into the algo as research. Most Pr 8 sites are pretty strong I would imagine :)

[MikeKay]

I'd take the 1000 links from PR5 websites. I bet more traffic would come from those websites then from that 1 link from that PR8 site. That's a problem I see when 1 link from a very high PR site gets you higher rankings in the Serps. I compete with some websites who managed to get listed in a questionable PR7 Dmoz category while the rest of us get listed in a PR4 category which really relates to our topic. These websites get the extra PR boost to shoot them to the top but their websites are really weak compared to the rest. I think too much credit is given for just having 1 high PR site linking to them. I see high PR sites adding pages that are off topic and getting some excellent Serp rankings because of their high PR rankings.

[troels nybo nielsen]

I get your point, mfishy, and I share your curiousity. But I'm sure that those who know are not going to tell us. :-(

The nearest we'll get is that it most likely takes _many_ pages with low PR to outweigh one with high PR. As others have pointed out this means that gaining an incoming link with high PR is a big win and losing it is a big loss.

As I see it one should diversify the tactics in terms of gaining incoming links with PR. Have a few with high PR if possible _and_ a lot with lower PR.

And once again: What's really important is that your incoming links are relevant and bring motivated visitors.

Yes, I know that you know!:-)