Linking to competitor, suicide or strategie

Similar sites with few links raises your PR but...

[silverbytes]

Similar sites with few links raises your PR if they treat similar subjects and they have good PR, so some people makes links exchange with other sites, even when they are competitors.
What do you think about?
I'm offering 'web design services', a good site is linking back to me, he offers web services too (better than mine surely, but he's contributing to my PR and giving me some visits daily) Should I go on whith similar links, or I'm throwing away my potential clients...?
What about linking to 'web designers' in other languages I don't point as german, french,....

[mack]

Hi there.
Im not sure that pointing links to sites in other languages would have the same effect as an on topic link, although I may be wrong in this assumption. You would indeed loose some potential customers if you where to link out to other sites offering the same services as you. What you could do is link to sites that are not in direct competition, for example search for a design company that do volunteer web development for charities and good causes. That way you are linking out but I wouldent say loosing much in the way of customers.

One thing to remember is that linking out only serves to dilute your pagerank. If I was you I would keep my outgoing links to a minimum and try building the inbound links as much as possible.

Hope this is of some help.

[contentmaster]

hi mac
I am relatively new to this so please help me understand...isn't it true that having good links on your site improves your page rank? Also I've noticed that you have to first put the other sites link before asking them to link to your site?
Are there any guidelines for link requests? How do you decide on their feasibility?
Thanks

[mack]

Hi contentmaster,
Links are foremost there for your users so if you are going to link out link to the most apropriate sites in your topic. Out going links will not help your pagerank. In terms of pagerank a link is a vote. Therefore by linking out you are casting a vote for the site you link to and some of your pagerank will be passed from your site to the site you have linked to.

To improve pagerank you really need to aquire good inbound links from other sites to your site. Think in terms of the pagerank "flow". Every link carries some pagerank. Your internal links distribute page rank within your own site. Every time you link out you dilute the total value that youhave available to distribute. In bound link on the other hand will help to top up this value.

Hope this helps.

Mack.

[ktd121]

Does it matter if your incoming link comes from a page with a low PR? Most links pages have very low PR sometimes gray. If you were doing a link exchange, is it worth it to have an incoming link from the links pages with zero PR?

Does PR help any with SE rankings?

[contentmaster]

Thanks Mack..You made a lot of things clear for me!
I was also wondering the same thing ktd121!

I'm not sure what it is about PR and links but of what I know I think it's important to assess the relevance of the site - decide whether the site will really be helpful to your visitors.........do you think it will improve the content of your site? If yes, I think one can go ahead and have it link to you!
Any Comments anyone!

[jamie]

I think it's important to assess the relevance of the site - decide whether the site will really be helpful to your visitors.........do you think it will improve the content of your site

that's a great common sense approach contentmaster - won't go far wrong with that.

two other things to bear in mind are:

* your incoming anchor text - the exact words which the external site uses to link to you - this is an important 'objective' way for a search engine to know what your site is about, and can have a positive effect regardless of PR.

* today's PR0 sites could be tomorrow's PR6 sites

[ktd121]

Lets just say my site is YellowTulips.com and I'm trying to target the keyword "flowers". If my incoming anchor text was "Yellow Tulips Flowers", would that still be effective as having the incoming anchor text "Flowers" because it has the keyword "flowers" in the text?

[buckworks]

If you're targeting "flowers" that's the most important word to get in the link text. Think of anything else as a bonus.

However, as you get more links, you can relax a bit about the particular anchor text. An English-speaking human would see the connection between the site name "Yellow Tulips" and "flowers" right away, but a spider needs more clues. Once enough sites link to you with assorted anchor text like "flowers" "yellow blossoms" "pastel flowers" etc. Google will discern that your page is indeed relevant for "flowers", and probably especially relevant for "yellow flowers".

[2_much]

I think it's helpful to have outbound links on the site, and Mack's idea on how to find them is great.

This shows that the site has a place in the webmap, and isn't just receiving links in an isolated fashion.

Lately, I've totally relaxed my criteria for receiving inbound links. I used to only get links from high PR sites, but now, I just try to get links with good anchor text, regardless of where they come from.