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Since the last dance, we have a nice free PR8 link to our site, but the page has a few other links on it to dilute it. It seems that the big boys have PR7 and we would need PR7 to get in the top 3 so do you think this link could do it?
I would also like some ideas on link popularity. I mean, it's not as if other hosts are going to put our link on their site so getting relevant links is going to be hard. We have submitted to all the main host directories but what else can we do? A thousand or so sites hosted by us have HN banners. How many backlinks does it take to be major player in the serps?
[edited by: heini at 1:07 pm (utc) on April 8, 2003]
Next issue is does the PR get transferred in full? There are sites, giving out links to unrelated pages/offtopic sites, which do not pass the full PR to their linked sites.
>how many links
Basically with a PR6 you should be able to do well in serps. PR is not a magic wand. It's a very strong basis for good ranking, not more.
Example: A PR5 site receiving 1K links with the main keyword in the linktext might outrank a PR7 or 8 site with 1K links without that keyword in the linktext on a query for that keyword.
Raw number of links doesn't mean all that much. The value of a link is both in the linktext and in the PR transferred.
You might want to check some discussions here on the value of certain types of linkage. I have no good idea if that is so, but what about Google discounting reciprocal links between hosting companies and clients, or webdesign companies and their clients?
I think it's entirely possible, perhaps on a case by case basis.
How many incoming links do you and your competitor have?
Are they from high PR pages with a small number of links per page?
What is the anchor text of the link, specifically is it the keyword you're optimising for? [Keyword] is best, [Keyword CompanyName] is almost as good, [CompanyName] is not very helpful (unless CompanyName = Keyword].
Then on page optimisation factors, like title text, H1 text within site anchor text etc.
Google has a higher PR than I do, but if I have a page with "Shiny Red Spotted Widgets" as its page title and a decent incoming link with "Shiny Widgets" as the anchor text then I will probably outrank any Google page for the keyphrase "Shiny Red Spotted Widgets". It's not a very competitive keyword so a low PR page with just one or two well optimised incoming links could do it for me.
If I want to rank top for the term "news" then I'll need several thousand incoming links with the anchor text "news" from some very high PR sites to ever compete with the big boys.
Do you have the slightest of evidence to back up that assertion? Everything that I see indicates it is irrelevant if the links are to unrelated pages/offtopic sites.
How does Google know if a site about widgets is linking to a site about gadgets? Other than the obvious keyword density, etc. Is it that discriminatory?
Sure. At this point only the link text seems to be taken into account, no general theming of the page, let alone the site.
What I was talking about is the have_high_PR_but_can_not_pass_PR phenomenon, as described by some people here. I don't know how such sites are picked, might be a hand tweak/penalty.
I've got to figure if this happens, it is with extreme rarity, and only in obvious cases of selling PR, etc.
NexDog, are those thousand sites you host linking to you as CompanyName, or as Blue Widgets? This aspect is crucial, and may have more inluence than a single PR8 link.
