PR or Alexa Rank?

Representative, I know, but what do you prefer?

[explorador]

If you have a list of options for exchanging links, whats on top of your list? Sites with good Page Rank? or Alexa Rank?

Google Page Rank shows the "quality" of the site and the quality of the sites linking to it. A high PR doesn't always mean good traffic, in fact it might have very low traffic (but its PR thanks to quality sites linking there).

Alexa Rank is a guess of the traffic reached by X site. This means visitors. This is not exactly a sign of quality. There are many copy&paste sites with good traffic nowadays, so, they might have alexa rank of 25,000 but PR1 or PR0. Very low PR but... visitors! traffic!

What do you do? I would prefer the traffic. A site of PR5 with little traffic might not bring me the benefits I want against a site with PR2 but with good traffic.

I think I would deal with the low quality link with a nofollow. What do you think?

[martinibuster]

Google Page Rank shows the "quality" of the site and the quality of the sites linking to it...

No, it doesn't. It could mean the owner of the site bought a link from a high PR site. Says nothing about quality.

PR is not a consideration at all. Zero.

1. Backlinks, both quantity and quality
2. Quality of the content

[cnvi]

Martinibuster is spot on. Ignore these metrics and make linking decisions based on what benefits your end user. If you can get a highly relevant link from a site with low PR or other metrics, GET THE LINK. All websites start with low metrics when they are new and you will want the link from the site when it's metrics improve.

[nealrodriguez]

i prefer targeted traffic... period; i don't think any could tell you how targeted the traffic is;

but for your purposes - relevant content and the amount of people visiting the site registered by alexa may - and i'd like to emphasize 'may' - say something about how much those visitors qualify. otherwise, the site can be generating traffic, much of which is comprised by alexa toolbar users, from some off-topic site 9 to 5ers visit on their downtime.

relevant content and a link query of the site could give you a good idea as to how well-suited its traffic is for your site.

[wheel]

And of course, on an individual site bases, both PR and Alexa can be faked, artificially inflated, or manipulated in ways that you might not expect as being truely indicative of the actual PR or Alexa ranking.

[brotherhood of LAN]

Alexa can be faked

It can also get confused by subdomains and particular ccTLDs, which give sites a favourable looking Alexa rank when in fact the site could be receiving zero traffic.

If you're looking for a metric, feel free to add #backlinks, IP diversity of backlinks, diversity of URL strings in backlinks. There isn't one single metric that can tell the wheat from the chaff.

[nealrodriguez]

you may also want to consider prospecting for links outside of the neighborhoods from which your competitors are linked like in this thread:

[webmasterworld.com...]

[ForeverYoung]

Answering the original post: I believe you have to be somehow subjective when deciding.
PR and Alexa rank doesn't really tell you everything about the traffic and the quality of the site. Both have to be taken into consideration, because indeed a high PR site might only mean other high PR sites linking to it. But it could also mean that someone is taking care of the site and developing it, which in the end might mean that the site is somehow a quality site.
All in all, there has to be a balance in the decision, and many factors have to be taken into consideration: PR, Alexa, quality content, design of the site (should be user friendly and plain simply: nice), etc.
Regarding martinibuster's post: you are right. In my opinion quality always beats quantity but when you have both: it can only mean a success story.