I used to think, and always have gone for quality backlinks, but after doing some research on some lawyer kws I'm finding that all the top sites have tons of crap links to get their placement in one of the most competitive markets. What's your opinion on the subject?
In my opinion having quality backlinks only is not realistic. It's just not natural. So I focus on quality links but I wouldn't mind low quality links in big quantity as well
Content will get you quality backlinks, you can't really "get" them. Providing unique quality content that is useful to visitors will naturally build you relevant quality backlinks. Below is an example of where AT&T linked to my Civic SEO knowledge database via their internet marketing information; I never spoke to them nor attempted to get my link placed there. http://developer.att.com/developer/index.jsp?page=goToMarketArticle&id=24100189 Remember, content will bring upon quality backlinks. In theory, the lawyer keywords might not have "any" sites with respectable backlinks which should make it easy to get the position your trying to achieve.
high counts more in rasnking and pr...but u need both...the higher your pr the better your 2 way high pr backlinks should be...
Quality.... I had a site rank in top 3 from just two EDU backlinks for venture capital for a few months.. They weren't sponsored links but were real old fashioned natural links..
You can rank well for competitive keywords if you have significantly more high quality backlinks than low quality backlinks. If you are trying to rank well for competitive keywords but you are only relying on low quality backlinks I do not think you will get your desired results.
Funny story. When I was a teenager I was riding my bike to work with headphones on and I flew right through a four-way stop because there were no cars at it. Well there happened to be a police cruiser pulling up to the stop as I flew through it, and the officer stopped me. Apparently it's illegal where I lived to go through a stopsign on a bike, and it's illegal to wear headphones on a bike as well. So the officer asked me which ticket I wanted. I thought about it for a second and replied "well to be honest with you I don't want either one, asshole." I didn't get a ticket & I learned something that day, just because you have two options layed out for you doesn't mean you have to pick one of them. For that reason, I'm going to have to say I'd rather not pit the two against eachother and have a large quantity of quality.
Links in bulk are useless if it is not theme based. Theme based links are quality links and only few quality links will improve its ranking and it can save time too.
I think is important to have both, if I had to choose between having 100 quality links or have 100 quality and 100 crap I would go for the second option, is just looks more natural, every site should have good and crap links (the important thing is to not have just crap links).
I would be careful with using a niche as lawyers as your model for link quality. I think a lot of people resort to black hat techniques with such a competitive keyword.
I suggest to look for quality links. I once submitted few articles to few hundred low or no PR article directories. I never saw a link backlink from these sites in google webmaster tools or yahoo site explorer or any where else. So, getting links from pages that are not even indexed, or that if search engines dont count them, is a waste of time.
Honestly, you should still go for quality. Google will eventually ferret out the crap links and then your ranking will drop. Why risk this?
Well, links are links, one way links are helpful, either being called from the minor or crap sites or from the quality, high PR ones. They all can be helpful when it comes to have rankings.