Does Acquiring High PR Irrelevant Links Help At All?

Hi Everyone,
My names Nanovation and I'm a recovering high PR irrelevant linkaholic.

For years now I thought the secret to rising on the SERPs was to acquire high PR dofollow links. I'd get them everywhere I could: bidding directories, pay-to-be-included directories (Yahoo, Business.com, BOTW, etc.), link brokers, blog posts, forum pages, etc.

I'd see a PR5 bidding directory and realize that for only $50 I could be #1! I'm embarrassed to say that I jumped at them left and right. A year later I would check back and see the PR5 homepage was now only a PR1 or that the PR was faked completely. Nonetheless, I championed on.

I'd see a PR4 blog page about cryptology and submit my comment with a link for "cheap web hosting". Hey, high PR is high PR I thought. I knew relevant pages (pages about web hosting) would have been better, but I just wasn't finding those like I'd find unrelated topics for some reason.

The end result...I'm not sure if it worked or not. You see, at the same time, I was also using more traditional online marketing techniques such as press releases and PPC to drive traffic and sales. As far as I know, that one press release that got featured on MSN for 5 minutes could have been the one factor that made all the difference and all the other links meant nothing.

I bring all this up because I'm interested in what everyone else here thinks. Am I wasting my time getting high PR links from completely unrelated sites or does it all help...just the relevant pages with high PR help more. Should I continue to go after "cheap web hosting" links on bidding directories when all the other links on the homepage are about weight loss, online dating and casinos?

The mic is open. Who's first?

 

A lot of people are strict about relevancy.

I believe relevancy plays a part in the weight of a back link but not that much. I think as PR increases the importance of relevancy decreases. But, it's hard to tell since google is always tweaking their algorithms.


I also don't believe a backlink could hurt your rankings even if it comes from a 'bad neighborhood'. Otherwise I would make a horrible website about drugs/hate/porn/gambling all combined. And then charge people to put backlinks of their competitors on my website. It would be like selling Negative PR backlinks. This is of course to a certain extent if almost all of your backlinks are from 'bad neighborhoods' then google may penalize your rankings.

I've never had a site sandboxed because of backlinks, and I've never had my rankings go down because of a backlink. Now content issues like keyword stuffing and cloaking is another story.

 

yes it helps ;what matters is the anchor.And dont do blog commenting its better to get in-content links.

 

Avoid buying links, making high fake pr is quite easy.

Irrelevant links are not totally wastage, if the page is not full of spams left by spam bots, or contains contents that google does not like.

but links on relevant pages does have high value.

 

your old strategy is not totally uneffective, it will work to a certain extent, if the niche is small or medium, you will probably get top 20 or even top 10 rankings using those irrelevant high pr links, the question is, is that enough for you? or do you want to be #1, if you want to be #1, you absolutely need relevant links (Buying links from relevant sites is ok and is actually one of the best ways to rank high in the serps).

look; you are buying links anyway right so instead of bidding directories, look for relevant links, or do 3 way exchanges (it's always good to have 10 to 20 websites on the side, websites that you use to give links, only to get other links to your real money making sites)

so i don't think you are wasting your time, but if you want excellence, then you will need to start going after relevant links, so what is relevancy ? any page or website related to your niche, or any page which has your targeted keywords in it's meta titles or in it's URL or in the text surrounding the link.

you can also create those relevant pages using blogger, wordpress, HubPages, Squidoo, Weebly, Xanga,Flixya,Tumblr, Thoughts, Blogsome.. the list is very long, so your targeted keyword is "Wine Clubs" and you have $50 to invest ? i'd order 20 150 to 200 words Unique article about Wine Clubs here on DP for $50 (from the content creation section), then i'll invest 2 hours of my time to create 20 mini web 2.0 (or blogs) websites like this:

Wineclubs.Wordpress.com, Wineclubs.Blogsome.com Wineclubs.livejournal.com hubpages.com/hub/Wineclubs Wineclubs.blogger.com Wineclubs.xanga.com..

i will then post the 20 unique articles that i bought and implement my link in the content of the articles using 20 different anchor texts, (Wine clubs, Wine club, Wine clubs Website, Wine clubs Homepage, Click here for Wine clubs, List of Wine clubs, Wine clubs information, Wine clubs here, the best wine clubs, popular wine clubs..)

you just got yourself 20 Extremely relevant links from authority websites, surely a better spent $50 than a link on a bidding directory and will definitely have a great impact on your rankings, bidding directories are a no no anyway, they smell link selling from miles away.

i could write an ebook about this topic, this is really a broad topic, and i don't have enough time to address all the issues and every link building method, but hopefully this brief post will point you in the right direction.

 

Yes, it does help.

 

Great responses everyone. Thank you all very much.

Narrator, I agree that getting a handful of backlinks from bad neighborhoods will not bring your ranking down. I knew a webmaster at Google (before the December 08 layoffs) and he confirmed that they just ignore those links. I.E. they don't count them. They know they can't count them or we'd all be paying $50 to have our competitors sites submitted to every bad neighborhood there is.

Marsian, I have learned over the years how to determine with 95% accuracy if the PR is real or not, so I don't feel I run into fake PR issues anymore. Amazing how easy it really is to fake though, huh?

FunkyMario, your detailed post was really helpful and much appreciated. I really like the technique you laid out and will definitely try it. In fact, I'll probably use your service in your link too. When your eBook is ready, let me know and I'll be your first customer ;-)

Cheers!

 

As in, a link is a link is a link.

By this I mean that a multitude of backlinks is way better than no backlinks. High pagerank links transfer some of the pagerank juice - that's as great as it could be. However, it's not all about pagerank, because there're also serps to think about. Now here's where relevance comes into play - if you have links on related resources, you get way more likely to rank for what you are aspiring to rank for.

My stance on that is never miss a chance of building an additional backlink, but stay focused on those that are more likely to bring in traffic and improve serps.

 

Relevant content sites providing links that are displaying keyword anchor text. That is the key. PR is a guide to aid you in choosing who to link to, but it is less important than it used to be.

 

Relevancy does matter but for instance if you get a PR6 link from a website that does not really cover your industry it will still do you some good in SERPS as it builds more trust with your domain.

 

Well put Earnest01 and primeelite. This has always been my underlying gut instinct.

A PR5 link from a web page about web hosting for my "cheap web hosting" site is ALWAYS better than a PR5 link from a taxidermy site, but the PR5 taxidermy link still helps.

I would argue that it helps much more than a PR1 or PR2 link from a web page about web hosting.

 

hell all, i have been following this as well and fairly new to the PR thing ( I currently have a PR2) but was interested in knowing how often google tweeks their algarythim?

 

I think high PR irrevalant links boosts your page rank score, which has a multiplier effect on all keywords. Once you are higher page rank, you can rank for relatively low competitive keywords by just having that keyword in your title tag.

But relevancy score from related links tends to boost serp for certain keywords faster.

 

google algorithms are changing its algorithms so to be on the safe side provide good service and people would come to you by word of mouth

 

I think you should just try and keep a balance between relevant PR links and none because they both play a part in their different ways but also join together when it comes to inlinks amounts

 

Well the way I see it is a link is a link. Obviously the best is high PR and very contextual. So as the amount of pr or context decreases I think in theory you can make up on it with quantity. But this is a wide variance. In your case Nanovation you are essentially asking for 1 of the holy grails of SERP, which is how does google weight links. Honest I don't think anyone really knows.

My personal opinion is this, if you concentrate on High PR links that are anchored well it should help you. If you are not happy with your SERP just get more. I do that too not to be spammer but I find it's really hard some times to get an ideal link, one that is do follow, contexual and high pr.

 

Thanks everyone for the feedback. Ultimately, I agree that it all helps, but in the end, as the-big-boss said, excellent content, products and service ensure those links aren't wasted...and that you keep getting organic links without having to pay for them.

 

Do not pay for backlinks that are not relevant to your niche. If it is possible to get a link from a high PR site even though it is not relevant for free yes it is a good idea to help increase SERPs postition, but when you are link building you will want the majority of your backlinks to come from your niche.

 

contetual linking is the way to go

 

Linkbuilding is all about "quality" and "relevancy." Getting irrelevant, high PR links will not be beneficial to your site in the long run. It can boost your PR, but not your position in Google.