I have a new site and was thinking about buying a few links on pr3 and higher sites. I'm wondering, if the link is on a site related to mine, how much will one of these expensive links actually help my serp? Is 2 a lot better than 1? Do 2 even matter or do I need tons to see a difference? See where I'm going with this? Also, what's better, a link embed in an article or a sitewide link? Thanks, this will help me a lot.
Quality > quantity. That's basically true in everything, including links. Quality high pagerank related links are a webmasters dream. I'd assume a sitewide link would have more value, too. Also, if you want an easy way to get niche-relevant backlinks, check out my post on dofollow blog commenting.
its kind of confusing, you would think for pages to naturally be shown as popular or useful it would require alot of links from natural blogs that may not necessarily have high pr...or lots of forum sigs. When you make it so that high pr pages give lots of value, you put lots of manipulation with money into the serps....
The links can help you serps a lot, but how much really depends on your current position and the backlink profiles of your competitors. Look for links on a single page, preferably including your anchor text in the page title and a reasonable density in the visible text. If the page ranks well for your anchor text, then most likely it would serve you well having a backlink on the page.
They help a lot.. but again it all matters on how many links that page it self has. A PR 1 page with 100 links going out is more powerful then a PR 0 with even just 1 link going out.. but a PR 2 with 100 Links going out is as powerful as a PR 1 with 1 link going out. Do your best to mix it up so Google dont think you are buying links