Hello All, I finally have my site where I am far enough along (http://www.mycomputerpaladin.com) to begin the process of link development (this is my first time through this process). I have a question about the quality of links coming into the site. One of the first things I did was have my site submitted to a large number of directories. I have also begun looking at related forums I can participate in. I have also written a few articles and posted them on several of the free article directories. My question is this: I have noticed that on forums/directories/article sites, the actual page that my link resides on has a PR of ZERO, even though the main page of those sites may have a rank much higher. Am I getting any benefit from having links on these PR 0 pages, or am I totally off the beaten track here? Just trying to figure out how all this link development stuff works so that I can optimize my time. Thanks in advance.
You should not focus on pr, do-follow signature links at forums and article submission is great for building backlinks. If your on-screen optimization is good and you build backlinks your rankings will improve in the serps and your pr will improve over time.
If you do want some high page rank backlinks, then find some old posts on dofollow blogs to comment on.
Hmmm...so that's why I've seen people do that kind of thing. I was actually looking for forums that I could actually contribute to. I've found a few, but I need to check out that other thread here that shows forums with dofollow links. Thanks for the feedback.
I agree with the comments above about not focusing too much on PR. In my opinion the PR of a website's homepage gives a better indication about how a link on that site could help. It wouldn't be natural for a site to have mostly just high PR links. So the search engines don't want to just reward sites with high PR links. You should have a balanced link portfolio with links from many sources. Forum signatures and blog commenting is a great place to start. Also look into some of the other strategies discussed throughout this forum.
Best to also focus on getting links from sites that have relevant content to your site as well.. ie.. dont get a link from a motor site if your blog is about dieting... find a link in a health / diet site etc
Thanks. All good comments. My link development is focusing on related sites. Since I don't have anything to say about motor sites I am not building links there!
Doesn't matter. What you first need to do is to have your existence get recognized by the search engines. The websites you cited, forums, article directories. They are indexed by search engines very rapidly. PR will eventually go up depending on the value of the pages you make. So it all depends on your content. You are not simply riding on the article directory, directory or forum's high PR.
any link will help even if its pr 0 if you have anchor text on them it will help you rank higher on the search engines
You should try to get a variety of different kinds of backlinks, and also vary the anchor text. You should also build the backlinks gradually and consistently. You want it to look like it is happening naturally. If all the links are from the same type of site, such as directories, and have the same anchor text, that won't look natural, and could cause Google to devalue the links.
Ahhhh...hmmm....this may be my problem. I know at the moment a lot of my links are coming from directories, and they did all sort of land with a "splash." Sounds like as long as I follow a sound link strategy and work on it over time things will improve. Good comments from all. Thank you!