I recently went to one of the text link services to add links to one of the sites that I control and have come across the dilemma of quality vs. quantity. Should I pay the premium for a few links with a high PR or have hundreds of links to pages that probably rarely get seen. I'm more interested in conversion than SEO. Any advice would be appreciated.
Quality is what matters. Don't waste your money or time getting links from sites/pages with unrelated/non-relevant content. *Now, if some high PR unrelated site decides to link to you, that's still a good thing, just not worth the effort getting otherwise.
Quality matters the most. If a website has great quality it will get more readers, and more people will find the website more appealing, if you just go for quantity then you'll have to get a lot. I would rather go to a site with Good quality than a website with quantity.
I think you got your answer EHubert, an overwhelming victory for quality links! The most important factors are: -a high PR -killer unique content (attracts viewers and retains them) -RELEVANCY with your keyword/niche... The last factor cannot be overlooked, for example a plumber would have NO REASON to link with a ladies make-up blog, Google is smart enough to realize scams like this, so if you aren't linking within your niche your not going to benefit and you may even suffer just a little bit.
I should have been more specific, sorry! What i meant to get at was should I get the few sites with a high PR or go for the sites that still have relevant content, but just don't seem to be seen by a lot of people. There are a lot of relevant sites that just dont have a good PR. The opportunity for more eyes to see and click can only go up on low PR sites, no? Risk-Reward seems good.(?)
It depends on where your links will be placed. PR 8 or PR 2 if your link is in the footer or surrounded by tens of other similar-looking links, you may not get many conversions.
as extraarm points out, placement is important. so factor that in. but in general go with quality over quantity, and also check to see what other links will be next to your own and visit them. if they are spammy-type websites that should raise a red flag.
Quality wins by a landslide...Quality includes-- placement, PR, relevence, age, anchor text, etc. All of those are quality factors IMO Best; Eric
i would say be very careful of paying any company to do your linking. they will do exactly what they say they will i.e. you pay for then to get you 100 links, and they do so. the 2 major considerations are 1. link quality 2. link relevance
You should always go for a site that offers a free add links and with a good PR and more relevant to your site. --------------- htt://dcglobal.us/ourstaff-autocad.htm
Don't disregard the sites (both being relevant) that have low PR and/or are fairly new at this point in time. These will grow and you will be especially rewarded later. When these small, new sites become big it may be very difficult to get a backlink from them. Think long term.
Quality is best. Though, it goes beyond that even. You can build decent PR with quantity, its been done time and time again. However, when doing it through quantity, those links and that PR may not give much traffic, at least not quality traffic, and without quality traffic, you'll not be converting much of it. If more people went for quality the world wide web would be a much better (and cleaner) place.
I personally think that "The more Quantity of Quality Links you have the better it is for your site".
I've mentioned it before that in 2008 still links from sites with not-relevant content can help you greatly. The thing is that link juice ratio of non-relevant link to that of niche, high quality link is unknown (could be 1:10, 1:100 or 1:10000). I would suggest you to try to earn as much high-quality backlinks as possible but also boost your SERP position with loads of non-relevant ones.
I concur with a lot of other people in here who have said use both high quality and high quantity. I would steer clear of adult, porn/viagra, etc. I've been able to rank sites as #1 in topographical keywords (meaning keywords containing a country/city name) that are somewhat competitive with all non-relevant sites (usually takes a couple thousand pr1-pr2 to do it for me)