Welcome to the forum. Congrats on your PR0s. The site I referenced getting PR5 happened a year ago and only took 2 months. It wasn't a blog, forum, or directory or the usual things people slap together to get rich quickly with. By the way a couple of friends of mine have PR7 and PR8 sites and each of them said "What's PR?" when I congratulated them on their PR. I know how they did it and it wasn't with forums, blogs, directories or sites with cute-funny dogs.
Anchor text and key words are whats important when it comes to back links and serp's. The rest of it is all filler and merely intended to waste peoples time. PR is now all but irrelevant, the list of authority sites doing the rounds is bullsh*t and PS is for those who are too damned ugly to get it for free. It could have been a useful tool but failed to take human nature into account. I doubt they are going to drop it altogether and would suspect that they already have something lined up that will iron out a few of the wrinkles. Whatever there is a lesson there to be learnt.
Text links are important but it depends where you place them. Try some sh..ty sites and they won't matter at all. If you want to rank high , having a link from a trusted site is very helpful, 'cause it passes some trust value to your site, increasing your pr in the process.
This we dont agree on. You get the same results from the free directory lists as you do from your high PR sites. The only advantage I can see is that by buying your way in you ae assured of better turn around times and the fact that the trusted sites will invaiably turn a blind eye to submissions that dont pass muster further down the ladder.
There is a huge difference between a link and a link. If not, why Google is removing some sites like copies of dmoz or wikipedia. Do you think that links from these sites are valuable? I can assure you that if you manage to get a link from yahoo home page your serps will improve drastically (together with your pr)
I think they are trying to punish[I am not sure] only paid links, read this https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/paidlinks?hl=en
The problem is that if I place a link in text there is no way to say if somebody paid for it or not. Even human factor is not gonna help here. It's a different story if the same link is the footer - there is a likelihood that somebody placed it there for money, but still no proof. Google has a problem! In addition, how can they punish you for selling or buying links -remove valuable sites from its index? ridiculous!! they would have to remove 50% of all sites if not more. The only thing that is reasonable under the circumstances is to devalue those links that are clearly proved to be paid. But that's not your worry but the Google's engineers to find an appropriate solution. One thing that I'm sure of, Google will not ban you for buying or selling links!!!
Yahoo I accept. Government and educational institutions I accept. But it does not follow that just because they have high PR all high PR sites carry the same weight. Secondly how many free directories is a link from Yahoo worth? No ways I am going to pay $299 a year for the pleasure of getting shafted. Finally we have dealt with the question of PR. It might look pretty but right now I think its more likely to be a handicap rather than a selling point.
than you will have to except all the pr10 sites. if so, then pr matters. Why would a pr8 page of some site be less valuable than pr8 from yahoo?
No. PR is not what makes Yahoo an authority site. Its an authority site with a PR10 not an authority site because its PR10. Its war paint, nothing more. No fizz, no bubble. Some would have you believe that its an authority site because it displays "site links" but thats bullh*t too. They call it aggressive marketing whereas I call it being deliberately dishonest.
It is a pr10 because it is an authority site. Google is not gonna give you pr10 for nice pics. And yes, yahoo is an authority site and that's why it is so highly ranked by Google. Just because Google said so and Google is right in this case. Google can hide that pr value and Yahoo still will be considered pr10 authority site. @DharmaSeo - reliable source is the Google algo - I don't think they are stupid enough to make it public
That much we agree on. But it does not follow that an artificially high PR8 site can do more for your serp's than a PR 0 directory that has just been indexed. What I am saying is that we should rather be looking for directory masters who have an incentive to build their sites year by year and that this is the only viable alternative to PR.
T^here is no artificial pr8's - Google is smart enough to assign pr value based on merit. You may not like some pr8 sites (same here) but that doesn't mean that the site was not ranked so by google based on some specific criteria. Every pr8 is an authority unless Google devaluate their pr transfer power for whatever reason.
PR is PR and you buy PR from someone smarter than you who bought their PR from someone who was smarter than them. But this does nothing for your serp's. Dmoz is a recognised authority site which will pass you PR if you manage to jump through all the hoops and find an editor who is neither lazy nor corrupt. Dmoz will also help your serp's but you have to ask how many unconditionally free directories would achieve the same result. The only thing they dont pass is PR. But who really wants PR these days.Yahoo is much the same but this is going to cost you $299 a year and the question you must ask is what sort of mileage are you going to get out of your listings in the free directories and how many you need to get the same results you do from Yahoo. Its not as if one link from Yahoo is going to get you anywhere near page#1. Yes you will pop up on Googles radar a lot quicker but page#1 results are only achieved by hard work and regular submissions.
My pages pop up on first page of Google serps although I never did anything to seo them and the keywords are fairly competitive- maybe that's because they got a high pr? (just a wild guess
Depends on key words and the site. Very difficult to judge without knowing what we are talking about but on the same score I have a number of sites that pop up on #1. Some are competitive key words and some are not. But I dont buy to get there and consequently most of them are PR4 or less. Despite that we are doing very nicely. Maybe not but I think we will see less in the way of link pimping now that the margins have shrunk. We are competing on a level playing field and every man and his dog has a fair chance.