Could anybody advise me if it would best to do away with the links sales from my home page? Every update we keep getting 'pr' ed over the head down from 7 to 0 whilst still adding new content to the site, writing articles etc. Not to hung up on pr but if the links (although relevant) are causing damage then maybe is it time they went for good? Any advice would be gratefully received the site is www.oakleaf.net
Wow - you went from a PR 7 to 0? I usually don't espouse placing too much importance in pagerank, but that's a huge drop. I doubt it's because you sold a few links on the home page (esp. if they are relevant). You sure you didn't lose a few (thousand) backlinks?
Sorry If I was a little vague, The drop was over the last few updates, 7 to 4 (which seemed to be about the norm across the board), then from 4 to 2 and most recent 2 to 0. The only things that i have changed was to drop some paid links to the site ( which i thought was a good move) and replaced them with more content, directory entries, blog post, published articles etc. Serps is still good but it seems everytime gggle has a look it turns it nose up at something?
It could be due to the reason that your PR was made by a small number of high quality links - you need to keep a close track of those if it is the case...
Hi, You should keep a track of your backlinks, did you purchase a couple of PR8 links that made your site a PR7? have they been deleted? even a single link deleted from a PR8 site would lower your PR to 4. Its only the backlinks that build or break your PR. Content does not matter with PR (obviously i am not talking about illegal content).
are you sure you didn't get banned from google? cos 7-0 is unheard of....did you lose some vital backlinks?...do some checks
The fact is that link sales are usually conducted using PMs and not done openly so that you don't take any chances or risk. Who knows maybe there might be google employee amongst us here
Thank you all for your input, I did stop shelling out for a couple of (expensive) pr8 links I had in place so hence the intial drop (you guys where correct) Maybe the work that I put in to balance out removing the paid links hasn't caught up or doesn't carry the weight yet. Seems to have held the serps up but not pr. I was under the impression that high pr links where a lot less effective now. Maybe they still just have a 'pr effect'. But as it seems to be a good idea to drop the paid links (thanks cormac) and not being hooked up on 'pr' there seems little point in replacing them so saving some $$. Will need to do some house cleaning on my old links can anybody recommend a good link checker?
Reality check! You are a PR0 now. Therefore anyone with a link on your site will stop paying for it. Google and the other SEs made it quite clear that they were targeting sites that sold links. What is happening with this update is that they have also targeted Reciprocal Linking concepts. And time will document this. Just a suggestion, I would remove all OBL from the site and try to salvage it. As for a good link checker, this is only good for links from other sites to yours. Don't worry about them. The site is busted dude, and it is due to the Linking Concepts you are using. Remove them and wait out the Google penalty (6 month I think anyone know for sure?).
Are you worried about your lower PR? You said, SERP is still good - then there is no need to worry. Visitors will come to your website searching keywords, not searching higher PR. So just forget about the Green Bar - put all your concentration on SERP. Best of luck!
Actually, that's very good advice ... if your PR has dropped but you are still performing well in the SERPs, and if you haven't seen a big drop in traffic, it's really nothing to worry too much about.
It's the paid links that did it. Their initial decrease - from 7 to 4 - was a warning to you to stop selling links. As apparently the warning was not heeded, they continued to devalue your PR.
Thank you again for all your comments, so to round up: paid links gone, pr forget about it, focus on serps. and just to confirm anybody? the crusty relevant old recp links which some have been in place for over 3 years, drop that lot as well? (apoligises if this is old hat for some of you guys)