The perceived importance of PageRank can vary widely depending on who you talk to.  Some have become borderline obsessed with the green little bar graph, while others claim that it really doesn’t mean much at all.  And while I personally don’t put much emphasis on it throughout my daily work, it can be useful in certain situations.

Most people use PR to gauge the value of a link that they are trying to get.  The problem with this, however, is that the link quality that a certain page can carry is determined by much more than just the PageRank.  The quality of your link would be affected by the number of other outgoing links on the page, the type of link (contextual vs standalone), and the location of the link, just to name a few.

Where the PR can be helpful, however, is when you’re comparing two very similar sites that would provide a “similar-in-nature” link.  In this regard, PR can give you a general feel for the differences in authority that the two pages may carry.

How I Mainly Use PageRank

In my own practice, I find myself using PR mostly as a filtering tool.  When link building, it becomes important to find the good and weed out the bad link opportunities as quickly as possible.  In that regard, PageRank can be a quick litmus test to see if I want to further explore the possibility of getting a link from that source.  If I come across an opportunity with a PR of 0, you can bet that I’m not going to put much effort into deciding if I want a link from them.  If a quick glance at the toolbar, however, shows a PR 8, I’ll certainly look further into the possibility of receiving a link.

So in your link building efforts, take PageRank for what it is.  A general (and historic) view of the overall authority of a website.  All things equal, a link from a PR 4 is better than a PR2.  But when are you ever going to find “all things equal?”  Use PR as a filtering tool and not as the basis for most of your link building decisions.

While the true effectiveness of reciprocal links (or exchanged links) is certainly debatable, they still count for something.  And while I wouldn’t focus very much of your link building efforts on exchanging links, a few here and there won’t hurt.  So for those times when you are tempted to request a link exchange (even if it’s a three-way exchange), here’s one rule that you simply must adhere to: Don’t spam people.

A Brief Example

We’ve all received them, a generic email from someone you don’t know from Adam that wants to exchange links.  They may have even taken the initiative and already placed your link on one of their pages.  And while a more personal email would have been nice, at this point, it’s not a big deal.  You might ignore them or briefly consider doing the exchange.  But where it begins to get out of hand is when you receive the exact same email the next day.   And the next day.  And the next and the next!  So you reply and ask to be taken off their list.  And what happens then?  You get almost the exact same email the next day from “someone else” requesting a link for a different site.

2 Reasons Why This Doesn’t Work

First and foremost, spam emails like this just aren’t very effective.  They don’t grab your attention, and aside from the “highly valuable” link (I hope you sense my sarcasm), they don’t offer you anything of value.  Imagine how much more effective your request may be if, for example, you informed them of a number of broken links on their site.  Or maybe you informed them of a valuable tool related to a recent post that they could inform their readers about.  Build a relationship first, request a link second.

The second reason why spam emails don’t work is because they’re just plain unprofessional.  I find it ironic that their purpose in emailing multiple times in a row is to entice or remind you to actually give them a link.  In reality, by getting that second (or third, or fourth) email, it does the exact opposite.  Any consideration that I was giving them before has now gone out the window because they were actually unprofessional enough to spam me.  No one likes spam – so why start off on the wrong foot from the get go?

Requesting link exchanges can certainly be a (small) part of your link building campaign.  But make sure that you adhere to polite and professional standards when requesting them.  If you think of your website as your own personal business (rather than some anonymous entity), you’ll likely be able to see your link building efforts more in terms of business development, which is really what link building is all about.

Today I’m going to briefly go over one strategy that can help increase the quality of your backlinks from article marketing.  It’s the act of getting links that point to the articles that are pointing to you.  Note that this is not linking to those articles directly from your site.  Let’s first look at the why behind this strategy and then explain the how.

Why Building Links for Your Articles Can Help

It’s no surprise to you that the quality of the backlinks that you get to your site can vary tremendously.  Some are goldmines, while others aren’t worth a penny.  In order for a link to be more valuable (or carry more link juice), it needs to be on a page that is viewed by the search engines as one with higher authority.  And one of the ways that a page can increase in authority (and hence quality) is by receiving links.

So naturally, if you can increase the quality of the page of an article that you posted, say, on Ezine Articles (by building links that point to that article), theoretically you are increasing the quality of the link that is pointing from that article to your website.  Better links from your articles equals a more “authoritative” site, which hopefully equals better rankings in the SERPs.

How to Build Links for Your Articles

As I mentioned earlier, one thing that you shouldn’t do is link to your articles from your webpage.  This will be viewed as a reciprocal link and devalue it.  Rather, you want to find other sources of links.  The best way that I’ve found to do this is to use other article directories to point to your articles.  You’ll want your articles to be original content, but writing so many articles can get tiring and labor intensive. One thing that you can do is write your original article (for your main article that will be pointing to your site) and pay someone to re-write the idea of article in their own words.  This is often very inexpensive and can quickly get you loads of articles to use for those directories that are pointing to your main article.

As you also probably know, the quality of article websites can also very quite a bit.  So I suggest using the higher quality article websites for your main article that is pointing to your site, and using the less authoritative ones as your “second tier” to link to your main articles.

When done correctly this can be an inexpensive and effective way to increase the quality of your backlinks.  And while I wouldn’t expect to see the PR of your main article jump very much, it’s sure to help.  Happy link building!

Anyone who’s been involved with SEO or link building for any period of time has heard the phrase, “quality over quantity.”  It is now well established that in order to be successful in your SEO efforts, you must focus on getting quality links first and the quantity of links second.  In most cases, getting a handful of very high quality links will be more effective than getting hundreds of low-quality, essentially worthless links.  This important rule will only continue to become more true as time goes on and the search engines’ algorithms get smarter and smarter.

I wanted, however, to bring up one small exception to this rule regarding the need to focus primarily on high-quality links alone.  If a website is currently one that you would classify as providing a low-quality link, has the potential to, or is likely to increase in popularity and authority in the future, I’d consider it a well-qualified candidate for a link.  All websites and blogs have to start somewhere.  And there is sure to be loads of new websites that will make some big waves in the future as they grow older and bigger.  That “low-quality” link today (a PR0 for example), may become a powerhouse one day (a PR6).

So, by building a relationship with such a website early on can end up paying big dividends when it “makes it big.”  Having said that, however, I wouldn’t plan on dedicating any certain level of energy into activing searching for such websites.  But rather, I’d simply integrate those efforts into your constant “sharpening of the saw” that you do to find new information in your niche.  By simply keeping an eye open for up and coming websites, you’ll be able to recognize opportunities when they cross your desk.

The mantra “Quality over Quantity” remains true and strong.  But don’t disregard all link opportunities just because they’re currently below a PR3.