Take Your Links and Shove Them
So I’ve taken a larger interest in link development lately on many of my sites. I previously concentrated on content and more on-page SEO items. Unique titles, good use of H1 tags, and unique meta descriptions have been a major focus most of the last 4 months. Now that I am working more on off-page factors (links!), I am starting to wonder what the heck I am wasting my time on. Ok, I realize it’s not a waste of time, but link development surely seems to bring disparate opinions out.
Go for the PR?
If one were to buy links, and I’m not condoning or dis’ing it, should you look for PR as the key? There is an entire camp of people who seem to think that getting links from a high PR site in and of itself is a waste of time. Yes a non-reciprocal link has value, but buying for PR is a waste of time they would indicate. Well… if that is that case, why are the prices of links for sale seemingly so highly correlated with PR. Is PR just a way to sulf-justify charging more for a link? Furthermore, the PR link naysayers fall to the “increasing your PR will not increase your search rankings” punchline. Is this really true?
Go For the Traffic?Â
Ok, so if you are not looking for links for PR reasons, then you must be looking for links for traffic reasons. Right? That seems to make sense to me with regards to links from highly trafficed sites. But there must be a gazillion (technical term) directories out there selling (err reviewing) links. I bet most of them get less than 500 visitors a month. Of those visitors, maybe 50 will see the page your link is on (if you are lucky). Of those 50, maybe you get one click. Was it worth it?
Where Do You Stand?
This is a topic where I do not have a strong opinion. My general philosophy is to take advantage of small profits and exploit them (e.g., get as many links as you can on as many sites as yuo can find — regardless of their traffic, and hope you get 1 visit per month from each from now until I’m pushing up daisies). But, if it takes 5 hours a month, to generate an extra 20 page views a month, the payoff seems to be non-existent.
If however, the increase in PR does increase my rankings in the search engines, then it seems to make more sense to spend those same 5 hours on high PR link development.
I don’t know… do you?