Gaining inbound links is one of the most important, and hardest, aspects to owning a website if you want to rank highly in the search engines. While it is not the only way to gain traffic, it is one of the most consistent if you can get it right. Some links are worth a lot more than others. For example, a link from a site with a PR9 is surely worth much more than a link from a site with a PR0.
That’s the theory and it does seem to hold true. But what about the comparison between a PR5 dot com, PR5 dot net and PR5 dot gov (or edu). In the past we were told by ‘experts’ that dot gov and dot edu were much more valuable. Is it true. There are several views but I like that by Caroline Melberg in her post, Are .Gov And .Edu Links Worth More? Her attitude is based on a simple premise. A link is a link whether it comes from a dot com, dot net or dot gov – if the site/page is relevant to your site then it’s a valuable link.
If you have a franchise site then getting a link from a page about Finding Funds for Your Franchise – even though the page may be on a banking site, is far more valuable than getting a link from a page about baking cakes, even though is a franchise site. It is the relevance of the two documents that count.
A private school site that is discussing the devastation in Haiti can refer to schools being destroyed. Links to other sites that are Helping Haiti Heal would still be relevant, if they linked to stories on Haiti and the earthquake.
On the other hand, the millions of sites that are linking to the charity sites like the Red Cross are helping to boost that site, not because of the quality of the links, but because of the volume of links. If you can get a million links – good luck to you.
Footnote – while I have mentioned the Haiti earthquake – love them or hate them, Google has donated US$1 million to support disaster relief is acting as a collection point for anyone else to donate – you can do so through Google checkout. More information can be found here.
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I think the higher the Page Rank the more valuable.