All Links Matter

Many times when webmaster embark on a link campaign, they obsess on the vaunted Google PageRank that the linking page has.

What a waste of time.

Today's site with a PageRank of 0 could have a PageRank of 6 tomorrow. I've seen this myself on 2 separate sites - as they come out of the gate, they are graced with a PageRank of 6. Now, prior to that, any webmaster who was obsessed with PageRank would never link to that site.

While the above mentioned scenario is probably not very common, the point is that while a site may be ranking low today, unless you know the webmaster personally, you don't know what other efforts that person is putting in to get that site ranked.

Furthermore, a site may have little or no PageRank but still receive tons of traffic. So, would you pass up a page that was getting 11k visitors a day just because it has a Google PageRank of 0?

Yeah, I didn't think so.

Another key element in consideration is that every unique link you get from a site counts. Whether it's from Joe's Pizza shop, or Pizza hut directly, to the search engine, they still count as two "votes" for your site.

Now, each link would carry different levels of weight in regards to relevancy, but if you can't get a link from Pizza Hut, you could get about 1,200 links from the various Joe's Pizza Shops located on the web to make up for it.

There is a current backlash of directory bashing. True, there are many directories that exist for the sole purpose of making money off of Google AdSense, and those directories should be punished accordingly.

But, there are many directory owners who are dedicated to having highly targeted and specific category related listings to provide for their visitors. These directories are a great resource for search engines as they help categorize the Internet - that's why directories will always be important on the Web.

So, always get a link from any relevant site whenever you can - regardless of Google PageRank or any other factor. Even Google was an unknown when they first appeared on the Internet.