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What is more important? PR or incoming link count? Am looking for actual site analysis help.

by carlos123
20 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I am looking at the top site of a very high CPC keyword phrase I am thinking of going for but am at a bit of a loss as to whether I should pay more attention to the PR or to the incoming link count for this page.

The PR is 1.
CPC is $7.92
LSV traffic is 18,100
PR of top four pages on first page of SERP are 1,0,3,0
The incoming links as shown through Firefox SEO plugin are: 162

It's a bit confusing because checking directly with Yahoo the number of incoming links that are from offsite are 146. The total number of incoming links from both the site itself and from outside the site is 203 (according to Yahoo). So SEO plugin doesn't seem very accurate here. Don't know.

Regardless let's assume that it is has incoming links of 162 from outside it's own domain. We don't know the quality of those incoming links (I haven't checked that yet).

The site is a poor quality Adsense site with links to internal pages that have information for each state about the keyword topic. Personally I think the site is a joke (no offense intended to whoever put it up but hey...that's how it comes across to me). Put up solely to get Adsense income with little valuable content.

Now on the surface the PR1 seems beatable to me but I don't know about those incoming links. 162 seems like a lot to me. My guess is that since this is an Adsense site that most of those incoming links are from articles and other such sites put up by the site owner. I can't imagine someone actually linking to the site otherwise since it has almost nothing of value content wise.

The site has the keyword phrase in the title and the domain name.

How would you all analyze this further? What else should I look for? Would you give more weight to the incoming links and their quality or to the PR of only 1?

Anybody?

Carlos
#actual #analysis #count #important #incoming #link #site
  • Profile picture of the author jasonmorgan
    ok... lets see....

    PR 1, google doesn't think much of the site. I generally don't put much weight in pagerank and PR 1 isn't anything to be worried about.

    162 links, honestly, that nothing. 1,620 links and now we are talking.

    You need to do a backlinks check and see what those links are, also, check the internal pages for backlinks. It could be that the main site doesn't have a lot of links pointing at it but the internal pages could be a different story.

    Check PR Popularity others - Website Diagnostic - Complete Analysis run it through this (don't bother with the keywords) and see what comes up.

    What is the domain age of the site?

    that's a start to uncover the mystery of your competition
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    • Profile picture of the author carlos123
      Originally Posted by jasonmorgan View Post

      PR 1, google doesn't think much of the site. I generally don't put much weight in pagerank and PR 1 isn't anything to be worried about.

      162 links, honestly, that nothing. 1,620 links and now we are talking.
      Well it may be nothing technically but I sure don't relish putting in the time to get 162 incoming links for a single web site. I'm looking to make money for the least amount of time involved. So that's substantial to me with respect to getting quality incoming links.

      However I did some digging around and most of the links appear to be from his own web pages spread out all over the place, hubpage articles, squidoo, that type of stuff. I found some of his links on other unrelated Adsense sites stuck way down in small print at the bottom the pages. Presumably to build link juice.

      So it's beatable I think. It's just going to take a while to get over 162 similar links going. There is no question I can beat him or her on content. My content would blow him/her out of the water though I have no idea if Google will recognize the quality of my writing LOL.

      I take it then that you think incoming links should be a much higher consideration than pagerank? That you don't even concern yourself with trying to beat pages with PR7,8 or even 9? That doesn't make much sense to me.

      Every person I have read on this says a newbie like me shouldn't try and go up against anything greater than a PR4 if that.

      Check PR Popularity others - Website Diagnostic - Complete Analysis run it through this (don't bother with the keywords) and see what comes up.
      Nothing super significant as far as I can tell. Yahoo has indexed 58 pages...no doubt each of the 50 state pages which contain almost nothing in them but a bunch of more links. It shows no Google indexed pages though that is obviously not accurate.

      The age of the domain based on a whois is at least 2 years old. Maybe older if they had it registered longer than that.

      How do you find the age of the domain? Is that a really important consideration? If so...why?

      Carlos
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      • Profile picture of the author carlos123
        I just thought of another consideration. If I go head to head with this Adsense person and beat his site page for this keyword phrase I may take a real chunk out of his income given the high CPC of this keyword.

        If that happens he ain't gonna be too happy. What's to keep him from taking out his anger at me by going to my site and clicking on my Adsense link ads for an hour or two while watching a show on hulu.com?

        Nothing.

        So all my effort will go down the drain, Google will close down my account, and he will end up in top dog spot again.

        Doesn't sound too pretty. Maybe I should go find me a nice easy PR 1 no backlinks type keyword phrase. Maybe I should stay away from keyword phrases already taken by my fellow Adsensibites.

        Don't know. Anybody got any more suggestions?

        Carlos
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  • Profile picture of the author jasonmorgan
    I'm looking to make money for the least amount of time involved
    I agree
    It's just going to take a while to get over 162 similar links going
    go through his links and find if on any of those sites you can add your own, that is a start. I'll PM you some hints to get you going on adding some additional backlinks.
    I take it then that you think incoming links should be a much higher consideration than pagerank? That you don't even concern yourself with trying to beat pages with PR7,8 or even 9? That doesn't make much sense to me.
    not exactly. PR 1-3 I'm not afraid of, above that and I take other things into consideration.

    It's not uncommon to find lower PR sites beating higher PR sites. Often, the higher PR sites have a lot of authority so they will rank fairly well for additional long-tail keywords but lower PR sites that focus on those long-tail keywords can and often do beat the higher PR site for those keywords.

    If I have a PR 5 site that targets the keyword 'widgets' I'm going to have some spillover authority and ranking for 'blue widgets' but, if you build a site that targets 'blue widgets' chances are you're going to rank higher than I do.

    Now, going head to head with a site for the same keywords, chances are the higher PR site is going to win.

    for example, I typed in 'monkeys' into google, the PR for the top sites were... PR6 (wikipedia), PR2 (san diego zoo), PR4, PR - (youtube), PR5, PR4, PR4, PR2, PR4... what's that little 'ol PR 2 site doing in spot #2? Maybe not the best example but shows that lower PR sites can and do beat out higher PR sites.
    How do you find the age of the domain? Is that a really important consideration? If so...why?
    domain age shows stability and authority... how much weight search engines give to domain age is unknown but they tend to like sites that have been around a while.
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    • Profile picture of the author carlos123
      Thanks for your offer to pm me some backlink suggestions Jason. Truly that is very gracious of you but I think I'm going to skip this one. The main thing causing me to veer away is that I don't want to go head to head with an Adsense person who has obviously been in it for a while. I mean from the looks of things I could beat them but it's just not worth my time doing so.

      I found another one that has PR stats of 1,1,1,0 in the first four positions that pays even more. No Adsense site in sight. Only 4 inbound links to the top page in position one on this new one.

      Easier work. More money. Why not.

      I hope to find more like that one. I think I will stay away from one's that have big Adsense written all over them.

      Carlos
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    • Profile picture of the author carlos123
      Originally Posted by jasonmorgan View Post

      It's not uncommon to find lower PR sites beating higher PR sites. Often, the higher PR sites have a lot of authority so they will rank fairly well for additional long-tail keywords but lower PR sites that focus on those long-tail keywords can and often do beat the higher PR site for those keywords.

      If I have a PR 5 site that targets the keyword 'widgets' I'm going to have some spillover authority and ranking for 'blue widgets' but, if you build a site that targets 'blue widgets' chances are you're going to rank higher than I do.

      Now, going head to head with a site for the same keywords, chances are the higher PR site is going to win.
      That sounds like a bit more gold to add to my golden nugget tid bits I am getting off this forum. Thanks Jason!

      Carlos
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    • Profile picture of the author 2d0k
      Originally Posted by jasonmorgan View Post

      I agree
      domain age shows stability and authority... how much weight search engines give to domain age is unknown but they tend to like sites that have been around a while.
      Do you have some sources to support this statement? please.. so that i can read them..
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      • Profile picture of the author kingside
        Originally Posted by 2d0k View Post

        Do you have some sources to support this statement? please.. so that i can read them..
        It's a pretty well documented fact. Just go Google domain age seo and you'll find tons of articles.
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  • Profile picture of the author blueice
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    • Profile picture of the author carlos123
      Originally Posted by blueice View Post

      why are you using LSV?
      I am actually not using LSV exclusively. The formula I use in my spreadsheet evaluates whether LSV or MSV is higher and uses the higher value along with some percentages and other figures to arrive at an estimated monthly value of commission from Adsense.

      So in the case of "bikini" my formula would use the lower global average value (MSV).

      If the LSV and MSV are pretty close that's even better.

      [/quote]
      The reason you should stay away from high PR is not because they are unbeatable. It`s because they are more likely to be unbeatable and you should quickly move on to something easier without wasting your time.[/QUOTE]

      Thanks for the additional input blueice. I've added that last bit of your input to my warriorforum nuggets file.

      Carlos
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  • Profile picture of the author marynorth21
    Link count is what matters for me because a link is still a link and it gives juice as long as it is dofollow and doesn't belong in the bad neighbor.
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  • Profile picture of the author jasonmorgan
    The truth of the matter is nobody knows (except google employees) the formula of how sites are ranked.

    SEO is a giant hypothesis and guessing game of what factors help rank and which factors have the most weight.

    Certain factors are assumed to have more influence, like backlinks and anchor text, while other factors like domains age are more like mini factors that can tip ranking in a sites favor but on their own might not make a huge difference.

    Is any of what I said accurate? Reread the first sentence and then make up your own mind
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    • Profile picture of the author carlos123
      Originally Posted by jasonmorgan View Post

      SEO is a giant hypothesis and guessing game of what factors help rank and which factors have the most weight.
      In general I agree with you but I also believe that, like with any hypothesis, we can deduce certain things to be true or not true as we observe how Google deals with various web sites in it's SERP's.

      Basic SEO principles make sense and have been tuned over years of observing what Google does. They are most certainly more useful and sound as principles to operate by than picking things out of a hat to determine whether we should do something or not to a web site.

      Carlos
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    • Profile picture of the author 12holger34
      Originally Posted by jasonmorgan View Post

      The truth of the matter is nobody knows (except google employees) the formula of how sites are ranked.

      SEO is a giant hypothesis and guessing game of what factors help rank and which factors have the most weight.

      Certain factors are assumed to have more influence, like backlinks and anchor text, while other factors like domains age are more like mini factors that can tip ranking in a sites favor but on their own might not make a huge difference.

      Is any of what I said accurate? Reread the first sentence and then make up your own mind
      I agree on your statement.
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  • Profile picture of the author jasonmorgan
    I thought I knew something about SEO but then I built up 200 backlinks for my new site and its now ranking lower than it was a week ago for several keywords. Seems like the more links I get the farther it drops in the SERPs
    Could be several differect factors that are cauting this.

    Is the site new? It's not uncommon for a new site to rank very high and then after a few weeks settle into it's natural position much lower in the SERP's. Yeah, google likes to mess with our heads

    Are you chasing a trend of current hot topic? Could be competition who are faster and better than you all fighting for the same thing at the same time.

    Backlinks take time: You may have added 200 backlinks but that doesn't mean the search engines have found 200 backlinks yet. It could be months or longer before they all show up.

    There are more factors but you get the idea, it just some time for everything to fall into place.
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  • Profile picture of the author raphaellive1986
    hi carlos123,

    162 links is to very little.

    As far as i know. PR comes from quality link, which means PR and links are both important.
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    • Profile picture of the author carlos123
      Thanks for your input Raphael but I've decided to skip on this one for now. While 162 incoming links may be nothing technically speaking...I prefer to go after keyword phrases with...say 50 incoming links or less at this point in time. Less work and less hassle. I have found several since I posted here that are under 50 incoming links for each of the top positions and have decent traffic and ECPC. Those are the one's I am focusing on right now.

      Carlos
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      • Profile picture of the author raphaellive1986
        Originally Posted by carlos123 View Post

        Thanks for your input Raphael but I've decided to skip on this one for now. While 162 incoming links may be nothing technically speaking...I prefer to go after keyword phrases with...say 50 incoming links or less at this point in time. Less work and less hassle. I have found several since I posted here that are under 50 incoming links for each of the top positions and have decent traffic and ECPC. Those are the one's I am focusing on right now.
        You're right, but you can still use directory submission and social bookmarking.That is some of the way to increase one way link.

        ok, goodluck bro
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  • Profile picture of the author Xammy
    Originally Posted by carlos123 View Post

    I am looking at the top site of a very high CPC keyword phrase I am thinking of going for but am at a bit of a loss as to whether I should pay more attention to the PR or to the incoming link count for this page.

    The PR is 1.
    CPC is $7.92
    LSV traffic is 18,100
    PR of top four pages on first page of SERP are 1,0,3,0
    The incoming links as shown through Firefox SEO plugin are: 162

    It's a bit confusing because checking directly with Yahoo the number of incoming links that are from offsite are 146. The total number of incoming links from both the site itself and from outside the site is 203 (according to Yahoo). So SEO plugin doesn't seem very accurate here. Don't know.

    Regardless let's assume that it is has incoming links of 162 from outside it's own domain. We don't know the quality of those incoming links (I haven't checked that yet).

    The site is a poor quality Adsense site with links to internal pages that have information for each state about the keyword topic. Personally I think the site is a joke (no offense intended to whoever put it up but hey...that's how it comes across to me). Put up solely to get Adsense income with little valuable content.

    Now on the surface the PR1 seems beatable to me but I don't know about those incoming links. 162 seems like a lot to me. My guess is that since this is an Adsense site that most of those incoming links are from articles and other such sites put up by the site owner. I can't imagine someone actually linking to the site otherwise since it has almost nothing of value content wise.

    The site has the keyword phrase in the title and the domain name.

    How would you all analyze this further? What else should I look for? Would you give more weight to the incoming links and their quality or to the PR of only 1?

    Anybody?

    Carlos
    Just try this also . . . checkpagerank.net
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