Which backlink is better? A Relevant PR-2 or a Non relevant PR-3/4?

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I often see that people emphasize on just getting PR-3/4+ Do-follow backlinks i.e. Quality backlinks. But I'm finding it hard to find such backlinks.
But I could manage some Relevant PR-2 sites from where I may acquire backlinks.

So, I'm in a fix.Because, after the recent Web Spam update, Google is penalizing Low Quality backlinked sites. So, will such low PR site will be counted the same and my site will get penalized? Also, such PR-2 backlink will make any contribution for improving SERP?

And, backlinks from Non-English sites are BAD?
#search engine optimization #backlink #pr2 #pr3 or 4 #relevant
  • Exactly the opposite..

    If you have too many of these higher quality PR3/4 links you could do more damage than having PR0 links. Lets face it, the web for the most part is made up of PR0 pages..

    The majority of your links need to be PR0 and be relevant.. with a few higher quality links. With non English they are OK but just not too many, I have a site with loads of blogroll links from Chinese sites and it's doing OK.
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    • Wow, that's a new one. Too many quality backlinks can penalize your site? Sorry, but I 100% disagree with you.
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  • Links from sites within your own niche are very important. As dmtaylor247 says, relevant PR0 links are very good. Most of mine are like that.
  • Relevant backlink much better even it's only PR 0 than high PR site but not relevant at all and non-English site it's depend on what your content is, if your site is on german language then you'll need backlink from German language site to keep your backlink relevancy.
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    • Well said.
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      Bit offtopic but it's important to also look at the Domain Authority, you can find these stats in Open Site Explorer
  • One that sends visitors to your site.
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    • Personally i'd go for the relevant PR 2 over a PR 3/4 in non related content but it depends on the content. If the site is not related to your your niche but the link is relevant to the content on the page then go for the higher PR.
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  • In my opinion, I would never go for non-related backlinks.. If you want to be "real" and not trying to trick the search engines, relevant content/backlinks are the way to go.

    I mean come on.. why in the heck are we just building backlinks to our sites that don't even support what our site is about? That's considered spamming and in my opinion it's just dumb.

    We should be building backlinks just the same as we are building traffic. Would you build traffic from a source that was totally unrelated to your topic and get 100 viewers or build traffic from a related source and get 50 viewers?

    Think about it.
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    • Yes, logical thinking. For being 'Real', relevancy is essential.

      Here I've some confusions.
      Firstly, if Non-Relevant links are considered as 'Spam' & 'Dumb', then why people try to get Backlinks from a .edu & .gov sites? I think, such relevant backlinks are very rare.

      Secondly, as your profile says, you've handled a lots of sites. So, have you ever tested this for any of the sites? Whether Non-Relevant backlins causing penalty to a site or not? Especially, after the latest 'WebSpam' update?
      Thanks
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      Most build links to rank in the search engines, that does drive relevant traffic so the source where the link is doesn't necessarily has to be relevant. We all know it's not easy to find relevant links all the time so we grab anything we can to rank, as long as it's not too spammy obvious and preferably with PR/DA.
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  • Though the relevant PR 2 backlinks can't do much good on your ranking, it is better than the unrelevant PR3/4. The great thing about the change is, it is not about the quantity anymore, as long as we have a few high PR and relevant backlinks, we can gain the favor of Google.
  • Dofolow links is needed to get link juice and it helps to rank as well.But only this kind of non related link is not good for your site.So it is better to build link(nofollow or dofollow) in related sites.
  • Things are changing in search engine land, that is for sure. I choose to ignore stuff like PR and go after backlinks that are niche related. It just makes sense to me, as you should be going after the traffic that these links can bring. Anything else such as rankings increase is just extra!

    Remember PR changes. A site or page with low PR could gain it in the future. I feel that there is an ever growing risk involved with seeking out links that are unrelated. In other words it is not as questionable to the search engines when you have mostly related links.

    Now is it going to hurt you to have a few random nice PR backlinks??? I doubt it... but those sort of links will not be my focus.
  • I would go for relevant ones, definitely!
  • I would say that relevancy is a whole lot more important since Penguin.
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    • I have been experimenting with utilizing more relevant terms in my back link building efforts recently and have seen some eye opening cause and effect scenarios. I have noticed a drastic difference in the benefit derived from back linking when using relevant vs. not so relevant vs. not relevant at all keywords.
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  • How about getting both the links?
  • Google Loves those backlinks which are created on a website related to your theme. So a PR2 relevant backlink is definitely more juicy than other high PR irrelevant backlinks.
  • In my point of view PR2 Relevant backlinks is more better than PR4 non relevant backlinks.
  • A relevant PR2 links are better.
  • relevant pr2 is better if there are not many other external links on the page.
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  • Relevancy is considered first than the PR.
  • Google's algorithm can determine relevance of the source page (on which the link appears) to the link's anchor text to the target page. Yes, all three need to form a relevance "chain". There's lots of disagreement on whether you need to worry about the source site (as a whole) being relevant to the target page.

    There's no evidence that this is currently required, and there's weak evidence only that the whole source page is required to be relevant to the link to the target page. There's some pretty strong evidence that if the paragraph surrounding the link forms a relevance chain thru the link with the target page, that's a better link (in terms of relevance) than a link thats not in the middle of some relevant text.

    If I were to design an algorithm for taking into account source site relevance, I'd for sure implement some kind of cut-off on the number of pages considered, so that source sites with more than that number of pages does not have to be relevant in all its pages to the link under consideration. And I'd implement it so that the set of pages selected for the relevance test would be the ones that act as source pages for links to the page on which the link under consideration appears. In other words, I'd consider only a small set of pages on the source site -- those that point at the source page with links in the text.

    Anyways all of this only touches upon one parameter for evaluating the value of a link. There's many more, such as page rank of the source page, page rank of the source site, authority of the source site, and on and on. Noone besides Google knows what's the formula and what exceptions really exist, we're just trying to observe like blind mice around an elephant
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    • There are ways Google can classify relevancy. They can categorise the web in many different ways, take users for example;

      >>Your categories and demographics

      https://www.google.com/ads/preferences/

      They also have the ability to categorise websites;

      Top 1000 sites - DoubleClick Ad Planner

      I know from building adsense sites that Google's categories can be 5 levels deep, they need to do this to serve better advertisments. The whole web to them is made up of social and web profiles. Just go over to adwords and use the contextual targeting tool and you will see what I mean.

      Bing can also determine relevancy, in fact they use the page title when determining the weight of a given link.

      The proof is really in the pudding on this one.. I personally have had better results when the website, webpage and link are all relevant regardless of pagerank but having abit of pagerank and domain authority is a bonus. The less relevance there is, the less serps increase you will have but it's not to say there won't be some improvement.
  • I think the relevant PRs are always better. Google's algorithm is pretty advanced. So I think it really looks for relevancy, if s=for no other reason that just because it can
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    • Ralph sorry to pick on you but this is exactly the kind of thinking we need to combat.

      If you haven't worked at Google on this exact part of their algorithm, then you don't know what they can and cannot do. And if you believewhat Matt Cutts says, then we part ways right there -- Matt's job is to tell people how Google would like them to behave, not necessarily how Google can analyze that behavior.

      The other alternative is to provide some observable evidence for your "thinking", i.e. just because you think they can do X, it's not a fact.
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  • Your backlinks have got to be relevant, that's what Google like and expect. PR0 sites aren't ideal either, Google loves high PR relevant backlinks. You should ideally have 250 - 750 good quality links.
  • Google is killing blog networks where you could have got PR3+ links as many as you wanted. Getting links from relevant sites is much more valuable and getting links from high PR blogs where nobody comment or discuss on the topics. Simply find relevant community sites and be active in the discussion there.
  • I was just wondering, How many backlinks would be considered natural for a website in its first year?
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    • No more than 100 good quality links, why would you need more anyway?
    • Way too many variables. A site in a low competition niche isn't going to need much. (As long as they're quality backlinks.) But a site in a heavy competition niche is going to need more.

      Quality over quantity though.
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  • relevant links are always better, you get the link juice and you get the targeted visitor with conversion. Remember, a visitor with no interest in your website can't convert like a targeted visitor.
  • Relevant backlinks are always better in the long run, first I'd concentrate on those.

    But in case you come across the opportunity of an easy PR5 backlink (even though it's unrelevant), don't miss it.
  • Relevant backlink good for your SERP ranking. But if you want to increase your PR than higher PR is better.
  • Hi, first of all I would like to thanks to all and I understand relevant backlink is important but I'm still little bit confuse regarding do-follow relevant backlink and no-follow relevant backlink which one is more important and what is natural backlinks ?


  • Relevant sites.


    And why would you even link to nonenglish sites? Thats just spam.
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    • I've left plenty of comments on non-english sites and they work just fine. I don't see why they'd be considered spam. Although, since I comment manually, I run them through a translator first. (Generally not the greatest translation, but plenty of my comments have been approved.)
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