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Backlinks and their value - questions

shags38

Top Contributor
Hi again,

My understanding of the value of the "juice" of backlinks is pretty much related to quality moreso than volume albeit a combination is best. Quality is primarily based on the PR and content similarity of the site linking to yours right?

Is it also correct that Google only counts one (1) link from any given site to your site or does it count links from a site to different pages of your site? e.g. site X links to my home page but also to 3 other pages on my site - does Google count 4 links from site X or just 1 ?

I ask because I left a post on a PR 6 (Alexa 76,575) dot ORG site on their blog and now have 8,810 inbound links from that site to one of my Jewellery sites - I am assuming that 8,809 are worthless ?? (unless of course it is generating a link to my home page from 8,810 individual pages ?? ) - the site has 94,878 indexed pages and 1,300,000 monthly hits from its top ten keywords alone.

Looking forward to comments.
 

WG2010

Archived Member
Welcome back shags38, I hope you had a good Christmas.

Pagerank is specific to each individual page and not the domain itself (that's not why it's named pagerank, just a coincidence).

Depending on the website, each page will have different amounts of PR or juice that will flow to the links on that page. That includes links to other websites on the Internet as well as links on the webpage itself. The total amount of juice is divided up amongst all the links on the page.

Example.

A) http://www.domain.com/page1.html - PR5 with 10 outbound links. You will have total juice / amount of links on page = juice that flows to each one.

B) http://www.domain.com/page2.html PR8 with 100 outbound links. Again, total amount of juice/ amount of links on the page = amount of juice each link will receive.

Which is better? The page that has higher pagerank but has far more links on it or the lower page which has less links, increasing the total juice each link receives.

You could argue for either but it's not worth spending a lot of time theorising but instead use the time to just build links and getting both types

As for your 8000 links, it's likely your comment was posted on a blog that has a recent comments widget which is displayed on every page on the website.

Google bot then came along, spidered the site and found your comment/link on every webpage. As more comments are made, yours will drop off the recent comment section and thus you will lose the majority of the links. Nothing to worry about or be alarmed.

Google probably counts all these links but they would not count them very high due to lack of IP diversity as well as the fact that most blog comments are nofollow.

At the end of the day, I personally think a link is a link is a link and I will take any type of link I can get. But you are much better off to spend your time building links than trying to come up with the perfect link building strategy (which will be flawed because nothing is perfect online and that would probably throw up a huge red flag anyway).
 

shags38

Top Contributor
Welcome back shags38, I hope you had a good Christmas.

Pagerank is specific to each individual page and not the domain itself (that's not why it's named pagerank, just a coincidence).

Depending on the website, each page will have different amounts of PR or juice that will flow to the links on that page. That includes links to other websites on the Internet as well as links on the webpage itself. The total amount of juice is divided up amongst all the links on the page.

Example.

A) http://www.domain.com/page1.html - PR5 with 10 outbound links. You will have total juice / amount of links on page = juice that flows to each one.

B) http://www.domain.com/page2.html PR8 with 100 outbound links. Again, total amount of juice/ amount of links on the page = amount of juice each link will receive.

Which is better? The page that has higher pagerank but has far more links on it or the lower page which has less links, increasing the total juice each link receives.

You could argue for either but it's not worth spending a lot of time theorising but instead use the time to just build links and getting both types

As for your 8000 links, it's likely your comment was posted on a blog that has a recent comments widget which is displayed on every page on the website.

Google bot then came along, spidered the site and found your comment/link on every webpage. As more comments are made, yours will drop off the recent comment section and thus you will lose the majority of the links. Nothing to worry about or be alarmed.

Google probably counts all these links but they would not count them very high due to lack of IP diversity as well as the fact that most blog comments are nofollow.

At the end of the day, I personally think a link is a link is a link and I will take any type of link I can get. But you are much better off to spend your time building links than trying to come up with the perfect link building strategy (which will be flawed because nothing is perfect online and that would probably throw up a huge red flag anyway).

G'day General and thanks, yes I had a good Christmas and I hope you did also.

Thanks for your detailed reply - very informative stuff and it all actually makes sense to me (miracles do happen) - except for the 4 different pages link from one site example I gave - does that count for 4 links or only the juice value of one because they eminate from the same IP

Just a couple more quick ones. As much as I agree a link is a link - is 500 links from Facebook as good or better than 500 individual site links?

When doing reciprocal linking - does it matter where on my site I put the link to the other site? I tend to put them on my links page as against on any content pages on the site - is that acceptable practice? is the link just as visible to the spiders for the other party to gain a benefit?

cheers,
Mike
 

WG2010

Archived Member
G'day General and thanks, yes I had a good Christmas and I hope you did also.

Thanks for your detailed reply - very informative stuff and it all actually makes sense to me (miracles do happen) - except for the 4 different pages link from one site example I gave - does that count for 4 links or only the juice value of one because they eminate from the same IP

Each link will contribute some linkjuice because they're on different pages.

PR applies to individual pages and has nothing to do with the entire domain name itself. Occasionally, some inner pages will have higher pagerank than the root domain itself. I would much prefer to have 4 links on 4 seperate pages on the same domain than just 1.

Are they devalued for being on the same IP range? Possible if the the domain doesn't have much authority but to be honest, I don't know for certain either way. I'd take the 4 instead of 1 though if I was given the option.

Just a couple more quick ones. As much as I agree a link is a link - is 500 links from Facebook as good or better than 500 individual site links?

When doing reciprocal linking - does it matter where on my site I put the link to the other site? I tend to put them on my links page as against on any content pages on the site - is that acceptable practice? is the link just as visible to the spiders for the other party to gain a benefit?

cheers,
Mike

SEOMoz recently did an interesting test on social media (twitter, not facebook) links vs traditional webpage links. You can read about it here.

Most major search engines recently stated that they now give some weight to twitter/facebook links but because a lot of facebook is unspiderable, it can't always give those links any value as it can't find them.

A few links placed on a Facebook page which has 500 likes (and which Google can spider) would have some value IMO. More than 500 spammy links on a page or profile that no-one has liked or shared.

Discussing links vs links is like coming across 2 $50 notes on the footpath and stopping to think which one you ought to pick up when you should obviously pick up both without a second thought.

According to Google, reciprocal links don't carry a lot of weight juice wise but that's not the only reason to get links. Any weight given to that link will depend on which page you place it on (your home page generally has higher PR than your links page unless you've been building a lot of links to your links page).

The position of the link on the page also affects the juice given to it; a footer link has less value than a link placed above the fold.
 

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