Comments on: Teaching Advanced Link Building and Why Pagerank Will Never Die

By: cole

cole — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 04:36:22 +0000

I can’t remember the last time concerned myself with PR. The PR for a number of authoritative websites got smacked down a few digits not all that long ago. However, the serp position for many of these websites didn’t even make a twitch. I’m more interested in the number of unique inbound links to the website that are related to my topic. I will also see how they rank for their targeted keywords in Google. If it’s worth it I will move onto figuring how to get safe and effective placement.

By: Melissa - SEOAware.com

Melissa - SEOAware.com — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 17:42:15 +0000

SEO Canada, regarding this statement “then throw some crappy quality links down with good anchor text and outrank you with both strength and number…”, I agree. I am seeing this more and more. In fact, I have seen a local site that launched a couple of months ago, with 10 pages, pass up 25 well-established sites with over 5,000 backlinks and there are not many that have any page rank at all. The site went from a PR of 0 to a 3 with the last update. There are those that say Google is looking at sites that get links too fast and it could hurt you…from what I am seeing this is not happening.

By: SEO Canada

SEO Canada — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 22:10:28 +0000

Great post Michael. I’ve always thought of pagerank as no more then an indicator of is this website healthy, and does google like it (provided it ranks somewhere in the SERPs). Even then I’m not that fussy about what a good / authoritative link is, if I can find the site on a phrase relevant for my business I’m link building for that ranks for any particular phrase then its more then good enough for put a link on. I find too many people concentrate on only the higher PR links which makes it easy for your competitors to duplicate then throw some crappy quality links down with good anchor text and outrank you with both strength and number…

By: david taylor

david taylor — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 19:52:01 +0000

I have to say I do agree with you. Unfortunately because so many clients have got it into their head that pagerank is the be all and end all then trying to convince them otherwise is very difficult. I’ve found a good way is to get them to use firefox, and the seo plugin which shows them the truth.

Another good argument is that If pagerank mattered as much as it is claimed, wikipedia would be number one for everything!

By: Trontastic

Trontastic — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 16:58:03 +0000

I think you hit on a very important point that Mr. Turner eludes to as well. So often I hear ‘oh I ignore alexa because the data isn’t very solid’, or ‘quantcast just doesn’t work’… Most of the time its from people with very little experience in the industry. They fail to realize that while none of these systems are 100%; collectively, alexa, compete, technorati, quantcast, hitwise, feed burner, and even webmaster tools (G and Y!) paint a substantial picture. The key here though is understanding through experience where to draw the line and what the data is good for.

Cheers!

By: Patti Fousek

Patti Fousek — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 12:14:03 +0000

I agree with the research aspect of link building. I get asked “how do you build links to a site?” many times. My answer is always, “by doing lots of research.” There are no short cuts to link building unfortunately. I’ve been doing this for almost 8 years now and if there was a short cut I would have found it by now.

Also agree with your PageRank statement. It reminds me of the adage “you can’t judge a book by it’s cover.” Well, you can’t judge a website by it’s PageRank.

By: Winooski

Winooski — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 15:58:53 +0000

The way I think of PageRank is as a unique number assigned to each document in Google’s index. It’s different from a permanent, unique ID in that fluctuates as Google’s indexing processes keep operating, but, nonetheless, each page should have its own unique “PageRank stamp” that orders it in the PageRank hierarchy.

What most people (and, unfortunately, sometimes even Google itself) call PageRank is actually a set of ten tiers into which each document can be slotted depending on its *real* PageRank, but those little green bars on your Google toolbar aren’t the PageRank itself, just the tier in which your page falls (and who knows if those tiers are divided evenly based on a linear, logarithmic, or some other function).

I also get a twisted pleasure out of comparing PageRank with karma, that is, the totality of what that page has “done” that gives it a unique value in the universe; just as every being has its own unique karma, so every page should have its own unique PageRank.

By: Hugo

Hugo — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 13:47:30 +0000

Great disclaimer, Michael! I often end up sharing that same exact disclaimer with clients and colleagues alike.

P.S. Back in 2004 or so, Rand and I toyed with the idea of trying to invent a third-party “PageRank” tool. Rand went on to become a rock star and invented “PageStrength”, which has now been replaced by a newer tool, but I don’t think he’s succeeded in undermining PageRank.

Hopefully, somebody (or a group of somebodies) will finally make it happen.

By: Brian Turner

Brian Turner — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 11:34:30 +0000

It’s a very good pointer about the teaching element.

On the one hand, as webmasters, we seem imbued with an “open source” mentality of helping others if we can, despite no associated monetary gain.

And yet, too many people coming to SEO for the first time want to be baby-spooned into becoming an expert in all things SEO over night.

I think SEO is at heart a creative process, and requires a creative mindset that can draw on relevant webmastering experience of seeing how changes impact on the wild.

Yet people with little experience and no intention of gaining further experience, and no inclination to the creative process, expect to be able to be taught how to be creative and what experience is – and then promptly challenge us for our experience because they think difference.

I’m not referring to SEO hangouts, as much as general public forums – business & webmaster forums, for example, plus general interactions with the public.

This goes back to something I’ve said before – I think people need to develop decent experience managing multiple websites in order to learn, through experience, the basics of what constitutes the internet and its live environment, and how to work most constructively in that environment.

Once they do, hopefully it should be much easily to better understand the concepts that we’re trying to communicate.

2c.

By: Marios Alexandrou

Marios Alexandrou — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 01:00:24 +0000

FYI… I’m being welcomed as a StumbleUpon user even though I clicked here from Sphinn.