One thing I am tired of hearing from new Bloggers, SEOs, Webmasters, etc… is that because they have a PR of X they should get XYZ or that they don’t want to link because their PR is X and they don’t want to lose it. PR has gotten to much attention lately and is being spoken about incorrectly, especially at shows for Mommy Bloggers and non intelligent/scammy SEO or Affiliate Shows lead by some people who claim to be experts. They are usually the smaller local ones. Here is what PR is, what it means if you have a PRX, for your media kit and it’s value and everything else you could want to know about Google PR being relevant.
Google PR is a value assigned by Google to a specific page on a website on the authority it has. Years ago there way a meta tag you could use which could give you whatever PR you wanted. PR ranges from 0 to 9 (I have never seen a 10). The higher the PR the more authority you have. Google PR is essentially just a count of the relevant and then the total backlinks pointing into your site. That is Google PR or Page Rank. It is no longer relevant for decision making, but can put a site above another if you have to choose between two content relevant sites that are the same age but one has a higher Google PR.
My blog or site is a PR5, I should get more money for a guest post or a link
This is absolutely incorrect. When people say this they usually refer to their homepage as having a PR5. Chances are the rest of their website is a PR3 or lower. If they want to charge you more money because their site’s homepage has a PR5, you need to make sure their entire site, or the page you will be getting a link from has a PR5. If most pages are a PR1, then the value is gone. Go through their site with newer posts, older posts and posts that get traffic and take an average of the actual site’s Google PR ranking. Once you have that then approach them and ask if your link will be from the actual PR5 or from the lower pages which do not have any authority close to a PR5. This can reduce your costs or even get you a free post if you can show them how you’ll help to boost the entire site’s Google PR ranking. BTW, you should actually know how to do this before offering them advice on it. You also have to remember that new posts won’t get a PR ranking until Google updates it’s PR rankings so it could be zero because it’s a new post.
I don’t want to lose my PR3 and want it to grow.
If you don’t want to lose your PR3 and want it to grow, you don’t have to be afraid of linking everything with no follow links. By linking to high PR and content relevant sites with a high PR as well as linking do follow links to content relevant sites with a lower PR, you can show your relevance and that you have a solid mix and help to grow your own Google PR. The next thing you need to do is work on a link building strategy from content relevant sites, not always high PR sites, and then get them to point into the pages you want your PR to increase on.
Which site should I get a post from, a high PR or content relevant.
This is tricky. If you have a site with a ton of authority but isn’t relevant like TechCrunch or Mashable, the link can drive traffic and sales, but it may not be as good for SEO, depending on the copy, content and category your link is in. If you have a site that is very content relevant but doesn’t have as much authority, but will give you a link in the top of a post, that could be much better for you SEO wise, but not for traffic wise. The thing you should think about with this is what is the goal, traffic and sales or SEO value and rankings for the long run.
In your media kit
One thing you should avoid is posting your PR in your media kit because it looks like you are selling links. If you are doing it, place it in an image or non crawlable one so that you can still have it there to help sell your space, but also so that your media kit isn’t misread in that you are selling backlinks.
PR can boost the rest of my site.
This is still true. One thing that does happen with a lot of sites and blogs is that you link too many links internally from your homepage with the higher PR. By adding more links from the page with the higher PR, you pass less rank to each internal page. It’s important to focus on what is the most important and what can use the most help. Then decide where to post links to and how many should be posted from your higher PR pages.
Google PR used to be a huge decision making factor on backlinks, however it has begun to fade as important with content relevance taking over and other ranking factors. Although a high PR or authoritative site does carry a lot of value, sometimes you may want to go for a site that has a lower PR, but more relevance. This could help boost your SEO even more than the higher PR but less relevant website.
