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How Low PR Web Sites Can Improve Search Engine Ranking
About the Author: Andy Theekson provides unbiased advice, software and service reviews and free information on designing and promoting your web site for search engines. Learn the essential keys to achieving higher rankings with both human and non-human visitors at : http://www.the-search-engine-optimizer.com
Some website owners are under the misguided impression that the more links they get from High Google Page Rank (PR) pages the better they'll improve their own search engine ranking. But this is only partially true and it's only part of the story.
When Exchanging Links with other Websites some people are overly preoccupied with linking to sites only with a High Page Rank. What's often overlooked is the importance of how many other outgoing links there are from the page you're linking to.
The more outgoing links from the page and the PR value of the link to your website becomes diluted and of less value.
It's an established fact that many search engines and in particular Google are placing a greater emphasis on " one way links " that connect to a website. Links are part of the off page factors in SEO. There importance has been gaining ground in recent years when you need to improve search engine ranking.
The value of a link to your website is considered higher if :
1. The link is from a page with a good Page Rank.
2. The page supplying the link has fewer outgoing links.
3. The link is from a site that has a related theme to your own website.
4. The link is one way - there is no reciprocal link back to the other website.
The Page Rank that's credited to a web page by Google comes partly from the incoming links that come to your site. It's determined by the PR of the sending page and the number of outgoing links from the sending page.
One of the first people to report this fact was Leslie Rhode creator of OptiLink back in 2002. OptiLink is an SEO software tool that became so effective that Google to this day has continued to try to prevent it being used through a variety of countermeasure techniques.
Determining PR for a web page is quite simple, but often out of date because of Google's update delays. However determining the number of outgoing links from a page and the value a link from that page would be to your website, takes a little more work.
One tool that I use for this task is SEO Elite V3. One feature of this tool is analyzing links back to a website. One of the reports gives the PR of the page the link is coming from as well as the number of other outgoing links from that page. It then calculates the value of that link based on these two factors.
SEO Elite's Link Value is calculated using a formula for Page Rank that was established some years ago and it's this:
Pr(A) = (1-d) + d[Pr(P1/L1) + Pr(P2/L2) + Pr(Pn/Ln)] where d=0.85; P1 to Pn are pages linked to Page A; L1 to Ln are the number of outbound links from each page. In the case of the Page Rank or Pr value of one link the formula simplifies to 0.85[Pr(P1/L1)]
It's not the exact formula that Google uses since that's unknown to anyone outside Google. However it shows how the value of a link to your website is affected by the number of outgoing links.
The higher the Link Value the more value a link is from that page to your own website.
Let me give you some examples:
A PR 1 page with 4 outgoing links has a Link Value to you of 0.21
A PR 2 page with 8 outgoing links has a Link Value to you of 0.21
A PR 3 page with 13 outgoing links has a Link Value to you of 0.20
A PR 4 page with 17 outgoing links has a Link Value to you of 0.20
A PR 5 page with 21 outgoing links has a Link Value to you of 0.20
A PR 6 page with 25 outgoing links has a Link Value to you of 0.20
A PR 7 page with 30 outgoing links has a Link Value to you of 0.20
A PR 8 page with 34 outgoing links has a Link Value to you of 0.20
A PR 9 page with 38 outgoing links has a Link Value to you of 0.20
A PR 10 page with 42 outgoing links has a Link Value to you of 0.20
What this shows is that a link from a low PR page with a lower number of outgoing links can be of more or equal value to a link from a high PR page with a higher number of outgoing links.
Because of this it's should be clear that to improve search engine ranking requires knowing how many other links are outgoing from the page, not just the Page Rank of the page linking to your website.
It may surprise you that a link from a web page with a PR of 2 and 8 outgoing links can be of as much value to your website as a link from a page with a PR of 7 and 30 outgoing links.
Of course it's rare to find a website with a links page with so few outgoing links as in my examples. Most Link Directory pages have 40 links or more and some have 100's. Hopefully it's clear that to improve search engine ranking, what's important is not just the PR of the linking page, but how many outgoing links there are.
Conclusion
When you're next thinking about linking to a website don't get obsessed with just finding websites with high PR pages. Consider also how many outgoing links they have, because that low PR site could be worth a lot more to you than you might have first thought.