Every Internet Marketer and every blogger knows that backlinks are like money in the bank. The more backlinks you have, the more authority your site gains and the more visitors come to your website. If you have a lot of backlinks to your site, you’l’ naturally rise in the rankings for your keywords.
However, there is a lot of false information out there about how they work. Many people are led the wrong way by well meaning bloggers who don’t know backlinks from a hole in the hole in the ground.
It’s so important to get the right information and bust through the lies are being spread out here. So I wrote this article to help my readers getting the truth about backlinks.
Backlink Myth #1 – Google Page Rank is equal to Search Engine Ranking.
People all over internet get excited when Google updates its pgae rank program and they find that they’ve risen from a PR2 to a PR3 or from PR0 to PR4. There’s also a lot of discussion over page rank in website marketplaces. Page rank is one of the important facts that bloggers use to measure the performance of their blog. But is all this really necessary? What exactly does page rank mean?
There’s big misconception over what page rank means, especially with respect to search engine rankings. Many people mistakenly believe that getting a high page rank will automatically mean that their blog will be ranked well in the search engine results.
The Truth is Ugly! Ops 
The truth is that page rank is only a small part of the overall al algorithm the determines the search engine results position of your blog or your websites. Page rank and search engine results position of your blog. Page rank and search engine results position are independent of each other. Page rank is a ranking determined by Google and only used in that search engine. Search engine results positions are across several different search engines.
Page Rank is determined by the number of backlinks that a specific page on your website is receiving. It is not site rank. Just because your homepage is ranked PR3 it doesn’t meanthat the rest of your blog or website will be ranked the same way.
If your home page is ranked a PR3, the pages that are linked from that homepage will get a bit of the “link juice” as problogger or marketers call it and will have their page rank slightly bumped. That is why it is so important to link to quality sites.
The fastest way to screw up your earned page rank is to link off to hundreds of low quality sites. If you do this, you’ll end up having your accumulated page rank totally spread out instead of staying in your websites where it should be.
It’s possible to have a web page with high page rank appear below a web page with a low page rank on the search engine results. It all depends on the quality of content that appears on that lower page rank website. If you install SEO tool that shows you the page rank for websites in your search engine results page, you’ll begin to see the details.
The truth is we don’t know exactly what contributes to search engine ranking. Many people spend a lot of time trying to guess Google’s algorithm but really this is a pointless quest. we know that page rank is a part of it, but it shouldn’t be your sole focus when you’re trying to increase your search engine ranking.
Does this mean that page rank is totally useless? No. While it is true that search engine do not list web pages in order of page rank, page rank itself is a very helpful tool in other aspects of internet marketing. Page rank is built up through backlinks and backlinks are a good way to increase your search engine results placement.
In addition, page rank can be like a feather in your cap when it comes to networking. Since a bit of link of “link juice” passes on to each page that you link to, having a high page rank is good for trading links and getting advertisers to advertise on your site. Your page rank will also come into play when you are submitting articles to quality article directories.
Backlink Myth #2 – Submitting to Hundreds of Free Directories will increase search results ranking
Backlinks are an important part of building up your page rank and your search engine results ranking. Many people have taken this advice to mean that they should be building as many about the number of backlinks than the quantity.
As a result, there are dozens of free directories that have popped up online. They promise that if you register to have your domain name appear in the directory, you’’ be rewarded with an increased search engine page ranking. These directories have hundreds and thousands of webmasters linked in their directory. They display advertising and hope that they will be rewarded with a nice adsense check.
Not only do these free directories not pan out well for the directory owners, they are not very useful for marketers either. They normally have very low page rank. Having a back link from hundreds of PR 0 websites isn’t any more useful than having no back links at all.
Since approximately 99% of all back link directories have no page rank for their categories or sub-domains, there is really no point in submitting to these directories. They don’t have any “link juice” to pass along to your websites.
What’s worse is that if you get too aggressive with your backlinking strategy, you could actually be penalized in the next round of Google page rank updates. Spreading your link all over the net on sites that aren’t relevant to the content of your site is a surefire way to get slapped by Google.
This practice is called link spamming and it’s the opposite of what you want to achieve with your linking strategy. You may luck out and get a PR1 on the next update from mass linking, but more often than not you will get a PR N/A or negative PR (PR-), which doesn’t mean a hill of beans to your ranking.
Backlink Myth #3 – getting a ton of social networking links is a way to increase your search engine results page rank
Many marketers or bloggers swear by making posts to social networking sites like Digg.com, Reddit.com and numerous others. These sites normally carry a great deal of page rank and authority. When you submit a story (with a link) on these sites, you will be displayed on the first page and get boost in your page rank.
In theory, the more you submit to these sites, the better for your website’s ranking. However, in practice it does not always work out that way. When your link is fresh, it will appear on the fist page of the social networking site. However it doesn’t stay there for long.
In most cases, it is just a matter of hours before your site is bumped to page 2, page 3 and so on. The effects on your blog or website’s search engine ranking are minimal, at best. They don’t stay there long enough to have any real impact, so you could spend all of your time submitting to these sites and still not getting any extra benefit from the process.
There are definitely better ways to spend your link building time!
PS: Any question or doubt please ask at comment section as known as citcat section. I will answer as I could.
{ 42 comments… read them below or add one }
Great Post Een.
Myth #1: Totally True
Myth #2: I paid $45 for a 300 directory subimission and it did boost my traffic.
Myth #3: It depends of if the Social Network is “DO FOLLOW”.
Thanks for your feedback. All points mentioned above are my observation since I was blogging. More to personal thought. As I said the truth is nobody know exactly how SEO works
It’s important to note with Myth 3 that if you should utilized Digg, that you piggy back off their PR. That means, say I submitted an article, and I use a title that keyword enriched, there is a high probability that when I type that search query in Google, my article that is being hosted on Digg becomes #1 in the SERP’s.
I will concede that it is short lived, the minute someone does something similar they will claim the #1 spot and knock my post submission down, but I will still be on the front page SERP’s for some time gaining targeted traffic. So, while you might only have very short success on based on Digg’s algorithm, it doesn’t matter as long as you stay point based on Google’s.
“Hosted” was the wrong term, I should have used “referenced” by Digg…
My apologies.
It’s ok
Yes it’s true. Time period for having in Digg’s front page is too short but once you’re there you will gain massive traffic. Beware of your bandwith!
nice tips buddy . look like you have enough skill to earn more pagerank next three month . i have my own target , i will love to have at least page rank 4 next google update page rank , how about you ?
Thanks anyway. I have prepared some strategy to gain high PR. My target is to achieve PR4
Great article Fazreen. It’s not easy just to tell people that PR mean nothing even if it comes from Google spokesman itself. As for me, I still need PR to attract advertisers.
Me too. PR is a benchmark to tell advertiser that our blog is good
Advertisers are delusional, all PR ever does is measure the amount quality inbound links. They should be told that one in theory could have all the PR8 or PR9 links under the sun and the site still doesn’t garner any eyeballs. What they should be measuring is the number of unique hits to a site and based their purchasing decision on that analytic measurement alone.
People who use PR to base price point on advertising are just using smoke in mirrors.
Nice phrase. Thanks for visiting my blog. and thanks also for your thought. You must be someone who are expert in SEO.
That’s why i said that opinion about PR was only assumption.
Yes..nobody know the truth
that actually answer my old question..
which is… if that blog have pr9 and other blog have
the same pr.. so who gonna be on top if they both sharing
same keyword.. now i know pr just a slice in determine ranking..
thank for the post, help me a lot to understand about seo as always..
You’re welcome my friend!
Thanks for sharing..your blog cleared all my doubts on back links..keep posting. seo firm
I bet you must expert in SEO because you’re from SEO firm
Hi Fazreen, just a constructive criticism. The texts of your posts makes it hard to read because it blends with your layout. I cannot clearly read it.
Hi pal, thanks for telling me. If you know me you will know why I like to try fancy design. Anyway thanks for coming. I hope can see you around again.
let me show my own opinion about this:
myth #1 : not true
myth #2 : the myth is totally true.
myth #3 : if it’s dofollow, of course it can gain your PR.
Everyone can give an answer like you did. Please state your reason also to support your answer. Thank you!
It is true if you are going to use bookmakring sites, try to at least post articles that are truly attractive. otherwise you will be dropped down the very last page and no one will digg or stumble you.
I think this article is interesting but I don’t think so people will dig it to the fron page of social bookmarking. Why?? Because I don’t ask peopla to digg it. It’s hard to make people willingly digg.
Thanks for all the information. I didn’t know about getting penalized for linking out too much. Although I really don’t care much about PR, you are totally right when you say its like a feather in your cap and is good for building networks.
Linking to much will make us look like a spammer especially when we’re linking to unrelated site
Not sure if theres such thing as negative PR or PR-, never seen it or even heard of it.
Not. It’s just my expression to show how bad when you’re linking to bad sites.
I do not agree with your points. Your first point is valid as I see many PR2 blogs on the first page of Google for some particular keywords.
Submitting to paid directories can improve your search engine traffic. Apart from that if you submit your article to dofollow social networking website you will definitely earn some backlinks and link juice which can boost your ranking.
Do I said paid directories in my post? I said submitting to free directories actually. You must know there are dozen of free directories and they like a trash websites having low PR. You must know also PR is not equal to all page in your blog or in their websites. Usually they only have good PR at home page or main page. But do you think our link is placed at their home page or main page? Not really, when we submit our blog to them our blog link will be placed at another page that has low quality in terms of backlink and PR. Did you get what I mean?
Page ranks ARE the most important thing if you are planning to sell links to advertisers such as text link ads or teliads ! Otherwise it is a rather useless obsession. People should focus more on Alexa, PR will come eventually
That’s true. I had an experienced selling text link and for sure advertiser want to buy text link from high PR blog to get quality backlink
Thank you for this information. Here that you mentioned about that submitting to social bookmarking can increase your search engine rank, this is really misconception. I submit my every post on major social bookmarking sites, but I do not see any backlink from there. Just we get the backlink from the profile if they prvide for place link on profile. But you can get backlink from digg commenting.
You should fully understand this paragraph
“In theory, the more you submit to these sites, the better for your website’s ranking. However, in practice it does not always work out that way. When your link is fresh, it will appear on the fist page of the social networking site. However it doesn’t stay there for long.”
yes thats the point actually. Suppose your blog come to digg front page, that time you will get lots of traffic ans also backlink, but when new story will submitted then your post will be invisible on the front page and your backlink also gone decrease.
Again to bring your blog post on digg front page is not so easy.
Yes it’s so hard to get in front of popular bookmarking sites. Everyone keep update fresh content everyday
I can not expect for get traffic from digg, because my blog is related to work at home and my post are not unique.
Every Internet Marketer and every blogger knows that backlinks are like money in the bank. The more backlinks you have, the more authority your site gains and the more visitors come to your website. If you have a lot of backlinks to your site, you’l’ naturally rise in the rankings for your keywords.
Yes thats really true, you described nice myths.
The post was well said Fazreen.. Good article
i guess that true. Most importantly, i also think traffic, link building and update our blog also another strong point to get better pagerank.
you gave some useful information on the quality of backlinks and where you should link to. more backlinks means better traffic.
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