high pr backlinksIf I didn’t have to create a whole blog post around this subject, I’d simply end this article with a single word, “no.” However, since you’re probably not reading this blog just for the purpose of seeing me write two characters, I’ll explain why a high PR link on a page full of links isn’t worth anything. Here’s what you need to know:

What Makes for a High PR Page?

Let’s start with the basics. What exactly makes for a high PR page anyway? Basically, a high PR or high Page Rank page has been linked to numerous times by many other pages which also have a high PR. This means that the page is more likely to be visited regularly and is more likely to be considered authoritative on whatever subject it discusses.

Pages, Not Sites

It’s important by the way, before we continue this discussion to note that the term page rank refers specifically to pages and not websites. The front page of Facebook has a PR10 ranking, the highest. However, most inner pages on Facebook have either a PR0 or no PR at all because they’re not linked to very much and not considered to be particularly authoritative.

Link Farms

Okay, so let’s get back to the title question – is a high PR link worth anything on a page full of links? Now when I say a page is full of links, I don’t mean it has five links on it. Even 10 links is not a big deal if the page happens to have lots of text and content on it. However, let’s assume that we had a theoretical page which has a PR5 and which has 1,000 links on the page. This kind of link is all but worthless.
The reason is simple – Google’s engineers long ago learned to filter out links from link farms because such links tend to be pretty much worthless when it comes to figuring out whether or not a website is authoritative. The page described above is a classic link farm, even though it happens to have a PR5 since it’s got 1,000 links on it.

PR is Distributed

Another thing to be aware of is that PR is distributed amongst the various links on a page. So this means for example that a page with 5 links on it will give more “link juice” to each of those 5 pages it links to than a page with 10 links on it and the same PR ranking. That’s because Google’s system figures the value of each link proportionately to the total number of links.

Bottom Line

If you are offered 100 PR5 links for $5, the odds are good that these 100 links are either links on PR5 sites, but not on PR5 pages and or that these pages will have thousands of links on them, making them pretty much worthless.