Do more backlinks increase Page Rank?

[flaxseoguru]

Hi all,

Does more backlinks makes/increases Pagerank?
How many number of backlinks we have to make to get Pagerank?
Is this the right method for SEO?
Waiting for your replies.

Thanks in advance.

 

[djbaxter]

Yes, of course. That is the very basis and definition of PageRank. It is calculated from a formula assigning a value to a web page based on the quantity and quality of incoming links to that page.

 

[Linda Buquet]

This is something a SEO Guru would know.
(sorry could not resist)

 

[djbaxter]

Yes. You would think so, wouldn't you?

 

[diytechblog]

Quality over quantity

I'd add that the quality of the link is more vital than the quantity? Thoughts?

 

[Dan_Green]

I had two (unrelated) blogs who liked my website and they put a link to it in about 1200 pages (together) and then my PR0 jumped to PR2. I didn't have too many meaningful links before, so I must think that quantity has also something to do with it.
I still think that quality (relevance, trusted domains and high PR) is the way to go, though...

 

[beryas]

Like others have said links do increase PR but it is much more complicated than that. For instance 5 PR4 links are better than 1,000 PR0 links. No offense but if you run a SEO company and consider yourself an SEO Guru you should at least know the very basic core of how SEO works. I would invest some time reading all over this forum as well as many websites and blogs that deal with SEO. To get good at SEO it can take months of reading and trial/error.

 

[bigcat1967]

For me, I've seen many a site rank high in the SERPs w/ a low PR. Here is an excerpt from the below link to his blog:

viggen says: “Do i need to know that? What does it tell me when i know it? Why would i care? Meaning, what purpose has the Pagerank for the mom and pop site out there?”

[Matt Cutts:] viggen, I think that’s a perfectly healthy attitude. If you don’t care about PageRank and your site is doing well, that’s fine by me.

More info on PageRank

 

[djbaxter]

For me, I've seen many a site rank high in the SERPs w/ a low PR. Here is an excerpt from the below link to his blog:

viggen says: ?Do i need to know that? What does it tell me when i know it? Why would i care? Meaning, what purpose has the Pagerank for the mom and pop site out there??

[Matt Cutts:] viggen, I think that?s a perfectly healthy attitude. If you don?t care about PageRank and your site is doing well, that?s fine by me.

More info on PageRank

True enough. However, the OP was asking specifically about PageRank. There are many other factors, and many of gthem more important than PR, in determining ranking for specific search terms.

 

[bobjones121806]

Though generally speaking, not more backlinks but more quality backlinks give good PR in Google-it is a good practice to get quality backlinks rather than getting lots of backlinks. It is said three links from PR7 websites is going to help you a lot more than 150 links from PR1 website. Well, why do a PR7 just link to you?
Maybe, start with a little bit quantity work will worth it. Because, you backlinks are directly proportional to your page rank, as whenever, Google updates the PR, it will distribute some amount of PR to the links lying on a page. If your link is lying on hundreds of web pages, then you might get some good PR still.

 

[yanamk]

As previous post mentioned, it is more about quality then quantity. The revelance of the sites linked back to you is extremely important in the google's eyes. You get more points for a number of quality backlinks.

Quality backlinks can be obtained not only from link exchange, but from blog posting and internet community participation, reviews, articles etc.

 

[JasonM]

bascially, it is not more backlinks increases Pagerank but more qulaity backlinks do. Though, we have been told agian and agian, that how important tht quality is, how Google values it, the truth is the number still counts.

 

[JasonM]

As concerned to how to get quality links, I personally think high of social bookmarking.It is can be very useful both for gaining backlinks and getting direct traffic, which, as has been discussed, stands a good chance of earning more backlinks as people link to you.

 

[mmaniquis]

this seo issue about pagerank directly affected by backlinks is highly debatable. i'm a test and backlinking fanatic and nowhere in my several test result shows any direct relation between the two or of any seo methods flaunted around by several seo specialist.

an example is of my sites, one of which is a pr3 and shows more than 700+ backlinks from yahoo (which every webmaster knows is the most reliable source of backlink results). the traffic for that site in any keyword i'm targetting is dismal! imagine, google thinks its pr3 but couldn't bring in the traffic worthy of that kind of pagerank.

on the other hand, i have a pr0 site with only 100+ backlinks showing in yahoo. but i'm getting more than 300 unique hits per day for at least 10 keywords!

now, what does that tell me. unless a seo guru knows how the search engines designed their algorithm, which is developed and coded by hundreds of mba geniuses, then he or she can figure out how to capture whatever ranking he or she desires.

but for now, not one of those seo theories will hold ground. but that's just what my tests are showing. if any one have different result then that only proves that the serps are not yet designed to perfection.

just keep cranking all the backlinks you can get - is how i go about it. as long as i maintain my site on top of my keyword target, i care less about pagerank.

best to all,

manuel

 

[djbaxter]

this seo issue about pagerank directly affected by backlinks is highly debatable.

No, really it isn't debatable at all.

First, I think you are confusing PageRank and how a page ranks - they are two very different things.

PageRank is a mathematical formula invented by the founders of Google while still at University (because they were students at the time, the university actually hold or co-holds the patent on PageRank). What PageRank does is calculate the score of a specific individual web page based on the quality and quantity of links from other pages on the net pointing to that specific page. Period.

So is PageRank directly affected by backlinks? Absolutely. In fact, it is solely affected by backlinks. Nothing else matters in the calculation of PageRank.

However, how that page ranks in a search for any specific search term depends on "more than 100 factors", of which PageRank is only one and far from the most important one. That is why it's not uncommon to see lower PR pages outranking higher PR pages in search results.

Now we come to traffic, which is different again still. Traffic depends on a number of things as well, including clickthrough rates from search results and direct clickthoughs from links in emails or other web pages. And again, how one ranks in search listings does not necessarily translate into good traffic. As just one example, if your page has a spammy looking title or description, searchers are less likely to click through to your page from a search result,

And finally, there is the issue of conversion - will a searcher who does click through to your page linger long enbough to actually buy a product or serviuce from you. nd that depends primarily on page content and design, and site structure.

 

[mmaniquis]

your explanation of the PageRank system is enlightening however, what shows in any of my research are showing different results. i love learning seo because it's very challenging.

if what you're saying about PageRank as a mathematical formula therefore is only based on backlinks, then please explain this:

expressdelivery.biz has PR3 and 23,663 backlinks as against
accessrx.com has PR4 and only have 1,314 backlinks.

shouldn't it be that expressdelivery.biz has to have a PR value greater than just 3 because its backlinks are a lot more than accessrx.com if PageRank is based on a formula?

or is it safer to assume that google can manipulate their PR rankings (pagerank values) and not anymore based on a mathematical formula as you explained?

or maybe in the beginning they designed it to be as what you said but have decided to alter their original plans when webmasters turned on spamming techniques to gain better PageRank?

i'm just wondering.

oh, those 2 sites are ranking 2 and 4 in the keyword "buy viagra" with accessrx.com at number 4.

best to all,

manuel

 

[djbaxter]

if what you're saying about PageRank as a mathematical formula therefore is only based on backlinks, then please explain this:

expressdelivery.biz has PR3 and 23,663 backlinks as against
accessrx.com has PR4 and only have 1,314 backlinks.

shouldn't it be that expressdelivery.biz has to have a PR value greater than just 3 because its backlinks are a lot more than accessrx.com if PageRank is based on a formula?

or is it safer to assume that google can manipulate their PR rankings (pagerank values) and not anymore based on a mathematical formula as you explained?

In my post above, I said:

PageRank is a mathematical formula invented by the founders of Google while still at University (because they were students at the time, the university actually hold or co-holds the patent on PageRank). What PageRank does is calculate the score of a specific individual web page based on the quality and quantity of links from other pages on the net pointing to that specific page.

So it it not just the NUMBER of links but also the QUALITY of those links. Here, quality means

1. the PR value passed from that link, which is a function of the PageRank of the page containing the link to you multiplied by a dampening factor assumed to be about .85 AND the total number of outgoing links, including internal navigation links, on that page, or

{PR of originating page} * .85 / {total # outgoing links on that page}​

2. any devaluation of the PageRank of the originating page by Google, e.g., due to penalties;

3. the relevance of the link, i.e., the relation between the content of the originating page and the content of the receiving page.

Note:

1. A nofollow link does not pass any PageRank along to the receiving page.

2. The relevance factor is presumed rather than definite, but the assumption is based on good evidence.

 

[mmaniquis]

ok. so, PageRank value has a formula for quality.

1. the PR value passed from that link, which is a function of the PageRank of the page containing the link to you multiplied by a dampening factor assumed to be about .85 AND the total number of outgoing links, including internal navigation links, on that page, or

{PR of originating page} * .85 / {total # outgoing links on that page}

that looks like a mathematical formula

2. any devaluation of the PageRank of the originating page by Google, e.g., due to penalties;

that doesn't look like a mathematical formula

3. the relevance of the link, i.e., the relation between the content of the originating page and the content of the receiving page.

that even more doesn't look like it represents a mathematical formula. sounds more like a human factor has to be involved to come up with the result.

2. The relevance factor is presumed rather than definite, but the assumption is based on good evidence.

does "evidence" here have a numerical value (at least) to qualify as a mathematical formula?

here's more:

keyword: social

#4) facebook.com - PR9 - 19,178,277 backlinks
#5) myspace.com - PR9 - 5,635,726 backlinks

why is facebook only PR9 with 19M backlinks as against myspace which is also PR9 with only 5M backlinks? how do we know which of those backlinks are "quality" according to the PageRank formula when both of them are authority social networking sites and therefore must have both spam and good backlinks? the proof is the same from my previous example:

keyword: buy viagra

#2) expressdelivery.biz - PR3 - 23,663 backlinks
#4) accessrx.com - PR4 - 1,314 backlinks.

from those above examples, it looks like backlinks affect the keyword ranking of a site rather than its PageRank value. But in your response, you seem certain that PageRank value is "solely affected by backlinks":

So is PageRank directly affected by backlinks? Absolutely. In fact, it is solely affected by backlinks. Nothing else matters in the calculation of PageRank.

i showed proof that PageRank value is a highly debatable SEO issue, can you show proof it is not? i will believe if shown verifiable facts.

best to all,

manuel

 

[djbaxter]

1. factors like relevance are in fact calculate mathematically with no human intervention - do a seaqrch for Latent Semantic Analysis or "semantic indexing" for more information

2. in certain circumstancews, Google does manually penalize a site or page, although the majority of penalties are also done automatically via its algorithms

3. you have not provided "proof that PageRank value is a highly debatable SEO issue" - you have provided evidence of a basic misunderstanding of the meaning of PageRank and confusion between PageRank and search engine ranking

I suggest you also look at:

PageRank - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Corporate Information - Technology Overview​

 

[djbaxter]

keyword: social

#4) facebook.com - PR9 - 19,178,277 backlinks
#5) myspace.com - PR9 - 5,635,726 backlinks

why is facebook only PR9 with 19M backlinks as against myspace which is also PR9 with only 5M backlinks? how do we know which of those backlinks are "quality" according to the PageRank formula when both of them are authority social networking sites and therefore must have both spam and good backlinks? the proof is the same from my previous example:

keyword: buy viagra

#2) expressdelivery.biz - PR3 - 23,663 backlinks
#4) accessrx.com - PR4 - 1,314 backlinks.

from those above examples, it looks like backlinks affect the keyword ranking of a site rather than its PageRank value. But in your response, you seem certain that PageRank value is "solely affected by backlinks":

First, I said that PageRank depends solely on the quantity and quality of backlinks. I did not say that the only thing backlinks can do is affect PageRank. Your logic is faulty here.

I can tell you that influenza is caused by a virus. Does that mean that viruses only cause influenza? Of course not.

Backlinks affect ranking for search terms via their anchor text. If you have many backlinks pointing to your page with the anchor text "social networking", AND the content of that page also includes references to "social networking", then these backlinks will improve your ranking for that search term.