Link Trading Q

[Rocco]

think relevancy is very important for the linktrades - feel free to contact me if you would like me to help you out with some linktrades

[Monsieur]

Hey there!

A link from a page other than the index page doesn't make any difference to Google (can't say too much about other search engines as Google is the only one I did much research for).

It might even be better for your ranking because it would seem more relevant (from the theme) for the search engine.

The only thing that would go for the index page instead of the category page would be that the index page probably has higher PR (which, seen as only factor, doesn't count anything these days, but implies other (valuable) things as well) so a link from the index could have a higher value.

Personally I would go for relevant theme links so I'ld be perfectly fine with the category backlink ;-)

[Linkster]

Ill stick my neck out a little here - first off - remember that you really have no way of measuring what the PR is of the page linking to you as Google has officially removed any way of really seeing that - the toolbar PR is definitely not correct and the only other way of measuring it is very time-consuming (although some of us still do it)
Now lets talk about a seperate subject - Page Rank - not to be confused with PR - if you see that a page (category in this case) is ranking well in the SE positions (SERPs) in Google, then it is probably a safe bet that you would want a link from the category with a good mix of text in the link if you can get it for your "theme"

On the other hand if you can find a "niche" index page that has a good ranking and seems to be legit, then that would be a better link, if you can see that that page is affecting other peoples site in a beneficial way.

[neveremail]

Originally Posted by Linkster

Ill stick my neck out a little here - first off - remember that you really have no way of measuring what the PR is of the page linking to you as Google has officially removed any way of really seeing that - the toolbar PR is definitely not correct and the only other way of measuring it is very time-consuming (although some of us still do it)
Now lets talk about a seperate subject - Page Rank - not to be confused with PR - if you see that a page (category in this case) is ranking well in the SE positions (SERPs) in Google, then it is probably a safe bet that you would want a link from the category with a good mix of text in the link if you can get it for your "theme"

On the other hand if you can find a "niche" index page that has a good ranking and seems to be legit, then that would be a better link, if you can see that that page is affecting other peoples site in a beneficial way.

Whats the difference between PR and Page Rank

I thought they were the same??

[Linkster]

Sorry - should have defined the terms a little better PR is usually the number that one sees when they look at the Google toolbar or one of its clones - which Google has made pretty much useless in an attempt to thwart link buyers wheras Page Rank is the actual part of the Google algorithm (actually the main basis of their voting system) used to rank pages against each other.
These are the "standard" definitions however you are correct in that a lot of people use them interchangeably - hope that helps

[Monsieur]

Originally Posted by Linkster

(...) - which Google has made pretty much useless in an attempt to thwart link buyers (...)

But they still have some updates (pretty much on a quarterly basis) which you can use as a hint for the PR so you'll just need to look at the PRs right after a new update to find out the current PRs of pages.

And yes, the Toolbar PR ist useless, but in another way, because it's very vague, especially when a page gets to a higher PR. Reason for that is that the internal PR of a site is not the one Google shows in the toolbar.
Little example (numbers not correct):

Internal PR: 1-10 --> Toolbar PR: 1
Internal PR: 11-100 --> Toolbar PR: 2
Internal PR: 101-1000 --> Toolbar PR: 3
and so on...

Would've been easier to understand if I was a native speaker, I know...;-)

[Linkster]

Originally Posted by Monsieur

But they still have some updates (pretty much on a quarterly basis) which you can use as a hint for the PR so you'll just need to look at the PRs right after a new update to find out the current PRs of pages.

And yes, the Toolbar PR ist useless, but in another way, because it's very vague, especially when a page gets to a higher PR. Reason for that is that the internal PR of a site is not the one Google shows in the toolbar.

Monsieur - I really dont understand what you are trying to say here - but I can tell you that the PR shown after an update (which btw is not quarterly anymore) is complete BS - the closest you can come to a real number is to look at the site in the Google Directory and if you know how to read the little green bars next to the sites in the directory, they will give you a somewhat good indication of it's PR for the page they have in there.