High PR vs Low PR and Relative

[blackrino]

My main question is if you had a choice between a PR 7 site and a PR 4-5 site that was relative and related to your website content, which would be a better choice? Does relativeness matter anymore?

[blackrino]

They are both good links, just saying is there a big difference between related content and non-related content. Has nothing to do with link farms or anything. Both are good sites.

[heatherrobinson]

Completely agreed with Todd.

If the PR7 site is just a page full of outbound links, you'll won't get all the PR7 link juice, so you'd be better looking for a site with relevant editorial content where the link appears natural, regardless of the PR.

As PR is almost always out of date, you never know if Google has already dropped it. Google has stopped even reporting on PR in Google Webmaster Tools as it doesn't wnat people to focus on this metric.

[toddmumford]

Ultimately, I would never make this decision based on PR. I would make the decision based on who could give me the most editorial based link that looked natural, on a page that looked natural, and on a website that does not appear to sell links. That would likely be the strongest link, and least likely to raise and particular red flags.

Page rank is one of hundreds of metrics. Developing a very natural looking, diverse backlink profile consisting of a healthy dose of editorial based links will also land you in desirable places.

[SteveOllington]

I'm sticking with my guns on that PR is a bad metric to judge stuff on so I'd definitely go for the relevant sites... even IF PR is still of anything more than a tiny value, relevance kicks ass over it.

[EGOL]

If the PR4 site was high quality without a lot of duplicate content, no signs of manipulation, and perfectly in my keyword niche I would rather have a link there than on an unrelated PR7 site.

No scientific data to justify this, just sayin' what I would grab.

[brycebertola]

PR 4's and 5's are definitely of value, but I would probably take a 7.

I forget who, but someone talked about the "trickle-down theory" at the SMX Advanced link building presentation. If you get a link from a high ranking website, chances are there are many smaller sites that spin their content or write followups that will also contain a link. So your single PR 7 link just turned into a PR7, plus 3 PR6's, Plus 30 PR5's, etc.

That being said, a link from a PR 4 or 5 site that's within your category would definitely help.