Anchor Text vs. PageRank

I’m thinking that focusing on buildling PageRank isn’t the best strategy for getting good traffic out of the search engines. I’m not saying that PageRank isn’t important, just that seeking PageRank for the sake of PageRank isn’t going to get you a lot of traffic. OTOH, seeking anchor text will bring in the traffic.
I’ve seen search engine results where sites with lower PageRank get better results than sites with very nice PageRank. At the basic logic, you can see that if PageRank alone was what it took to get good search ranking you’d only have one site at the top for all keywords. Also, when you put anchor text at the top of your SEO priority, you’re building PageRank incidentally.

What’s worth more to you then? A link from a PageRank 6/10 site with no anchor text, or a link from a PageRank 4/10 site with the anchor text you specify? That’s also a tough call because with the link from a 6/10 site you can get the raw PR and then use it to spread around in your own site and use your own internal links with your anchor text to increase your rankings. OTOH, the anchor text from the 4/10 site will give you the greater boost to your home page for your primary keyword.

Conclusion…. seeking links from lower PR sites is very worthwhile if you can specify your anchor text.

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