Google's PR 0 And Link Exchange Difficulties

By Tracy Weber

With your brand new, professional looking website up and ready
for the masses, using link exchanges can be a powerful way to
drive high quality traffic to your website and provide useful
content for your readers. Unfortunately, having a newly built
website creates a number of hurdles you must cross before
reciprocal linking becomes an easier process. Learn to spot
these roadblocks up front and you will break through the PR 0
barriers.

Why do I have a PR of 0?

Google Page Rank (PR) is given to websites approximately once
every quarter to determine their level of importance on a scale
of 1-10. Many factors determine PR, most of which Google keeps
very secret. It is during this time when Google has yet to rank
your website that you will show a PR of 0 in the Foxfire Google
toolbar.

Why Does a PR of 0 Matter?

One aspect of backlinking to websites that greatly affects your
PR is the quality of the pages you are linked to. For instance:
linking your car parts website to ten dog grooming websites
will not give your PR much of a boost due to lack of relevance,
but if you link to several websites that are also automobile
related, it will send your PR in the right direction.

Many webmasters look at the requesting website's PR before they
will complete a link exchange fearing that a low PR will bring
their website page rank down. Though this is not really the
case, it is a hurdle you must cross.

What to do about it?

Unfortunately, the PR of 0 will not change until Google updates
their page ranks, but you can push through the next few months
by doing the following:

1. Run the numbers. There are several tools available to help
lessen the burden of manually searching for link partners. I
suggest using one of these to help find a large pool to start
from. Set a goal to send a determined number of link requests
each day. I generally look for 50 matches, sort quickly by web
title for relevance and apply to the link exchange forms that
match my content. Even if you only get one response a day, you
are still building quality reciprocal links.

Note: If you see they have a PR restriction, honor it and put
them in a category for the future.

2. Build relationships. If you know a Webmaster with a site
relevant to yours, send a personal note requesting a link
exchange. Many website owners are willing to help out if they
know the quality of the site.

3. Build one-way links by sending out articles, posting in
newsgroups or by building a profile on high traffic sites such
as MySpace. Commenting in newsgroups or on high traffic sites
and adding a comment about your website in your signature file
(making sure the link is active) gives you backlinks to your
website from those pages.

Having an initial PR of 0 is a reality all new webmasters must
face, but if you forge ahead, building a high quality link
exchange network, you will be pleasantly surprised when Google
makes it's page rank updates. Don't be discouraged and don't
give up. Soon you will be in a position to easily gain
reciprocal links to other websites with content your readers
will value. This will give you both a steady stream of targeted
traffic from your partner sites, and a high quality, content
rich website as well.

About The Author: Tracy Weber the successful owner of the
eProZone Internet Article Directory http://eprozone.com , has
written unbiased reviews of link exchange tools to make the
process run more smoothly.
http://www.eprozone.com/Article/Link-Exchange-Product-Reviews-/20