Okay, let’s be honest. A PR 7 backlink is going to be worth a heck of a lot more to your web site’s climb up the SERPs than a PR 0 backlink. But how much different are they really? Well, for starters, in case you’ve been out to tea somewhere, Google has recently downplayed the importance of PR and even took it out of one of its tools. They’re not saying it doesn’t count anymore. They’re just saying that it’s not the big thing that people think it is. And personally, I couldn’t be happier. But that’s another story.

Truth is, I’ve got some sites that have PR 5 and 6 backlinks that are nowhere to be found near page 1 of Google’s search engine while I have sites with PR 1 and 2 backlinks that are on page 1. Why? What’s the reason? Well, the simple explanation is that there is a lot more to ranking with Google, or any search engine for that matter, than just backlinks. If that were the case, people would just beg, borrow and steal to get them. But even more important is the content on the site itself and even more important than that is the relevancy of the keywords to what people are searching for. Add to that mix the amount of time that the site has been online and……..(?)

Don’t forget that each province has a regional tld as well – for example http://www.website.on.ca where the on stands for Ontario. You may find other smaller universities there. Also, many universities use subdomains for different departments which also rank quite highly. Worth checking them out too.

Frank