How Valuable are Home Page Links

[The Leader]

I have been doing some research on the link building efforts of some SEO companies and found they are trying to predominantly get home page links where the pr is highest even if they have to pay for them. Their results are pretty good so there must be something to it!
Buying links in bidding directories will get you on the homepage so I wonder what others think?

[The Old Sarge]

Buying links for the purpose of passing PR in never a good idea, especially if Google gets wind of it.

[Duke]

What TOS sais is true. If you pay for links and Google finds out about it, you can see your site de-indexed completely.

I know that a lot of people focus on this type of marketing simply because they feel you can easily pass link juice back and forth between sites but it's been my experience that PR does not equate to a busy and successful site.

Also, having a lot of outboud links on your main page can make your site appear as a link farm which also is not a good idea.

If you're interested in link exchanging, stick to sites that are like minded or compliment your own and don't focus soley on PR. IMHO in any linking program it's all about quality, not quantity.

[KateDaring52]

Well, great work! You have helped me to improve my knowledge about this field. Thank you so much for sharing.

[jasontn]

Some people like home page links. However, many other SEOs prefer doing blog posts (sometimes even on PR 0 pages of PR 1 + sites). I'd say both are good for SEO. However, you don't want to get with link farms. In other words, pages with over 20 or 30 links a page.

[turkeyhomes]

Even if Google did not penalize for getting paid links, I still wouldn’t do it on principle because there are plenty of ways to get good quality backlinks for free if you have the time and the inclination.