In a world where inbound links are often crucial in complimenting an on-page SEO effort, determining the value of those links can be equally important. This is especially true if you are making any kind of “investment” in those links whether that involve time, money or both.
Following is a simple checklist of what to look for in a valuable inbound link.
1. Indexed By Google
One of the most important factors to look at when securing a link on any specific web page is whether that page is actually indexed by Google. Common sense would tell you that if the page is not in Google’s index, they are not going to recognize that it is linking to your page. In other words, the link won’t count in their eyes.
2. PageRank
While Google PageRank is certainly not everything, a PR 5 is certainly better than a PR 1. And a PR 7 or better has the potential of passing a lot of link juice to the page your linking to. That being said, I would recommend having a good mix of links from different PageRanks as it looks more natural.
3. Relevancy
Is the site or page relevant to your business model? For example, if I have a site that sells software, I want to obtain links on software related sites. It does not have to necessarily be a competitor but could be a site that reviews various software products or covers news related to software.
4. Identifying Paid Links
Try to avoid links that are clearly identified as paid links. Words such as “Sponsored,” “Advertisements,” “Partners” and the like make it very easy for a search engine such as Google, who by the way does not like paid links, identify them. Once they are identified as “paid links” they may no longer pass any link value.
An easy way for a site to identify a link as sponsored would be to use an image in place of text and then make sure not to give away the details in the image’s alt attribute. That may sound sneaky but remember that Google has pretty much declared war on paid links. So, if you want them to count, make sure the site owner is not making it too easy for Google or any other engine to detect them.
5. Outbound Links
How many other sites is the page linking to? I don’t want to see any more than 10 outbound links including mine on any given page. This is especially true if I’m paying for it. The more outbound links, the more diluted the link value that is passed to each site.
6. Inbound Links
Does the page have any inbound links from other sites? What types of sites are linking to that page and even more importantly, what are they saying (anchor text)?
7. Placement of Link
Search engines, especially Google, have worked hard in the last few years at trying to identify links that are not specifically “editorial” in their context. Therefore it is best to avoid links that are placed in footers, blog rolls and the like that would give of an indicator that it is not “editorial.”
I typically like links that are within the content itself or even above the fold near site navigation. Keep in mind that a properly placed link in addition to passing link juice may also send valuable traffic your way.
8. Is Link ‘NoFollowed’
A link that has the ‘nofollow’ attribute is going to do little as far as passing any link popularity or link juice to your site. That being said, you should not always avoid these types of links as they can drive traffic to your site (Twitter is a great example of this) and even make your link building look more natural in the eyes of search engines.
9. Alexa Rank
While a site’s Alexa Rank should not be taken as an exact science, it can provide a good guess at how popular a site is. Because Alexa gathers its data from those who have installed the Alexa toolbar on their browser, traffic results will not be exact. However it is easy enough to see that a site that has an Alexa Rank in the tens of thousands generates a lot more traffic than one who has an Alexa rank in the tens of millions.
10. Age of Domain
Two facts regarding domains that have been around for awhile – 1.) search engines seem to place more trust in a domain that has been around for some time; 2.) a domain that has some age to it most likely has acquired inbound links itself.
While this is not a complete checklist of what you can look at when evaluating inbound link opportunities, it does consist of some of the most important factors to consider.
@Robert Enriquez – Are you referring to “links indexed” or “pages indexed?”
In item # 1, I’m referring to whether a web page is in a Google’s index or not. If a page is not in Google’s index for example, they are unaware of it (unless it is penalized) and I would think if they are unaware of page, they would be unable to recognize that the same page is linking out to other sites.
Google does give value to links that are nonindexed. I have seen a lot of links ‘indexed’ that taken off the indexed and my link count drops, but my rankings stay the same. This is w/out continually link building
Also, I have built many backlinks that never get indexed, and my rankings still increase.
I use Google alerts to see if Google even crawls a lot of the links and they do. I receive a notification that they crawled it….but never see it in the index. Doesn’t matter as the rankings go up and that’s all that matters from that. 🙂
I’m referring to a link that is on a page that is indexed 🙂
My point is that links that are on a page that IS NOT INDEXED still carries value.
The fact that it was ‘crawled’ by Google is the most important factor.
I didn’t believe this until i saw a lot of the pages I have my back links on were NOT indexed by Google but they were being crawled by Google.
I have seen a lot of Social Bookmarking sites that don’t offer PR, and are not in the indexed yet they still offer link juice.
David,
Excellent post! Wondering, at what point do you consider using paid links? You suggested to try to avoid them, which isn’t an absolute. Curious what you think about paid reviews and if you consider them as paid links? Thanks for thoughts!
And thanks for sharing such great tips!
Fantastic post. The no-follow point interests me, maybe yahoo and msn still recognize the no follow attribute as a quality link, but Google defiantly doesn’t. I do come across people using no-follow links, but i am never sure whether they do it for beneficial reasons or just do not understand the no-follow rule.
I know its obvious, but for those new to SEO out there, worth mentioning something on anchor text of your own link, and words around it!
“The fact that it was ‘crawled’ by Google is the most important factor.” – true it counts from when its crawled not from when its indexed. But, as a crude measurement of value it would certainly be better to get a link on an indexed page, as you don’t know if there is something blocking a search engine from crawling a nonindexed page.
Great post. I used to only place value on pagerank and age. Thanks for opening my eyes up! It makes sense that all those other elements would come into play.
However, I’ve always been curious re: the usage of Alexa by SE’s. In so far as whether or not SE’s place value on the rank or if Alexa mimics the value that the SE’s would asign. Kind of a chicken or the egg thing!
Ok, this post is just great. No matter if you are a beginner or an expert, these guidelines must be followed to know the importance of your links. Of course google is the most important here and the fact of being crawled or not is a decisive factor to know if the link is working or not. No paid links? Maybe…
Hey Dave,
As professional link builders we don’t look to much at Alexa data but I totally agree with the other 9 items listed. For what it’s worth, we also look at the cache date.
Arnie
Thanks for compiling this list. Though I was aware of all these, it’s a good list to keep for review.
Hi David
I agree with you on all points except I have a couple of comments on points #4 paid links.
I have to wonder if paid links is really bad or just for some sites. For example. in my opinion, G seems to turn a blind eye to certain article directories that have an obvious paid membership option like Ezine Articles and Go articles. In essence you are paying for links, yet they still pass good quality link juice, although Go Articles seems to have hit some bumpy waters lately.
In fact Go articles sends regular emails to me advising you can get on the high page rank page for a certain amount of money. Yet they are not de-indexed by G. I think it just comes down to which websites you are referring to, but in general they don’t like paid link sites etc.
Alexa Ranking I pay no attention to for one reason. Google has analytics. I just log into my own back office at Google and check out my stats.
For me, I pay attention to a few daily and consistent activities to get ranked on page 1 of Google. Write relevant and useful content, post articles and get back links.
Rinse and repeat!
Good article by the way
Regards,
>> 1. Indexed By Google
One problem with looking for only indexed pages is that Google may suddenly remove that page from the index. With certain types of link building, it may not make sense to spend time checking if a particular page is in the index, as long as you know that the site is indexed.
Some may say that point #6 (Inbound Links) would ensure that the page remained indexed, but I have found out otherwise. I’ve had a few sites removed from Google’s index even though nearly every page had links from high quality article directories (EZA, GoArticles, Article Dashboard).
You’d be scared of my site if you don’t like to see more than 10 outbound links on a page. I’ve got so many on each page I’ve had to split the pages up.
Really excellent posts and some of the best points to consider regarding links building. I would like to know if its worth to exchange links with competitors when we talk of relevancy of websites. I know this may divert the traffic to the competitor website.
Here I have one question that if I comment on dofollow blog that is not related to our blog niche then is it harm to our blog rank?
Thanks for the tips. Building links is the hardest thing for me to get my head round!
By the way, you’re not the David Wallace from NBC’s The Office…. are you? 😉
Google does not give that much importance to “nofollow” link. But yes if you get link on any popular site which might be nofollow than also you will get benefit of good traffic.
But can you just guide if nofollow really makes difference with Bing and Yahoo?
Also total number of links on page where you have your own link plays really a vital role in getting the PR juice.
Really great tips you have here! I agree with indexed by google as being number 1. It may not sound true but most, especially newbies tend to ignore this or not know about it.
I think this is one of the great collections about inbound links. I agree with your post but paid link is not important in current period. Can you tell why we will use paid link?
I think there is a lot of conjecture on backlinks. On one of my sites, some tools like backlinkwatch show only a handful of do follow links, while the rest are shown as no follow. Still the rank itself has been reasonably high. So I can only conclude that few of us know what goes on in Google’s mind.
It is amazing that the very first point on top “Is the site listed in Google” was something that I had never bothered to check till date. Thanks for this great article.
Thanks for sharing the impressive article which provide me the deep knowledge on the inbound link process, I come to know that..
Link Value: Link value is the value that is passed on by an inbound link in terms of
Page Rank Passage
Anchor Text Optimization
Direct Traffic
Link-back page: Page that has the in-bound link
There are many factors apart from PR of the ‘link-back page’ that determine the quality of an inbound link.
Thanks and Regards
Catherine Johnson
datarecoverysoftware.com