25 Ways to Qualify Great Links
There are numerous types of links that exist on the internet. Paid, product reviews, sponsors lists, blogrolls, and we could go on till the cows come home. With Google placing so much weight on links, below are 25 ways to qualify whether the link you’re pitching, buying, trading, or baiting is a quality one.
1. Does the page link out directly?
It’s common for sites to run your link through a redirect. It’s also common for sites to be affiliates & run it through some jumbled CJ link. If you need to be there & the price makes sense, go for it. Aside from that, we would steer clear of these redirects.
2. How many links are on the page?
Matt Cutts recently came out with a video that provides some great insight as to how many links on a page Google will digest, but typically if we see over 150-200, we’ll look for a better opportunity.
3. Does PR flow through to the page you’re evaluating?
PAGERANK IS NOT EVERYTHING, but it’s interesting to see if Google places that measurement of value on a page. If a page does have PR, fantastic. If it doesn’t, check other scoring systems like mR.
4. When was the last time that page was cached?
A quality page will be cached more frequently by Google. If you find the page you’re targeting hasn’t been cached in 2-3 months, it’s almost guaranteed to be a less valuable link.
5. Does the site rank for the name?
If you search for the site name and it doesn’t show up as the first result, unless there’s a big monster company with a similar name taking first result this should be an indicator that Google might not be placing a lot of value on the site.
6. Does the site have sitelinks?
Having sitelinks in Google is a great way to know if the site is valuable. If you drop in the name of the site, directory, or blog and it brings back 8 sitelinks, not only does Google think the site is important, but so important that 8 other pages in the site should show up in results too.
7. Will the links be nofollowed?
We can argue about the quality & weight of a site having a great impact on links regardless if they are nofollowed or not. Still, if a site is nofollowing all of the outbound links, this is one negative point based on what Google says about how they treat nofollows. Also, you can use the SEOMoz toolbar to see which links are nofollowed on a page.
8. Is the site on topic?
There may be an opportunity to get a link on a site that has nothing to do with your own website. It could make sense if it provides a local citation or is somehow a complementary business, but an off topic website link can be less valuable vs an on topic site. This judgment may be used more for scoring a priority order for targeting links.
9. How many backlinks does the site have that you’re targeting?
Getting a link from pages that have quality backlinks is important. Not only do you want to build quality links to your site, but you want the pages linking to you to be quality too. A page could have 30,000 backlinks, but if they’re all internal links then the site could be less juicy than another with only a handful of external ones.
10. When was the page created?
A brand new page that compares & links to all of your competitors, but leaves your company out, would be a nice place to get a link. If I look and see it has no PR, mR, cache date or backlinks, it could appear that it’s not that valuable of a linking opportunity. Pages that were just pushed live could still be a valuable opportunity that you just happened to find too quickly.
11. Are there obvious paid links on the page?
If there’s a big PAID LINKS BELOW section on the page you’re evaluating, you might want to skip it. Totally above board to sponsor charities, wordcamps, podcamps, but a paid links section that’s 48 links long with custom anchor text for each ranging from rx meds to hipster shirts is going to get flagged & probably devalued.
12. Are there poor quality outbound links on the page?
It’s a rare situation where we would look further into a page if it had gambling or xxx porn links on it. We believe it’s a huge indicator of a spammy site/paid links and would not want our links touching those with a latex covered ten foot pole.
13. Can you get custom anchor text links?
While you don’t want every single link you get to have the same anchor text, building up some anchor text for your important keywords is still necessary. If you’re able to get custom anchor text, this could make the linking opportunity more valuable depending on your seo needs.
14. How much does the link cost?
Yes, paid links. Sponsored links. Donation links. Whatever you want to call it, most companies do it. Most companies do it in a smarter way than Overstock or J.C. Penney. If the opportunity you’re looking at will require some cash or product, how much & how long is always the question. If it doesn’t make sense financially then even the best paid linking opportunity isn’t worthwhile.
15. Where is the linking opportunity on the page?
Link placement is something to evaluate when going through opportunities. Is it a lowly footer links? A blogroll link? A link in the content of the page? I’d take these three as a poor, better, best example.
16. How long will the link be prominent placement?
We had a client get a link from the NYTimes and go down for that keyword. The Times goes through stories so fast that an article containing your link that was one click from the homepage could be eight clicks away or archived two days later. This is the same for bloggers who knock out a post a day. Content is great, but for sites that produce a lot it could bump the page containing your link to a far off place of less importance.
17. What type of link is being offered?
There are differences between the value of a logo link, a logo link with alt text, a www.company.com link, a Company with Main Keyword link, Main Keyword link and the list could go on. Getting some type of link is (90% of the time) better than getting nothing, but something to consider when prioritizing your outreach & opportunity.
18. Doe the site rank for a term you’re targeting?
The easiest way I’ve found to bump up for a competitive term is to get a site ranking above you for that term to link to you.
If I know I want to rank for something like Swimming Hand Paddles and a site like http://www.alleghenymountainmasters.org/Page1333.htm might be ranked ahead of me for the term, I might try to get a link on there by making my page THE authority source for everything about Swimming Hand Paddles including a fitting guide, different workouts to use them for, and how we offer a guarantee on our products for a year. They might be the only site ahead of me that isn’t a competitor, so this site is probably one of the most important links I can get.
19. Will the site promote the article highlighting my link/company?
It’s an added bonus when getting a link on a website if that article or your link is then highlighted in a weekly/monthly newsletter or sent out in a tweet. Any extra exposure that page can get, the more potential value & traffic it can pass. It could also help with social as a ranking factor in search.
20. Does the site require a reciprocal link?
Some reciprocal links happen naturally and that’s okay. At the same time, unless there’s a special relationship between your company and the site you’re targeting, a reciprocal link request is one thing we won’t spend time pursuing. Google lays it out in their Linking Schemes section.
21. Is the site a bad neighborhood?
There are many definitions of a bad neighborhood. Any number of the steps above like 3-6 should help you weed out bad neighborhoods. If you need a tool to help you out, you can try http://www.bad-neighborhood.com/text-link-tool.htm, but common sense should prevail.
22. Does the page you’re targeting contain duplicate content?
Google has a small tolerance for some types of duplicate content, but if you drop multiple phrases in quotes and the page you’re targeting doesn’t show up, it might be a good idea to pass. Getting a link on a site that’s almost 100% duplicate content won’t hurt your site, it just isn’t a good use of your time getting links on pages that will end up in omitted results.
23. Are there broken links on the page you’re targeting?
If Google indexes 75 links on a page and 15 of them are broken, it doesn’t make sense that Google would consider a page where 20% of the links are broken as very valuable or trusted. For a little more on broken links, check out the post that @napoleonsuarez put up a few months ago.
24. When you turn off javascript & reload the page, do all of the links still appear?
If you’re evaluating getting a link in a section of a page that goes away when javascript is turned off, the engines might not be able to spider those links. Run it through at least 2 spider simulator or check the cache to see if the links are actually indexed.
25. Is the site using spammy on page tactics?
If you find the page you’re thinking of targeting for a link contains white on white text, insanely long alt text image descriptions that don’t match the text in the image, or “read more” dropdown that contain 70 links and more text than is on the page, these are signs that you probably want to abandon this opportunity.
The list could go on, but I think this highlights plenty of ways to pick & choose to evaluate a link. Follow me at @adammm , the rest of the SEER team from our profile page, & grab the rss feed for the SEER blog for these types of posts as well as other SEO & PPC reads.
Posted: 03.15.11
Tom Demers:
Wow really comprehensive list thanks Adam.
One thing we tend to focus on is the relative weight of different quality signals for different link types – so particularly important signals in looking at guest posting opps (for us anyway) would be the way individual blog posts resolve re: PR and mR as well as archiving issues (same question here really) and whether similar individual posts are promoted by the linking site/have their own momentum. Whereas for something like promotion of a free tool or guide into resource links things like willingness to link out, use of no follow, and broken links are stronger factors (with broken links sometimes representing an ice-breaking opportunity in outreach efforts, depending on how actively the site’s maintained).
Great post thanks for pulling this together.
Tom
Wiehan Britz:
Lovely article covering some decent points.
I’m an SEO-noob so I’m trying to find my way around the digital realm and spotting new things to integrate into my own efforts. One thing I battle with is link building. It is easy if you’ve got a massive eCommerce site such as Zappos or whatever, but what about the smaller, less popular sites? That is where my question comes in: How do you tackle link building for a client selling warehouse storages for example? Local directories aint helping, social media is out of the question because no one wants to use it for warehouse storages info.
Any ideas on that will be highly appreciated. Your site design looks great so by the way!
Adam:
Tom – thanks for the comment. How promoted the linked post is might be underplayed in this post. I know one blogger that was mentioned in one link by another blogger months ago and still receives 100+ visits each day from that little link. How promoted and what happens to it after it leaves the homepage of that site can be make or break for the value.
Adam:
Wiehan – getting links is a whole separate post or book for that matter. Until you think of something great and test that it will work, I’d use open site explorer and Yahoo site explorer to see the type of backlinks your top competitors are getting. Try & get those. If you’re selling/renting warehouse storage, I’d find complementary businesses in the area that might have a resources section, maybe a local college with recommended local resources for students, or state/city directories that might be able to give you the custom anchor text you need.
Wiehan Britz:
Makes perfect sense. Luckily I’m a pro-member of SEOMoz so I will look at the open site explorer and other link building tools to see what the competition are doing. Thanx for the reply on my comment!
Gareth James:
Re: #4 – Its also worth noting that putting a link on an old stale page could leave a big footprint. Why would an old page suddenly get a new outbound link? I’ve seen Google’s algo easily discount links like this.
Matthew Diehl:
#19 is so money and people don’t even know it.
Getting a link in a sharable piece of content is great, but getting a link in a sharable piece of content that is backed by a strong set of followers/friends/subscribers is exponentially greater because of the added weight that social has gained with the SEs.
Great list Adam!
Adam Melson:
Gareth – not sure if you mean #4 about caching above, but still noted. If I’m going to put a link on an old page, I’d like to see some new content or new sentence around that new link too.
Adrian Drysdale:
Damn that’s a big list. Don’t think you can say yes to all 25. To me a great backlink is one that you didn’t create yourself. If it was natural it’s a win.
Kirk Stephens:
I started following you on twitter based on a recommendation by Will. I am glad I did!
Excellent reading and such to the point material will keep me interrsted. Utterly fantastic!
Adam Melson:
Kirk – so glad you enjoyed it. Hopefully some more list posts and tips to come. Adrian – A great backlink is one that drives value & gives a client a bump in traffic or rankings. If one comes naturally that we weren’t even trying for, those are sweet as we’ve’ invested little/no time towards it. For all of our clients we HAVE to go out & create links ourselves or else we’ll be out of business.
Tom Demers:
Re: new outbound links on old pages: I totally get the sentiment here but I’ve seen it work both ways in terms of a new link on an old page helping and having less impact than you’d expect. If you’re G it’s sort of impossible to discount this too aggressively because you would be throwing out updates to quality resources, well-maintained directories, etc. If someone compiles a killer list of the best blogs about pet grooming with a bunch of great information, and then adds to it over time as they find new blogs, you don’t want to create a filter to discount that updated link.
Two signals that might make sense for them to think about would be to differentiate updates to old blog posts versus static pages (easy enough for them to differentiate these by looking at code, URL, etc. – the same things they used to do blog search) and/or number and authority of inbound links to the page that’s being updated. If it’s really authoritative it’s difficult to discount, if it’s something they would have whacked in the farmer update (300 words, no deep links to the page, no social signal, but hung off an authoritative domain) it’s a lot easier. This second one in particular would map with my (entirely anecdotal and unscientific) experience.
Tom
Goga:
The post is great. Very extensive and yet uncluttered. Awesome.
But what I really liked is the point #22. I guess I never thought about duplicate content as a link value determinant. But you are completely right on that one. You really gave me new insight into this. Thanks!
Chotrul SEO:
That’s an extremely extensive list of metrics by which to judge the value of a link. #22 is very important – a is one example of factors which could devalue that page which contains the link. It’s very important to check anything which could hit the site in the near future – it’s value could change imminently!
roey:
i don?t really agree with no. 20-i still think it?s a great way to gain trust and ranking
Joel:
Great list! #16 was interesting, never really thought about how hyper-active bloggers/content creators might actually be a detrimental thing.
Generic Domain Market:
“To me a great backlink is one that you didnt create yourself. If it was natural its a win.”
@Adrian Drysdale .. Good point. It’s always back to Quality Content.
This post prove your point since I came here through a recommendation by another good blog (Wiep.net).
Jon:
I thought this was a good article. I did not know about overstock.com getting in trouble. So my question is something like build my rank bad? you write your own content and can put a link in it. You are not buying a link?
Maryland SEO:
Thanks for the great list! You provided a lot of insights into locating quality links that are very helpful, Thanks again!
w3-logics:
This is a good list, it actually had a few ideas I had not heard of before which really suprised me, but I have never seen a list longer than about 20 ways to build incoming links either though. Good job.
Calgary SEO:
Wow this is a killer list. Honestly the bad neighbor website was worth an entire post.
Mark in Worthing:
Does the site have a broken link to a previous competitor of yours? You can write and helpfully point out that your site would make a more-than-adequate replacement for the broken link.
One variant of this is to find unloved, out-of-date or deceased sites in your niche and see if they have any still extant links that might become yours instead (with a bit of work and goodwill).