Factors that make up quality links

When you decide whether you need a link from some page or not, there are a couple of factors that can help you make up your mind. And these are not just things to add up to each other. You should carefully look at them, when building your links. I’ll tell you about some of the most important factors that contribute to the quality of a link. For the convenience of us both, I’ll call them quality factors, or Q-factors in this book.

Relevance of your partner’s site

When I talk of relevance of a potential partner’s website to yours, I mean how close your partner’s offer is to what you sell. If a website has a complementary offer, it’s great to have a link from it.

Well, say you’ve got a travel agency and have a site for it. One link to you comes from a website selling detailed maps and travelers’ guides of countries and cities, while another link to you stands on a site that sells wallpaper.

The first website is connected with traveling, so it’s thematically relevant to your site, and Search Engines will value the link coming from it more. The second website is thematically irrelevant (travels and wallpaper normally don’t come together). And therefore, this link won’t be that trusted by Google, Bing, or Yahoo!

And it’s not only Search Engines who look at the relevance of a site that links to you. People who’re visitors of the website that sells golf clubs may be happy to click a link saying find golf course in your location. But if you’re a meat products wholesaler, the habitual visitor of www.vegetarian-food.com won’t appreciate the link to you.

When discussing the relevancy of inbound links I cannot help but mention the Penguin update.

The Penguin update mostly affected the off-page SEO strategy of the websites. It targeted websites using illegitimate aka "black-hat” SEO techniques to manipulate search engine rankings.

The new algorithm checked the backlinks for relevancy and lowered the websites rankings for any irrelevant links. That’s why today relevancy is most important thing to consider, and getting links from thematically relevant sites must be your thumb rule from now on.

Right anchors

Say, I want to get high rankings for the search term wedding ideas. I will try to use this keyphrase in my links’ anchor texts.

For good SEO, anchor texts of the inbound links you’re getting should contain your keywords, as anchors help search robots determine the relevancy of a link, which we previously discussed.

At the same time, all your links must look natural. If you’re getting 1,000 links, you shouldn’t use the same anchors for all of them. Think: if 1,000 persons naturally put links to you, they wouldn’t use the same anchor texts — people don’t think absolutely the same.

This is true to check — and I did check this myself. I asked my relatives to say in a couple of words what I do. Here’s just a few replies:

"You promote websites”
"You do SEO”
"You optimize sites”
"You’re in Internet marketing”
"You idle about in front of computer, just like these little kids” — that’s my wife’s granddad, just turned 89.

So there’s dozens of ways to say one and the same thing.

Consequently, there are different types of anchor texts, for example:

• Brand name/Brand-keyword hybrid ("ralph lauren”, "ralph lauren t-shirts”)
• Commercial or "money” anchors ("buy t-shirt”)
• Partial and broad match ("buy mens t-shirt online”)
• Non-descriptive ("click here”, "view details”)
• Naked URLs ("Ralphlauren.Com”)
• Anchors in foreign languages ("t-shirt kaufen gunstig”)
• ALT texts in linking images (which are perceived by Search Engines as anchor texts)
• Other

So, how should you build up links not get hurt by Google and still go up in Search Engines? Just use many anchor texts variations to make your backlink profile look natural.

Now many SEOs argue how many exact-match anchors (which are most often commercial) one may have to be on the safe side. Some of them say 30%, others say 60%, but from my experience I can say that 10% are what most webmasters now stick to, mixing commercial anchors with brand names, partial-match and non-descriptive anchors.

So, in the view of the recent Google updates (yep, I’m talking about this crazy “Penguinomania”), we have to be very careful with both existing and prospecting backlinks.

Let’s recollect the table we made in the previous chapter.

Look at the first group of keywords. Though I’m specifically targeting wedding ideas, I’ll also use wedding ideas flowers, wedding ideas pictures, wedding ideas Australia and so on. Plus, you’ve got an even bigger list of keywords where you can take other terms to create variations.

You can check the anchors of your existing links either manually or using the SEO SpyGlass tool (http://www.link-assistant.com/seo-spyglass/).

 Good context for links

Links will look more natural if they come in a natural context. I mean, text around the link should also be relevant. For example, a perfect surrounding for a link "wedding ideas” could be:

Getting married soon? Make your wedding unforgettable! Get fresh wedding ideas at Jeremy’s and plan your wedding with us!

Here the link with the anchor text wedding ideas is used in a keyword-rich context and is naturally built-in into the text.

Don’t underestimate the value of anchors and context in which they appear. Better spend a bit more time and put some effort into writing proper link contexts. This way, you will make Search Engines rank your site higher in their SERPs, because your linking strategy will look more natural.

DO IT NOW!

Write at least 5 different anchor text variations and descriptions with your keywords, following the above mentioned recommendations.

Keywords in title and body of the partner’s page

That’s probably another dimension of relevance. Search Engines put more value to links that come from sites that have your targeted keywords in their page titles and body text. Sounds too difficult? Here’s a real-life example.

When I met my wife, I not only liked the way she looked. I was pleased to find out that she also loved listening to Depeche Mode, watching Scarface and reading Tom Wolfe, and hated tomatoes just like I did. You see we had a lot in common, and it wasn’t a surprise to anyone that we married soon.

Same thing happens in SEO: if you are "friends” with some webpage, it’s supposed to have something in common with yours.

Of course it’s not wise linking to a competitor’s page, though it may have plenty of keyword coincidences with yours. It’s also unlikely that your competitor will place a link to your site on his. Still, it’s possible to find hundreds and even thousands of non-competing pages.

For instance, if you sell cats food, and one of your keywords is smooth-coated cats food, you could get a great link from a webpage entitled “Cats pictures — smooth-coated cats and kittens".

PageRank

The next factor that influences link quality is Google PageRank.

PageRank is a patented method that Google uses to measure the relative importance of a page, on a scale of 0 to 10. Here’s how Google describes it:

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important."

The wording may change from time to time, but the essence stays the same.

Google counts PageRank for each separate page of a website. And if a page has outbound links, it will add a proportional part of its PageRank to each page it links to.

So, if a page with a high PageRank has a link to you, your page will seem to Google more weighty, and you’ll get part of its PageRank, too, and this’ll help you get a better position in Google’s results page, thus getting more impressions, traffic and sales.

Where can you see a page’s PageRank?

To view webpages’ PageRank, you need to install a special toolbar that’s designed for different web browsers (Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Google Chrome) — it’s free and installs within seconds. Here’s a link to it: http://toolbar.google.com/.

So let’s install Google toolbar and load this page: http://www.apple.com.

See this green scale? It shows that http://www.apple.com has a PageRank of 9.

And what PageRank is considered high? Though it largely depends on the market where you compete, I’d say that generally, PageRank of 5 and above is quite a lot!

And, just because I believe anyone may be curious, I’ll tell you (though you can easily check it yourself) Google itself has PageRank of 10, Wikipedia’s homepage has got 9 today — and Intel has 8. So you see, very high PageRank like this is something hard to imagine.

By the way, PageRank values change from time to time, when Google updates its PageRank — and I won’t be surprised if Apple soon gets PageRank 10, like it used to have before.

Quite sure, for many reasons PageRank is far from being the sole important factor in optimization. Therefore, don’t get carried away and don’t make achieving a high PageRank the #1 point of your linking strategy. PageRank is just one of the many factors Google takes into account when calculating the ranking for your Website. And it’s not the most vital one. Not by a long shot.

Still PageRank is rather important for organic link building. But you have to be wise and careful with it. Look at this example:

If ten of your incoming links carry the PageRank of 5, six links have a PageRank of 4, and the remaining 50 have PageRanks of 0 to 3, this looks all natural and dandy. However, if all ten of your backlinks have the PageRank value of 5, Google may frown on this and devalue all these links.

Why? Because when sites put links to you because they want to, not because you asked them to, it’s hardly possible that all of them have the same PageRank. Google has similar logic — it doesn’t look natural if you’ve got links from ten PageRank 5 pages. What it does look like is that you simply went ahead and purchased ten high PageRank links pointing to your site. Even if you didn’t, Google may still think you did and devalue them, so be warned.

Remember we’re trying to make our link growth look natural. And in the natural scenario, the PageRank values of the sites that link to you are usually different. So firstly,

Try to be getting links with different PageRank.

And secondly, here’s a rule that I devised from my own experience:

Not more than 15-25% of your incoming links should have a PageRank of 5 and above.

Does Google PageRank change? How often?

Yes, Google PageRank changes — and it changes constantly. But it’s only Google who knows real PageRanks for sure. And, Google exports its PageRank values to Google Toolbar now and then. So what you know now isn’t necessarily the real PageRank that Google knows.

A big SEO guy Bob Mutch would have a lot to tell about Google PageRank. He has recorded all PageRank updates till Ferbruary, 2008 that were visible on the toolbar.

Check it at http://www.seocompany.ca/pagerank/page-rank-update-list.html, if you want to know how often the toolbar values changed (but there’s no strict system though).

Is PageRank leak true?

Many clients ask me: "If I have a lot of outbound links, they’re getting part of my PageRank. Does this mean my website will have lower PageRank because I link to others?”

Nope.

If you link to another site, it gets an add-up to its PageRank, and this add-up is proportional to the PageRank of your own site. But your PageRank still remains yours — noone’s taking it away from you. This is too much of mathematics but basically, though a slight PageRank leak exists, it happens for other reasons buried deep in what I call "Google science” — and you won’t be even able to notice this tiny leak.

In this respect I’d like to mention a "nofollow” tag. As Google guidelines state, it provides a way for webmasters to tell Search Engines "Don’t follow links on this page” or "Don’t follow this specific link.” However, this attribute is valuable not only for webmasters, but for SEOs as well. Why? Because Google does not transfer PageRank or anchor text across such links.According to Google, the use of "nofollow” tag is also required when getting paid links.

Direct from Google guidelines: “In order to prevent paid links from influencing search results and negatively impacting users, we urge webmasters use nofollow on such links. Search engine guidelines require machine-readable disclosure of paid links in the same way that consumers online and offline appreciate disclosure of paid relationships (for example, a full-page newspaper ad may be headed by the word "Advertisement”)”.

DO IT NOW!

Install a Google toolbar and check how high is the PageRank of pages you are getting links from.

These PageRank talks can be endless. If you want to ask more, send your questions to dan@seoinpractice.com — and I’ll try to answer them.

Quantity of outbound links on a page

As I told you before, a webpage that has outbound links (i.e. links to pages outside its website) gives a proportional part of its PageRank to each of the links (putting it simple). Therefore, it’s useful to know how many outbound links the page has — so you can know what to expect if you get a link from it.

For instance, just yesterday I was looking at two pages. The first one belongs to a well-known desktop applications developer. It’s got PageRank 5 and has about 200 outbound links, so each link gets PageRank 0.025 part of the possible maximum value (divide 5 by 200 to count). And, another page is a software forum that has PageRank 3 but only 15 outbound links on its homepage, so I’ve got a chance to get 0.200 of the maximum possible PageRank from it, which is much better than 0.025.

(I only provide these figures and calculations for the example. Google’s formula for PageRank distribution is more complicated than just dividing it between all links.)

I believe now you see it’s always wise to look at many factors and count real figures before choosing where to get links from.

Age of site

Search Engines trust older sites more, so when you’re getting a link, it’s good to look at the site’s age. When I say "old site” I mean a site that is 8 or 10 years old — but that’s an ideal. The most important point here for you to know is: sites less than 1 year old are considered very young.

Quite naturally, young sites must prove themselves before they can start ranking for much of anything important. And well aged sites are largely respected by Search Engines.

Do the website and the webpage have high link popularity?

That’s what you’re trying to achieve in fact, too. Link popularity is the authority that comes due to having a lot of websites linking to you. If an authority page links to you, this link will be more trusted by Search Engines.

So it’s good to know how many sites are linking to the page you’re getting a link from.

These were the main points that help you judge on the quality of a potential link. Of course, there are much more things to look at, though some of them are not as crucial as these Q-factors.

Some of the factors I just talked about depend on you, like anchor texts and context, others only depend on your link partners (use of keywords in the title and body text of their page), and some, like PageRank, are "closed territory”. Still all of them make sense to know and check before putting your time and efforts into getting this or that link.