Top 10 Criteria for Assessing the SEO Value of a Link
When doing SEO, and specifically link building, it is vital to have a procedure to follow when assessing links for their SEO value. As a link builder, you have got to equip yourself with all the best tools available to decide whether a given site is worth linking to, or worth gaining a link from. The following list covers the main things I look for when assessing a site for link-worthiness:1. One of the most important factor to consider when looking at site's potential is to see whether it is relevant to your website's industry. Remember to think quite broadly in terms of whether a site is related to your site e.g. if your site ia a luxury travel company, look at luxury lifstyle and leisure sites, as well as purely travel based sites.
2. Look at the PageRank (PR) of the site and page in question (the former will usually be higher than the latter). Download the Google toolbar to use the PageRank indicator when assessing sites in this way. Try to lean towards sites witha a PR of 2 or above.
3. The look, feel and content of the site. This is very important - does the site look professional? Is the content well written? Does it have useful linkbait/tools for users? The knack for quickly scanning a site quickly to see whether its worth linking to/from is one that all link builders pick up with experience.
4. No. of links coming from the page where the link comes from. Every extra outgoing link on, say, a links page of a given site decreases the PR given by the site to each link. In other words, a site offering a link on their links page with hundreds of links on it is probably not going to be worth much in terms of "link juice". It may, however, provide traffic, so don't rule it out straight away.
5. Whether or not you will get an anchor text link or a URL link. Go for anchor text links wherever possible, as Google values them highly in terms of ranking for a given phrase. Don't be scared to accept a URL link though if thats all thats available. It will make your link profile look more natural if you have a mixture of anchor text links and URL links. And natural is good.
6. Where the site ranks for your industry keywords. Put a few of your main keywords into Google, look to see whether the site you are assessing has any sort of ranking. Obviously the higher up the site in question ranks for your keywords, the better a linking candidate the site is.
7. Age of domain. You trust your oldest friend more than a guy you've just met in the street; in the same way, Google generally values older sites more than newer ones. Because of this, it's a good idea to check the age of a domain when link-assessing it. Type "who is" into Google to find a site that will check a .com domain's age; use Nominet for .co.uk domains.
8. Age of site. The age of a site could be completely different to the age of the domain. Use the wayback machine as a good assessor as to how long the site has been in existence.
9. Link placement. A link from the body content of a main page is worth more than one tucked away in the footer somewhere.
10. The site's link profile. Check with Yahoo Site Explorer or a tool like SEO Elite. Look at the quality and quantity of sites linking to the site you are investigating. Often link profiles can be a few hundred lines long, so just scan the profile if you are pushed for time.
