...in PageRank, in Link Love, in Rankings for Keywords?
If this doesn't win me cheesiest title of the year (or at least a Tony award), I don't know what I'll do. Seriously, though, I've noticed that a lot of people have questions about how to measure the quality and veracity of a link. Why? To answer questions like - "How much should I pay for this link?" or "Why is my competitor ranking so well?" or even "Which links should I target in a campaign?" Well, today's your lucky day.
The following are the ways I measure links, and while they're not entirely comprehensive, they'll certainly give you a degree of detail far beyond what you probably need. I'll start with the most important elements and work my way down.
Most Important Elements to Determing a Link's Value:
- Where does the linking page rank for the term/phrase you want to rank for?
If the page is ranking #1 at Google for "sliced bread" and you want to be #1 at Google for "sliced bread," guess what? That's the #1 most valuable link you can get. Keep going down the list to about position 25-30 and you're still getting solid gold in link value. - Where does the linking page rank for 1-2 important, competitive terms in its title tag?
This will give you a very solid idea about how much overall link juice and respect the search engines are giving the page. It's also a good way to identify the global link value that could be provided. - Where does content on the linking domain generally rank for competitive terms in its pages' respective title tags?
As above, we're trying to ID just how positively the engines view pages on the domain. If the pages generally rank in the top 20 results, we can rest assured that search engines think the domain's value is pretty darn high, and that links from that domain will pass significant value. - Does the linking site carry any brokered sets of links?
I don't worry about the occassional paid link or advertising link, but if I see that every page on a domain has links from a major link broker on it, I seriously worry that the site may lose its ability to pass link juice. This really applies to any type of low quality, manipulative linking. If you can see it, chances are, Google might see it someday, too. - What is the relevance of the linking page/site to your target page?
Answering this question require you to think critically about the visitors to both the potential linking page and the domain. If the relationship of subject matter is high, the link will provide more semantic and topic specific value.
Elements of Secondary Value for Links:
- Links to High Ranking Competitors
Although this isn't always an indication of direct value, it can be a good signal. Your competitors are obviously ranking based on the strength of their links, so researching those sources can provide insight into where they derive that value. - Page Strength
SEOmoz's own, in-house metrics compilation certainly isn't foolproof, and I advise you to ignore the number it spits out, but the data returned is convenient and certainly valuable. If there's a lot of links from Wikipedia and DMOZ and the site has high PageRank, lots of inbound links and blog links, there's clearly some value to getting a link. Just make sure you judge based on the data, not the numerical score - 4.5/10 doesn't mean much to professional SEOs. - PageRank of Domain
Yeah, I know it's weird that a PR hater like myself would call this out, but it really is something I examine. I look mostly at the domain to make sure it's not penalized and to see the overall link juice. A 6/10 domain clearly has some link love and respect, a 2/10 or a grey bar, can be a good red flag and seeing a 0/10 tells you that the domain is either new or completely invisble. - Inlinks to Page (via Yahoo!)
In a reversal of my look at the PR for the domain, with links, I'm looking at that specific page. I want to know if the domain links in to this individual page heavily, or if its practically an orphan. I want to see if its a page that other sites reference - both of which can help illuminate potential value. - Inlinks to Domain via Technorati (or Google Blog Search)
The Technorati and Google Blog Search link data can to show trends - if a site is picking up lots of new links over the past few months, it might be a much better candidate than PR or other link data might indicate.
Less Important Elements of Link Valuation:
- Inlinks to Domain (via Yahoo!)
They're not completely useless, but since the number often takes into account lots of links from a single domain, it can be misleading. - Alexa Ranking
Practically pointless in every way - Alexa data is skewed, inaccurate & really doesn't matter when grabbing a link. - PageRank of Page
Since so many newer pages are 0, and so many valuable pages may only be a 1-3, it seems unwise to get caught up in the PR of the specific page - better to look at the domain and the attention it gives your page. - Listing in DMOZ
I don't know why people consider this, but it is a metric some folks claim to use. We measure in the PageStrength tool only as a way to consider legitimacy and longevity, but honestly it's not particularly valuable when considering a link. - Number of External Links on the Page
Unless there are 150+ outbound links and you're worried that Googlebot doesn't spider them all, it's a very antiquated concern to worry about the individual amount of PageRank that will be passed by any given link. You're getting anchor text and trust value and all of the other positive factors a link providers, so don't sweat a crowd too much.
I'd be interested to hear if you have other metrics to consider when weighing the purchase of a link.
I think that WHERE the link is placed on the page and it's CONTEXT might be important...
Is it linked within a content paragraph?
Is it in a footnote format along with a few other highly authoritative links at bottom of page? (such as "for more information on widgets go here")
Is it an Image credit?
Is it in a footer table at bottom of page (not footnotes - but bottom of page text).
Is it in blogroll format?
Is it within a "sponsored links" box?
Serious oversight on my part, EGOL, and definitely a good addition to the post - thanks!
Do you have any thoughts on which of the above placements carry value? I think that everyone will agree that in a content paragraph is a great link... but do you think that a blogroll helps at all or the footnotes?
EGOL,
I think you've hit on an important whole other discussion entirely. As part designer (CSS tableless), part SEO I've always given some thought to the placement issue.
With the advancements in SE spidering/indexing and increasing CSS development where position in code and position on page have become less and less related, I wonder if most of the conversations on placement are outdated and need a refresher?
Placement early in code versus early on page as well as in footers or sidebars regardless of "code" placement will certainly be taking on more importance if they aren't already as engines get ever more advanced at determing "importance" without regard to code placement.
I agree that this is an interesting discussion on link location on the page. I have been pondering this lately and trying some different things to see if I can tell a difference in the location of a link on a blog and a static information type site.
Hopefully someone has better data and/or experience with this and will post me a wonderful post helping to end my speculation ;)
(Great post Rand)
I think placement as far as what comes first in the code might not be so important, but I can see where placement within code groups could play a part.
Perhaps the links in a blogroll could be seen differently than a group of links with a heading of top commenters. Maybe it's not the best example, but I can see where links on different parts of the page take on different values.
An in context link inside a paragraph of content will most likely be seen as more valuable than a link in the footer marked 'sponsored links'
The closer the link is to content, the better. I guess that's obvious.
What also is obvious that the closer link is to content, the more traffic it passes to another site. And thus, direct targeted traffic yet again can serve as link value indicator.
Now, it may not be actual direct targeted traffic - but at least the potential of direct traffic (yet, we have to remember about those nofollow, AJAX, JS and image links, however).
Another thing that I check is where will my link be placed and what other links will be within the same block of links or paragraph.
Thumbs up! We were typing our post at the same time!
Great point (EGOL - you too!). The difference between a link hidden away at the bottom of a page versus a prominent, relevant link should take into account.
Thumbs up from me.
I look at the URL of the link page in Google's cache... see if it has been updated recently.
By checking cache, you can also see if there is any funny business going on like cloaking, noindex, etc.
Great post Rand, now get some sleep :)
Thumbs up Kurt,
Cached pages within google....i suppose using wayback machine would be useful also, probably not as important as checking cache, but to get an idea of what revisions have been made to a site....
i.e. help establish if a site is making the SEO freindly amends over time.....
Astute readers will note that I didn't mention "traffic" - this post is really focused on the value of links from a search engine perspective, and while potential traffic might provide some indication of value, it doesn't figure into the ranking equation (at least, not until Google starts owning global wifi systems and knows everything everyone's clicking on).
With the Google Toolbar, Google Analytics and Adsense I think Google knows more about what we click on than we give them credit for. Not to mention Blogger, YouTube, and other major web properties along with Google itself.
Great article rand I'm getting ready to link to it it also created more ideas for my link bait article I'm writing up which I been on it for 7 hours now its called "SEO Tool Kit Guide - The Winners Guide to Getting Website Traffic". I'll see how that title works :).
Rand, I didn't expect to hear that from you.
If the link drives lots of direct targeted traffic, it means that it has all the characteristics of a good link, because:
- it is on a targeted website/page
- has lots of visitors, and thus ranks pretty good in the search engines
- has some trusted links to it (if the page/site is good enough to have visitors)
In a way, I think that direct traffic is the best link value factor.
Right, it sounds like that if it would be a good link without even considering search engines, then it's a good link, otherwise not. Anyway, it's still helpful to have the relevant factors somewhat quantified.
The real question is how do you get such a link?
I'm of the opinion that there are a lot of high quality links that will send absolutely no traffic, and, likewise, some high trafficked links that won't pass much value. Obviously, you're welcome to use it as a metric if you find it valuable, but for purposes of rank building, I've found that it can be an inaccurate predictor.
Hmm... Do you think that is because of a flaw in the algo or just that Google is giving credit to the webmasters opinion that the link target is worthy? It seems like links that pass value but no traffic would be contrary to the philosophy of "just build it for the customer"
For the purposes of rank building? Since when are we building rank again? Aren't we about providing great content and getting natural links? I thought you are not far into the Jim Boykin school of link building.
I don't mean that that direction shouldn't exist, I am saying that links that dont pass traffic won't be counted for much these days.
Then again, how do you get plenty of links that don't drive traffic, but have other otherwise good qualities? Doesn't sound like a scalable approach (more like manual and paid link building).
Then again, each to his own, I guess, but I am still under shock after reading what you said. I thought SEOmoz is way ahead of most webmasters, really.
Totally agree with you there Rand, DMOZ is the best example... It still carries weight, and yet, when was the last click YOU got through it? :)
You hit on a great point that I think is often missed, that being the speculation of future value. PageRank blindness is certainly one of the biggest examples, but you see people passing on link opportunities with sites because they don't seem to meet some metric today.
Looking for good links is a little like real estate, sometimes it is a lot easier and more valuable getting in early before the valuation goes through the roof.
More intensive and may just depend on the competitive level, the importance of the links, and how granlular you want or need to take things, but I think it can also be valuable to play the degrees of separation game...
look at those top ranking pages/sites that you want to get links from and then look at the top ranking sites linking to them and try to get links from those sites as well.
Not sure why nobody mentioned it, but we need to consider negative factors as well. I wouldn't want to get a link from pages breaking the search engine guide lines (hidden text or links, cloaking, etc.), using rel="no follow", meta robot="noindex, nofollow", blocking access via robots.txt or even more sneaky things such as blocking the robot access to the content where the link is -- Yahoo slurp support this feature.
They might pass all the positive tests but might get penalized later when the search engines catch the tricks.
I would like to hear opinions on this... lots of people say that "a link will NEVER hurt you".... What if you own both of these sites, hosted on same server, same IP? I think that search engines might be able to smell certain forms of manipulation.
I think most links don't hurt, but why would I pay or go through the trouble of getting a link that is not going to help?
One case that might hurt (at least in Google) is your competitor reporting your paid text links as spam.
I think the search engines would like for no link to hurt you since it can then become a game of hurting competitor's sites instead of trying to improve your own. I think most would agree that there are some links that can hurt, but for the most part as long as you build a strong enough profile most negative links shouldn't really affect you.
At the very least you should be able to counter the effects of negative links with a positive one.
Hamlet - another excellent point, and one that's worthy of inclusion.
Good post.
WHile I do go for links that are more valuabe in terms of "page strength" I get a lot of traffic that converts into customers from pages that don't pass link juice at all (Yahoo Answers, various niche forums ,etc).
Great post though. I'm saving it.
Yeah - that headline was unfortunate...
I agree, though, the best way to improve your position is to get a link from one of those sites ahead of or closely behind you in the same SERP.
Strength, PageRank, etc... it doesn't matter. If the site ranks near yours: get a link - it's valuable!
Another great post,
Results appearing in the top 30 SERPs can still contain valuable link juice….. ☺….i like…
With DMOZ, I was always under the impression that if you can get listed with the DMOZ directory, due to the frequency (very frequent) in which SE (Yahoo & Google) usually index DMOZ, its likely to drive valuable link juice for you rsite listed. Especially for any new domains....I don't rely on it so much due to the timeframe in getting listed.... :-)
I also think its important now to ensure links are directed from specific pages which contain specific content about your page being linked to, as opposed to be listed in a standard links page.....
Blimey! Great post. Ive never really gone into that much depth before when looking for links. Ill have to see if i can start incorporating some of these details into my reporting.thank u...
These are some great ways on concentrating the link juice.
At this time, I'm finding paid directories to link from. To make sure I get and much 'bang for my buck' I'm checking both the worth of the directory and the specific page that my link is likely to link from. This particularly important if the directory ranks everyone alphabetically and you land on page 5 with no pagerank.
Thank rand
Rand:
Have you now completely given up on the (once) conventional wisdom about links from .edu, .gov and .mil and perhaps even .org TLD's being more valuable?
No! Actually, I'd still say that a .gov or .edu link is (all other things being equal) more valuable than a link from .coms or .nets or .orgs, etc. Excellent point! I should also probably add a piece about geo-targeting and getting country-specific domain links if you're trying to rank in a particular market.
Yes you should... I've seen sites that rank well in for instance the Netherlands "overdo it" by getting to much links from outside of the Netherlands, and not ranking anymore... There's a big but with that one too though. This only counts for links from languages/countries Google can actually separate... German and Dutch are pretty alike, and Google has a very very hard time separating the two... That might go for other languages too...
So in all: if you want to rank in Dutch, get Dutch links... If you want to rank in English, get links from all over the place :P
Actually I had same thoughts Jonah. If you can find a page with scores of EDU, Gov and Mil links pointing in and there are only a handful of outbounds its hard to pass it buy.
The other thing is I have seen on occassion is where destination site ends up being acredited as having the edu/ gov link.
I am not totally sure as to how this happens but I have seen this:
E.g
Gov site links to information site.
Independent information site links to a client site
Client site (in Yahoo) accredited as having the Gov link because information site is set up using a weird frames/ redirect.
Usually frames/ redirects suck but when this happens - it is a nice happy accident :-)
Another thing that is worth a check is the quality of the inbound links to the domain and the page. A quick way to check that I use is:
Search Yahoo for "linkdomain:domain.com -hgfejwghhbvefdgjhdjhfbg" with Aaron's extension SEO for Firefox installed and activated. (I don't use Siteexplorer since SEO for firefox doesn't support it).
That way you can check at a glance the quality of inbound links and after all a domain's or a page's link power is as much as it's inbound links provide
Nice point about DMOZ. The sooner this love affair with such a useless site is over, the better.
Usually we tell our clients to do get a listing the ODP and the Yahoo! directory. One of the most important reason for this being that many new websites use the results of the ODP in their sites (=instant link spawning).
A company that is utterly clueless about SEO (but is in web design in our market) was ranked #1 for our most important keyword for a long time simply becuase they have a lot of links resulting from their listing in the ODP. They were kicked down in Google because they did a redesign and put all their text in images (talk about clueless...), but they still rank #1 in Yahoo for the same key phrase because of their listing in the Yahoo directory.
We've been listed in DMOZ for a few months now and it has resulted in some links already and we expect this number to grow without having to do anything for it.
Nothing wrong with that I'd guess, but I could be wrong?
LINKING + RENT : 2 great loves...never thought they would be connected. good job rand. good job. :)
I like this post Rand. It is a very "Keep it simple" post with not to many of the normal clutter that tends to confuse readers.
Blimey! Great post. Ive never really gone into that much depth before when looking for links. Ill have to see if i can start incorporating some of these details into my reporting.
I agree that Page Rank (toolbar) is not totally useless and I do take a peek when judging value. I use it as a shortcut to tell me whether a very deep page is in Google's index, if it's blank, I might to a site: operator to verify, seeing some green saves some time.
Can Rand or someone help me with clarification on below? Are you saying to ID how engines view pages on domain for competitive, related terms to keyword I'm trying to measure link value on OR in general how search engines view the linking domain for the domain's own category terms?
Where does content on the linking domain generally rank for competitive terms in its pages' respective title tags?
As above, we're trying to ID just how positively the engines view pages on the domain. If the pages generally rank in the top 20 results, we can rest assured that search engines think the domain's value is pretty darn high, and that links from that domain will pass significant value.
Great post Rannd. This is the type of content I love seeing on SEOmoz personally.
Lately I've been seeing a substantial drop on one or two of my sites. I'm not sure if something changed lately but articles like this help us all think about what we're doing and reevaluate our processes. Thanks for the great work.
I agree with you Nick. This is what we're all here for. :)
I also agree with Nick, this is the type of post that I like.
SEOmoz was taking some flak in some forums recently... are they reading the same blog as me... this is great stuff.
I am a little confused about two points, where you added the Page rank of the page as medium important and the Number of Outgoing links in Less important. I think both has equal impotrance.
If a page has 6/10 and having 100+ links going out, I prefer a page with 4/10 and 10 links going out. Since we are not discussing about the traffic but only on the Link Value in SE perspective, I believe in this.
I could be wrong so easily, though...
Kichus - if we were in 2003, I'd agree with you, but the original PR formula has so little to do with rankings nowadays that I'm inclined to largely overlook it. Besides that, the very, very slow rate of PR updates, the intentional inaccuracy in the toolbar and the high benefits of anchor text and links from trusted sources make me question the value.
From your point of view, is there anything of value offered by Alexa? I agree with Jojo that it can give some good initial info.
I disagree with you on Alexa. I like to get a short look at the Alexa Rank, to see if a site has at least noteworthy traffic. The Alexa-Rank should be less then 1,000,000 (from a german perspective). For me a site with some traffic seems like a "legitimate" site. Of course if you are checking the SERPs of this site and the site has some good positions the site must have some traffic, but I have a look at the Alexa Rank before I look at the other factors.
Alexa - the problem is that especially in niche link building, opn very specific topics, there can be sites that have small traffic numbers (couple hundred visitors a day or less) and sites that almost never see webmaster/techy traffic (which is what Alexa really counts) that can still provide some very high link value in terms of ranking.
I think Alexa can be useful for seeing trends in the traffic to a site, but like you say that's going to be a problem in niche sites with topics that don't attract webmaster/techy traffic. And even with sites that do enough Alexa users the trend in traffic may have little connection with how a search engine sees a link on the page.
I use the following metric:
"Will it help me rank better, and be uesful to my visitors"
If the answer is yes, go for it. Take care of the pennies and so on...
I'm with Rand - Alexa is so skewed and unimportant I dont even bother with it. I have links showing up in backlinks AND delivering great traffic that have a "not in the top 200k" alexa score - oh well.
Great resource - This is in my google notebook of "things to use to explain link purchases to clients."
~Carrie
Seriously Rand, did you have to go with the cheesy Broadway song? I'm going to have this horrid tune stuck in my head all day at work now. Thanks a lot.
No kidding, I've got "Seasons of Links" stuck in my head now. Actually, why don't we just go balls-out with it and write a new musical about the search industry, we'll call it RANK (natch).
This is a great checklist.
For newbies though, you still have to say that Pagerank and Alexa rank are essential indicators to be aware of.
Alexa rank still does mean something if you expect to get traffic from bought links, and above 10,000 the traffic rank is going to be a good indicator of at least the basic concept "this site has a lot of traffic".
And PR is still an indicator of authority if you haven't got the time and tools to analyse each text link site in detail. A link on a PR8 site is going to give a massive boost regardless of any of the other factors.
Unless things have changed... I don't really monitor it as I've never put much stock in the Alexa numbers... one of the biggest issues is that it can be so easily gamed. Not to mention that it tends to fall more within the tech/web industry (suppossively) of users.
The only real value would be in comparison of related sites within the same industry... being more likely that if a site is visited heavily by the same demographic of users, in this case, heavy or light Alexa toolbar demographics.
There are similar problems in PR in that you have no real idea whether that number actually reflects passed value, especially as Google goes after discounting passed value due to paid links, etc.
The big problem in both cases is that, especially for newbies, there is a far greater chance of putting way too much stock in either of these numbers, at the expense of judging a site based on its perceived value.
How many newbies will go after a site that ranks well in either of these cases but has garbage content, or pass on a site that might have excellent value, but ranks average or poorly for either of these numbers.
I think you hit it with the main problem at relying on PR as an indicator. It's too easy to get caught up in thinking it's the end all and be all or measuring quality.
I agree with Identity. I wouldn't put too much stock into Alexa. The problem with Alexa is their toolbar isn't installed on a random sample of people. The results are skewed very heavily toward webmasters/SEOs/and other techies. Most everyone who's ever compare what Alexa says they get for traffic and what they actually get will tell you how the numbers don't match.
I mentioned it above, but where Alexa might be useful is to see trends in a site that does have enough Alexa data. Even then I wouldn't necessarily trust the numbers.
There's a great deal to take in here. I think I need to print it all out and settle down with a cuppa (tea for non-Brits).