This is a guide. It is written primarily for beginners, but also you who have read a bit about SEO may learn something new about one way link building.
In search engine optimization inbound links are extremely important. It does not matter how well you optimize your website from on on-page perspective, if the page has no inbound links you will not be ranked for your keywords. All inbound links do not hold the same value. There are several factors that determine a link’s value. These factors are built into Google’s algorithms and are largely unknown to outsiders. In addition, understanding how those factors influence your search engine rankings is further complicated by the fact that Google’s algorithms are constantly changing.
When I talk about a link’s “value” I do not mean link’s monetary value, but its effect on a web page’s ranking in SERPS (SERPs = search engine results pages).
When I speak of the “host side” I am referring to the page where the link is located. For the most part it is the host page’s power to determine the link’s value. If website A links to website B, then website A is the host page and website B is the landing page. In this guide I’ll assume that your site is the landing page.
Each factor below is numbered. Please note that the numbering has no relation to how important the point is to link value. If a point is more important than anyone else I will clearly explain that below.
1st The host page’s PageRank
To start with, I would point out that Google PageRank (PR) does not play as large a role today, as it did a few years ago. Novice SEO’s often commit the mistake of putting too much emphasis on PR. It does not mean that we should ignore PageRank altogether (a mistake that many SEO professionals do). A link from a web page with high PR has a higher value than a link from a web page with low PR.
2nd Host page inlinks
To assess the value of our inbound links on the host side, we must look at how many inbound links the host side has pointing to it. We can easily determine that by making use of Yahoo Site Explorer. The more inbound links pointing to the host side, the more valuable will be our own inbound links that come from the host side.
Please note that Yahoo is preferable to Google when it comes to controlling inbound links. This is because Google does not show all links.
3rd Competition for power link
Your landing page is probably not the only link the host side is linking to. The more links there are on the host side, the lower link power flowing to our own site. We share the link power of a host page with all the other links that are on the same page. Note that this applies both to internal and external links. The fewer links on the page at the host side, the more value our own link will have on the page at the host side.
4th The host side trust rank
The host side TrustRank (TR) currently has a very significant impact on inbound link value. Unfortunately, little is known about how TR is measured in respect to the strength of a web page. We can only make educated guesses about a page TR. A variety of factors are considered to affect a page’s TR. Institutes, universities and large organizations are usually considered to have high TR. A website with a high TR will generally also have quite high PR (but not necessarily). There is no connection between the different values, but trusted organizations usually receive many inbound links – which usually also gives high PR.
Note that a link from a host page that itself has inbound links, such as from a university often has a high value. Your inbound links do not necessarily need to come directly from the university to be valuable. Think of it as a form of hierarchy, where each web site’s link force deteriorates the further away from the trusted web pages they are in the link hierarchy.
5th The host page’s relevance
A key factor in how your inbound links are measured in Google’s eyes, is how relevant the host page is in context with the topic or subject matter of your landing page. For example, if you have a website about football, you would want to have inbound links from other websites about football. It is therefore best if the subject matter of the content on the host side is about football. If the host page is about hockey or sports in general that can also be considered to be relevant. The limit of what can be considered as relevant are fluid and somewhat unclear. It is usually relatively easy to figure out for yourself what is definitely not a relevant link. Just use common sense. Another example, a link from a web page that is about science pointing to your website about football is absolutely irrelevant, and has a relatively low value in Google’s eyes.
