Identifying a Good Link
Written by Patrick LeMay | Posted in SEO | Posted on 
17-10-2011 | 
33 Comments
Tags: internet marketing, link building, page rank, search engine optimization, seo
In a matter of a few years, search engine optimization has grown into a big industry. Many articles and blogs are written dedicated to spreading knowledge about SEO, and covering aspects like identifying the right keywords, social media marketing and link building. Yet there is one aspect that is not very well looked into- how do you know the value of a link? Since building inbound links will be a critical part of your SEO strategy, this is a question that cannot be ignored.
The basic rule of thumb in finding out whether to link from a certain site or not depends on the potential of that site to deliver relevant visitors through the link. Relevant sites with high traffic will not only send you targeted traffic, they will also prove to be more valuable in terms of improving your search engine ranking for certain keywords. Here are a few factors that determine whether a site will prove to be useful or not.
Geographical location
The geographical location of the site you are linking on will be a factor worth considering. For instance, if you run a hardware store in the UK and want to build links to draw traffic to your site, then linking from a site that is also UK based would be a better idea.
Audience of the site
You create a link on another website in the hope that the link will draw enough amount of traffic to your site. So you must make sure that the site on which you are creating a link must have some sort of following in terms of visitors. You can find visitor figures of certain sites in the “about us” pages. Most websites these days also have plugins from social media sites like Facebook where people can “like” a particular page. Such figures will also let you know the following of the website.
Thematic similarity of the site
This is one of the most important factors that an SEO firm must consider while executing a campaign. Before you create a link on a particular site, you must make sure that the site deals with themes that are relevant to yours thematically. For instance, if you deal in computer equipment, creating links at an electronic equipment based site will drive more traffic to your site than linking from a site that deals with apparel. Regional relevance and thematic relevance are factors that go hand in hand in link building.
Reliability of Page Rank
Another useful piece of advice would be not to rely heavily on tools like PageRank to judge whether a link is good or not. In most cases, they may not be up to date or the number can be inflated.
Along with all these factors, you should also consider the reputation of the site, its age, and its authority in the field. And do not forget that simply building inbound links is not enough to make your online business a success. You should also ensure that you offer the users real value through your products and a great user experience on your site.
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Good points! These are exactly what to consider in getting the difference between the good and not that good links. You’re right,PR is not reliable in terms of the result of link building activities. It’s just a number.
You have a brilliant mind coming up with the topic. Thanks for sharing!
we must need a good links for our blog so i am always trying to make good links………..
I am using different plugins in determining if the link is do follow or now. Is that also consider as a way of identifying quality links?because sometimes I have links of comments for about a thousand comment ahed of mine but still it is a do follow one.
Nice Info!!!!
All points are on target for get better Backlinks but it is not an easy task to do for this we need to search very deeply which one is better.
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CAN ANY BODY TELL ME HOW TO CREATE BACKLINKS
I had never thought about geographical location before. Sure you would want to link from a locally-based site, but these days you can host your site from anywhere in the world. How much of a difference would it make then?
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Twitter: CompudocAZ
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Nice article, I didn’t know that links from your geographic area may hold more weight than say one from overseas.
Twitter: abidsultan
says:
I think the best attribute to check link quality or a good link is to determine its thematic similarity or in other words contextual relevance. However, there could be other elements to determine quality of the link if SEO is concerned.
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Yes, PR doesn’t determine and with Google Panda’s recent activity, the inflated figures will be more.
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I want to get some page rank for my tech blog, can you suggest me some things which I can do ?
I heard about upcoming PR update, help me…
Bharat recently posted..How to: Know your IP address using Google
Twitter: amambaie
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Geography is incredibly important, especially if you want to rank for a geography-specific search phrase. For instance, if you are trying to rank for “Chicago lawyers”, remember that a page related to Chicago is as relevant as a page related to lawyers.
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thanks for a great article whit good points!
im new in this online bussines and read and learn from your blog. thanks.
Great tips. Pagerank is so 2004, yet there are still so many webmasters hung up on it. Relevancy I think is the biggest factor with site age running neck and neck. I’ve seen just a single link from a highly relevant aged site boost another site dozens of places in a search.
A good link should be always in the high note, what i mean is the link must have a positive feedback from all users around the globe.
Good points! These are exactly what to consider in getting the difference between the good and not that good links. You’re right,PR is not reliable in terms of the result of link building activities. It’s just a number.
I think a good link is a link that have many clicks on it and it leads to a page with good quality content.
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Nice article, I didn’t know that links from your geographic area may hold more weight than say one from overseas. thanks for sharing
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I good link is a link that is active and doesn’t lead to nowhere. Therefore, if we want to have a good backlinks, remember to check our sites regularly for errors.
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There is no absolute judgement about how a link can be considered a good link. Sometimes it is a good link, sometimes, due to some certain errors, they are very bad link. The point is how we build backlinks for it, not how it’s good.
Very good points. I hear all the time people talking about building back links and they absolutely do not focus on their content. If you have 1000′s of links pointing to a bad site what’s the point? I think in the not too distant future back links will loose more weight. You already see Google going to more geo-located searches. Like if you type in “plumber” in the search field the places section (which is displayed first) all of the results are near your IP location. Some food for though.
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Im new to SEO and I knew that linking to like businesses was helpful but I did not realize that geographical location played into a factor. Thanks for providing a newbee with some good info.
Great article . you have provided good tips for identifying the best URL for promoting our site really an useful article .Thanks for sharing
Relevant backlinks from trustworthy, authority sites can definitely be considered good. Social signals are also something all of us should add to the equation these days.
good tips about good link. it really help me. i think, social media links are not give benefit for you.
Pretty interesting! Since we can host our site from anywhere in the world geographical location never came to my mind. I’ve been mindful of the other factors you pointed out but not at all about Geographical Location so this post has bee very informative for me.
thanks for the information very detailed and very useful, I enjoyed reading your article
Thanks, great points as I’ve never put enough link emphasis on geography.
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Great tips! although I think PageRank should be the first to look at in identifying a good quality link.
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Twitter: AnaTrafficCafe
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While these points make sense, a link is a link.
Most of link building is not done for traffic; most of it is done so that we can rank on Google and get traffic from there.
Thus, I’d say if it’s a quality link, who cares about the geographical location of a site.
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Ana- I will have to say that if you are a business optimizing locally, you SHOULD be aware of geographical location. Google has changed on ranking even more from the last Panda update, and with more social integration alongside the algorithm, you will have to consider whether you want to go to mom-and-pop store here or the franchise big store down the street.
I do a lot of local based business sites and have done major SEO campaigns for these people and it has working brilliantly for them. I’ve talked to quite a few people who have worked for Google and this tends to be also a big factor, especially for business owners who do are trying to be seen locally… even say in bigger cities like New York City .
Great point you discuss with us. its very helpful for improving my blog thank you for sharing this post.
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If you are targeting any Audience for your Blog, then its good to get a backlink from the sites within your country, If you are looking to target Indian Audience, then you should get a backlink from Indian Blogs.
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- Language is the another criteria we have to consider when we are building link backs.
– Amount of links from the page.