My Two Cents on SEO Link Value Factors
December 12, 2007 by Pablo Palatnik
If you’re optimizing a site and beginning your SEO strategies, if content is king, linking is majesty. Now, links will come from content so there’s a fine line in where you really want to focus, but overall, both are extremely important towards your SEO efforts and equally important.
A GREAT post was made on Wiep.net, “Link Value Factors,†which goes into detail from about 10 respected SEOs on the factors and value of links. I strongly recommend reading the post but I wanted to analyze it a bit myself and put my 2 cents.
The first 9 questions will focus on the link factors. This means only factors directly related to the link itself and no on-page or on-domain stuff yet.
01. Anchor Text
Is the anchor text of a link of influence on the value of a link?
For example, does it matter if the link is a URL, the company name or a relevant keyword?
A: Huge influence. The anchor text of a link is still to me the most relevant factor the engine can have towards the link ranking for a certain keyword. As Aaron Wall described in his opinion, I can tell you in fact you can start ranking very quickly for the anchor text if competition is low.
02. Age of the linkDoes the age of a link have an effect on the value of a link?
For example, is there a difference in value if a link is two weeks or two years old?
A: I don’t think there is much emphasis on the age of the link itself but the age of site itself, and if that site itself has authority, then the link could be very powerful.
03. Type of link (image, text)Does the type of link, for example a text link or an image link, have an effect on the value of a link?
A: To give a straight forward answer, I think a text link has much more of an effect mainly because of the anchor text, but if the site has authority using an image as link, it should still hold some weight, hence the alt text tag.
04. Surrounding text (near-link relevance)Does the content of a text that directly surrounds a link of positive influence the value of a link?
This question only covers the content that surrounds the link directly. The overall page relevance will be mentioned later on.
A: I think surrounding text isn’t that relevant. Overall content of site itself (title, tags) will give that link its relevance.
05. Number of links
Does the amount of links, for example a single link or a site wide link, have an effect on the value of a link?
A: Not to sure about this area. Again, my thought is if a link is placed on authority sites, whether it be one link or site wide, it holds the same value.
06. Location of link on page (boiler plate)
What kind of effect does the location of a link on a page, for example blogroll, body or footer link, have on the value of a link?
This factor only covers the position of the link on the linking page.
A: I think engine algos will change to put more emphasis giving link weight on certain parts they consider to be important, which to me, for now, is the actual content of the site, usually found in the middle. Links with content around it.
07. Reciprocity
Is it a one way link, or are you linking back?
A: One way. Reciprocal won’t hurt, but the one way carries more of the weight.
08. Target page (where the link points to) location
Is the target page (does the link point to your homepage, is it a deeplink, does it point to an orphaned page) of influence on the value of a link?
A: Linking to sub-pages carries weight with the engines as they see it as quality content on your site besides the home page. Gets you good deep crawling. That being said, I think a link to your home page has more weight then any other link for PageRank purposes.
09. Location of link in source code
Does the location of the link in the source code (for example top 5% or last 20 Kb) have an effect on the value of a link?
This factor only covers the position of the link in the page’s source code.
A: I’ll stick to this comment. Hamlet Batista: “It is a good idea to place the link high on the page. If you place it at the bottom and the page is too big (>100k), your link might not get indexed.â€
Read more of this Link Value Factors report.
