Omar Kattan

To begin lets define what’s an inbound link.  An inbound link is a link that points to your website from someone else’s website, its as simple as that!  Another important definition before we get started is Link Popularity: Link Popularity is the measure of how popular your site is from an inbound link perspective; ie how many sites are linking to yours.

Now that we got the definitions out of the way,  lets discuss the the characteristics of the perfect inbound link…

Here are the main things to pay attention to when you analyse the quality of the links pointing to your site: 

Targeted Key words in Anchor Text

The perfect inbound link has to have targeted keywords in the anchor text of the link (the text used to link to your site).  Some sites use “click here” to link to your site, thats no good unless your site is about “click here”!

A Relevant Link is Better

If your site is about holiday homes and you get a link from a site about dog kennels then thats no good either unless -maybe- of you’re selling holidays for dogs!

A Relevant Landing Page for the Link is also better

If the link is from a holiday homes site and you have a multi-themed site then make sure that the link goes to the section of your site about holiday homes. 

An Authoritative link is More Valuable

Ideally the links pointing to your site should be from authority sites; ie sites that have been around for a while and that Google et al consider as authority.  One way to get an indication of whether or not a site is authoritative is to look at its Pagerank.

A link Higher on the Page is More Valuable

Links closer to the top of the page are better than links closer to the bottom of the page, simple as that!

One-way Links are Better than Reciprocal Links

One way links are better than reciprocal.  The reason this is the case is because in the past, webmasters tried to manipulate Google’s algorithm by exchanging links and so Google now devalues reciprocal links to some extent.

Contextual Links are Favoured

If the link to your site is placed within the copy of the page then Google gives it more importance than a link in an advertising zone of the page.  Its logical, if the link is mentioned within the copy then its probably more relevant to the content of the page than a link mentioned as an advert placed in the margins.

The Link NoFollow Attribute  

Some site use the “nofollow” tag to tell Google and other engines not to give that link any importance.  Many blogs use this method to discourage spamming.  In recent month The Wikipedia also placed nofollow attribute to all outbound links from its site.  Make sure the links you acquire do not have a “nofollow” attribute attached to them.

Avoid Link Farms

Google and other search engines do not like pages stuffed with links, this is a result of the proliferation of what is termed as “link farms” that are designed for the purpose of exchanging links.  If your link is found on a page with many links (15-20+) then that link will most likely be devalues.  Ideally, aim to have your links on pages with < 2 links and at worst case scenario < 15 links.

And that is it!  These are the characteristics of the perfect inbound link!

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