SEO Junkie

Todd Malincoat points out 6 quality indicators of text link value to search engine rankings on his blog.

Getting links is hard work. It’s very difficult to solicit links with no value proposition. It’s difficult to develop a value proposition if you have no sense of what you’re negotiating for. This is one of the key reasons why understanding the value of links is such a critical component to an SEO campaign.

Loren Baker elucidates those quality link indicators on SearchEngineJournal:

1. By Keyword, Theme, or Industry Value : What is the value of the placement and traffic garnished from that link?

2. PageRank and Link Popularity : How much of a well trafficked authority site is that of which you have in your sights?

3. Outbound linking : In order to get, one has to give a little. Does the site give as much as it receives?

4. Links to the entire domain : How many sites are linking to various pages throughout the domain? And not just their links pages or link baited topics?

5. Where’s the link? Where on the site and within the pages will your link occur? In the body? The sidebar? Or hidden on the bottom? Would a normal web user notice or find the link? If so, chances are it will have more value to something burried behind the bushes.

6. How aged is the site? Anyone with a well mannered upbringing has respect for their elders. Expect the search engine algorithms to follow suit on giving value to links from older, established sites.

This test can hardly take 5 minutes but can help you evaluate the quality of the links that you are either building or buying for a boost in the search listings.

I just came across a thread at SERoundtable forums where the moderators first discussed the topic about the value of site wide links and then branched it out to the general members. The topic has been broken down into:

1. Do site wide links help for Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask.com?
2. Future & Present issues
3. Usability side of things

Randfish, one of the SERoundtable moderators pointed out:

In terms of link value, it’s my general belief that with a few notable exceptions (Wikipedia, Yahoo!, MSNBC, possibly DMOZ), the value of 5-10 links is near the maximum value you can get in terms of rank-boosting power (”Google Juice”). Moving up to 100 or 1000 links probably will not significantly impact your site’s rank, IMO.

Another moderator dazzlindonna said:

I’ve never come across a case where sitewides HURT. They may not help much in some instances, but so far, I haven’t experienced a reason to actually remove any. Having said that, and with the understanding that I have not run extensive tests, I’ll say that it seems as though sitewides help a lot with MSN, some with Yahoo, little with Google. No idea about Ask.

Phoenix (who is my personal favorite ;)) made some good points:

Generally, Google seems to have caught on to the site wide linking approach earlier on then most engines. Yahoo is a bit slow, and MSN is even slower, and in Ask they seem to have no effect in my experience. There has been a bountiful amount of discussion on this in the past. Effectively I would count a site wide link on an entire site as one large link. The best approach I think is rather instead of a site wide link a webmaster should approach a website by targeting individual pages and taking a slower more covert approach to obtaining links. I don’t mean hide links, but do your linking in a way that appears more natural. Place links here and there. This would thus make it more difficult to determine patterns in your approach.

Also, rustybrick pointed out a related thread at Cre8asite Forums titled Is there any conclusion with sitewides where Ammon said:

Site-wide links seem far more likely to be ignored or down-valued. I’m basing that on what I have seen generally, rather than on a specific empirical test.

The discussion is still going on and worth taking a look at.