Knowing when NOT to request a link

What's important when evaluating potential inbounds

[Fribble]

I've been slowly refining my link-building strategy over the past few months, paying closer attention to possible indicators that a page or site is not worth approaching. Here's my list of no-no's thus far:

• PR0 pages because they may have penalties.
  
• Pages named "Links.htm" or similar (unless they're EDU's, GOV's or authority sites).
  
• Sites that have hidden text or other shady SEO work.
  
• Pages that are off-topic.
  
• Sites that use rel="nofollow" on all outbound links unless it's for traffic.
  

Am I on the right track here? Anything that should be added?

What else should we be looking out for? I understand that bad neighborhoods should be avoided, but how does one figure out how many clicks away from porn or SEO link networks a particular page is without spending huge amounts of time running through them all? Is there a tool somewhere?

Also

If you haven't done so yet, go download 'The Tattler' from WebGuerrilla's blog - it's saved me tons of time and is a great tool - Thanks Greg!

[Wiep]

# PR0 pages because they may have penalties.
# Pages named "Links.htm" or similar (unless they're EDU's, GOV's or authority sites).

Pr0 pages can also be new pages, I usually check if Google has indexed the website. If so, and if it is a quality website, I'd proceed.
I can't think of one reason why not to approach a page called links.htm. Do you really think Google blocks those pages? They should be giving less weight to resources.htm, partners.htm, recommended.htm and all other types of links pages too then. I don't believe that.

# Sites that have hidden text or other shady SEO work.
# Pages that are off-topic.

I totally agree.

# Sites that use rel="nofollow" on all outbound links unless it's for traffic.

All links might give you traffic, so I don't mind if a link gets 'nofollowed'. It is nicer without the tag, though.

[Kufu]

Best way to avoid problems is to not do link-exchange. It is not a great help anyway, at least not with Google. I have a site that is about a year old, and I have never done a link exchange, just received natural links, and it is ranking rather well for some pretty popular keywords.

Link-exchanges are old news.

[rj87uk]

Im sorry Kufu, They do work, and work ok for me. However not as well as they used to hence going for one way links.

I always check to see if the website / page you will be on is cached and is in Yahoo, MSN & Google.

RJ

[Kufu]

Im sorry Kufu

No need to be sorry if they are working :)

I just think for the amount of benefit they provide compared to the time it takes to arrange good exchanges is just not worth it for me. But if you have a brand new site and have no other way of getting some links in, then it's better than nothing.

[Fribble]

Pr0 pages can also be new pages

I thought that new pages would return no PR - as opposed to seeing and acutal PR0. I'll start paying closer attention to these pages in the future then.

Good advice on checking to see if the page is cached in the SE's - I've not been doing that but will definitely start. Thanks!