Link Strength

what constitutes the weight of an individual link?

[Murdoch]

I've come up with some factors. I'd appreciate any others that you may think have credence. I think this applies similarly to internal, external, and inbound links, obviously the weight given (I'm assuming) is more for inbound links and less for outbound links (if at all) and medium for cross-links...of course this applies to ranking for a particular phrase on the search engines (i.e.-not pertaining to just site strength)

1. Keywords in anchor text (individually)
2. Keywords in anchor text (exact phrase match)
3. Keywords anchor in text (order of keywords if not exact match)
4. Length of anchor text (in words, not characters)
5. Placement on page
6. Proximity of non-link text
7. Proximity of link text
8. Density of surrounding non-link text
9. Density of surrounding link text
10. Relevancy of anchor text (to the page it's on)
11. Relevancy of anchor text (to the landing page)
12. Relevancy of anchor text (to the rest of the site)
13. Number of links on page using same anchor text (exact match)
14. Number of links on page using similar anchor text
15. Repeat 13 and 14 for entire site
16. PageRank of page link is on
17. Depth of page (subdirectory-wise) that the link points to (in relation to the page it is on)

That's all I can think of for the moment, what do you think? It's the small things that end up counting...

[adeel shahid]

The post feels technical but i think all of it matters.

[Precious pearls]

Thanks Murdoch,

It is really nice to read such posts on webmasterworld. This type of post give summary of a topic which is good for new commers. Because they can be benefited by having sufficient information about a particular topic which is new to them....
Just keep it up.

Cheers
P_P

[mjtaylor]

5. Placement on page

I question the relevance of the placement of the link on a page, but am not at all sure about it. I've read that PageRank is distributed equally to all links on a page.

But we are not talking just about PR here, are we?

Do we believe the link gets a greater boost in relevancy if it is at the top of a page? I certainly assume that when I optimize a page for keywords. So this must apply to links as well.

I also value a higher link on a page, as I assume it is more likely to be read by a site visitor than one further down the page.

Just thinking out loud and listening to what others have to say ...