What on-page factors constitute a good quality inbound link?

[billshorters]

My first post but I have been lurking for a while and have read a lot of the useful information here!

I would like to have your opinions on what on-page factors contribute to a good quality link. I have read that too many outbound links will dilute the quality of the link and that the page topic should be related to the linked-to page. Are there any other factors do you think? Like keywords in the title or in close proximity to the link for example?

[DXL]

Since most of what constitutes a quality link (one that won't get you penalized) is a matter of speculation, I can only provide my own guidelines rather than a concrete account of what's quality and what isn't.

For my own site, I don't accept a link on a page that has less than a pagerank of three or four, considering the other person will be getting a PR4 link back from me. Its different with some client sites, since they have PR0 resource pages. I don't trade links with someone that puts more than 20 links on a page, sometimes I'll let it go up to 25 depending on the site itself. I try to make sure that the page my link or a client's link is added to is fairly relevant to the specific industry (at least the title should reflect that). If I see any links on that page not related to the industry the page is supposed to be for, I don't trade. So mostly its making sure that there are a limited number of outbound links on each page, and that the page is relevant. Sometimes I'll go through any other resource pages on a site and see how many outbounds they have, because you might be the third person on a particular page but three months later you're one of 60 outbounds. I sniff around and make sure that none of the pages on the site in question have more than 20 outbounds.

[nickg]

To me a good inbound link is one that
- thematically matches my page
- one that has a 'gatekeeper' i.e. an editor like a thematically matched blog.
- one such that when I use the adsense preview tool [google.com] to see what adverts it generates for a given URL it gives up thematically correct adverts. if not then the bias for that page is off
- and then the page rank - which matters, but in my opiniion not as much as the context of a page.

[edited by: martinibuster at 5:46 pm (utc) on Sep. 5, 2006]
[edit reason] Added link. [/edit]

[ken_b]

If I see any links on that page not related to the industry the page is supposed to be for, I don't trade.

Hmmm.... this might be one of those "it depends on the type of site" things.

A huge number of the sites I link to have somewhere between a few and a lot of off topic outbound links. If they didn't have those links I'd wonder why, and consider it a negative.

Why?

Because they are enthusiast/hobbyist sites that are linking to local sponors, etc.

There's always two sides of a coin I guess.

[nickg]

Hi DXL - re the adsense tool - its helped me really understand how google sees context. Saying that I'm sure the way it looks at a page for adsense and the way it sees a page for search are different... but nevertheless its been very helpful when I've been explaining context and theme to various 3rd parties.

[edited by: martinibuster at 5:56 am (utc) on Sep. 6, 2006]
[edit reason] See TOS [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]

[minnapple]

A really good outbound link, should have related content, doesn't need to have a lot of content, try the ~ search to see it's relevance, and the page should have ten direct inbounds for each outbound, or it should be in direct proximity to a page that has a significant amount of decent inbounds.

[hemzlee]

Hi

I've been doing link building for the past 9 months but between our little community of SEOs were starting to think that google has only recently rejiged itself to disregard to resource page links - and has moved onto primarily content / possible subjective analysis of websites. This may have been included in googles recent shakeup i.e. dropping millions of pages.

has anyone got any thoughts ideas on this?

[jimbeetle]

were starting to think that google has only recently rejiged itself to disregard to resource page links - and has moved onto primarily content / possible subjective analysis of websites

The idea that lists of links on "resources" and "links" pages being somewhat devalued goes back a few years or so. It's been recommended for quite a time that "quality" links are those woven into content.

Of course, nobody really knows the answer to this except the folks that won't say.

[DXL]

starting to think that google has only recently rejiged itself to disregard to resource page links - and has moved onto primarily content / possible subjective analysis of websites

Ultimately, everyone is just speculating about what G has done or is presently doing. But I know that for new client websites that require pages for the purposes of linking, I spread links out throughout a few paragraphs of text.