Search engines essentially consider external links as 'votes of confidence' in favour of a blog or website and sites that have more links pointing towards them are generally considered more valuable than others.
Though link building as a practice is therefore incredibly important for SEO, all too often people pick up mediocre or non-performing links that have little impact on their search engine rankings. The perfect link satisfies three different values, and you should do your best to find all three. However, a link that possesses two of these values is still considered strong.
DoFollow Links
When a website is setup, the Webmaster is able to set the links to NoFollow. This is done to prevent search engines from transferring PageRank and anchor text across these links. Its true that popular pages attract a lot of comment spam and hence webmasters set links to NoFollow to prevent these pages from losing weightage. Moreover some advertising networks also demand that certain links be set to NoFollow.
When a website is setup, the Webmaster is able to set the links to NoFollow. This is done to prevent search engines from transferring PageRank and anchor text across these links. Its true that popular pages attract a lot of comment spam and hence webmasters set links to NoFollow to prevent these pages from losing weightage. Moreover some advertising networks also demand that certain links be set to NoFollow.
NoFollow links have different values for different search engines. Some search engines discredit the link entirely, while others pass on little value. To find out if a particular website has its links set to NoFollow, open “Page Source” in your browser and search for the term “NoFollow” corresponding to the link markup.
The most powerful links are DoFollow. Usually this is not specified in the source code, because a link is DoFollow by default.
High PageRank
High PageRank
This concerns Google the most, because the PageRank algorithm was invented by Google co-founder, Larry Page. This metric describes how trustworthy a page is, and it also describes how powerful its outbound links are. PageRank goes from 0 to 10, with 10 being the strongest.
Finding a DoFollow link with a PageRank of 10 is nearly impossible, but if possible, this would be an ideal link. Most often, accessible high PageRank links are around 6 to 8. You can check PageRank via one of the many PageRank checkers online. Be sure to check the page you are going to add the link to, and not the default domain.
Relevant Links
Relevant Links
The relevancy of the content between the source page and the target page is important for SEO. The higher the relevancy between the two pages, the more valuable the link.
For example if your website is about 'antique clocks', and you get a website dealing in 'cars' to link back to you, then the link hardly seems natural. Instead, try to find a website that deals with a similar topic. It does not have to be another antique clock website, but finding a website about 'antiques' or about 'clocks' would be ideal. This makes the link look more natural.
Conclusion
The perfect link is DoFollow, from a relevant website and with a PageRank of 10. While finding that link is nearly impossible, you can normally find links that come close to the “perfect one”. Just look for these three values and you should be able to get the best link possible for your website.
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The perfect link is DoFollow, from a relevant website and with a PageRank of 10. While finding that link is nearly impossible, you can normally find links that come close to the “perfect one”. Just look for these three values and you should be able to get the best link possible for your website.
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Article courtesy Web Concepts, a leading SEO and web design company based in West Jordan Utah. In addition to providing web design and development, Web Concepts also provides ecommerce website design, multimedia design and mobile application development.