Link Value and Site Quality

Michael Bergbauer - July 24, 2012

Marketers and webmasters are using more of their time to evaluate their link portfolios and looking for areas of improvement. For now, you can’t control who links to your site (Google has future plans to launch a “disavow this link” tool, which will tell Google to ignore certain links to your site), but you can learn some key things about other sites to determine if a link from them is going to do you more harm than good. By being prudent about where your links are coming from, you can avoid penalties and build a catalog of back links with lasting value.

The best links come from websites that follow ethical practices and have genuine character. From an ethical standpoint, you wouldn’t want a link from a site that links to several other low-quality sites, or that has a bunch of low-quality sites linking to it. Such underlying link schemes are usually on the verge of a penalty at some point. If you have a link from that site, it won’t hold value for very long. Conversely, a link from a site that boasts its own strong link portfolio will better resist algorithm updates and have long term value.

Sites with genuine character and motivation are also important. Is the site maintained by real authors with credentials? Is the content updated with topics relevant to the site’s audience? A site that languishes without updates or that doesn’t have any clear ownership will only lose link value and page visits as time rolls on.

Just as your site is high-quality — updating with original content that prioritizes user experience — it should link and be linked to by similar quality sites. It’s that type of reciprocation that has the highest link value. When it comes to SEO, “like begets links.”