Now, that you understand how a backlink is coded and some of the history behind
why the search engine ranking algorithms were changed, you are in a better
position to see how your website might be analyzed for quality links. Obviously, you
don’t want to add your link to websites that are link farms as this will now penalize,
rather than enhance your search engine ranking.
And, you know that search engine optimization is interested in the relevance of
your site compared to the content of your site. Understanding this makes it easier
to understand that when your backlinks are analyzed, they aren’t just done so
based on their isolated coding, they are done with respect to the environment too.
This environment includes, the page rank of the site that is linking to you, your own
website’s content, and the page environment and content that the backlink springs
from.
PageRank (PR)
The best types of quality links come from sites that have a high page rank in
Google’s search engine. Page rank ranges on a scale from 1 to 10, with 10 being
the highest page rank. This is a measure of the referral site’s reputation and will
give the search engine an idea of how reliable this source is about giving out
links that are not relevant or within their own content stream. If you don’t know
a site’s PageRank (PR), you can download the Google toolbar and it will tell you
what it is. It takes time to develop page rank and you should try to link to sites
with a slightly higher page rank than your own, thus building up your own site’s
reputation.
Website Content Matching
Ideally, you would want to get a backlink from a site that not only has a higher
page rank than you do, but also that has something to do with the content of
your site. If your site is about dating, you may want to be included in a site that reviews dating sites. If you just get a backlink from someone who is selling
Bibles, it’s likely to be ignored as a good quality backlink.
Page Positioning
A link that shows up near the top of the referrer’s page is worth more than one
at the bottom. This may seem odd, but you have to remember that paid links
are often placed nearer the bottom or out of the way of the relevant content.
Paid text links are now not considered good quality links by Google, but how
that algorithm is determined, it’s anyone’s guess. They appear to make page
positioning an indicator of whether a text link is paid or not.
Page Hierarchy
Within any website, there is a directory tree that leads people deeper and
deeper into the site. The higher a web page is in the directory structure the
more value it has to you as a potential host for your backlink. The home page of
a site with good ranking is an excellent place to get a backlink because this is
the prime real estate for websites that everyone is sure to visit.
Anchor Text
The anchor text used by the linking site is becoming more important. If you
have a site that sells shoes and the anchor text that backlinks to you is “pretty
wear” then it won’t be as efficient as one that clearly describes your offerings
like “quality top-brand shoes.” This effect appears to be evaluated across the
board with the more backlinks using quality anchor text, the higher your page
ranking in the results pages becomes.