With all the controversy surrounding linking at the moment, it was timely that someone put the link debate into context. Wiep Knol, a manager of Link Marketing from the Netherlands, has paneled 17 SEO and link building experts to draft an important list of Link Quality Factors.

The panel was provided with just under 40 different link characteristics to rate – which they did on various 5 point scales. Some were general link factors, some on-page elements, some on-domain factors and some negative considerations (dampening factors).

The surveying was based on the premise that search engines judge links for traffic (not just PR juice) and opinions rated accordingly. Below are the ratings as the experts voted. For the ful run-down of each experts opinions on each – visit Wiep’s blog for a full review (worth the read).

The Link Factors

1. Anchor Text – the text within a hyperlink
2. Age of Link
3. Type of Link – image, text
4. Surrounding Text – giving link context
5. Number of Links – one link vs site wide links
6. Location of Link – as displayed on the page
7. Reciprocity – is there a link back to the site
8. Target Page – aimed at homepage or deeper pages
9. Location of Link in Source Code – how far into the source code is the link

The On Page Factors

1. Page authority – the number of inbound links
2. Amount of outbound links
3. Total links on the page – total number of inbound and outbound links
4. Page authority – the number of internal links
5. Relevance of other links
6. Age of the Page
7. Page Relevance – the relevance of the page content
8. Quality of other outbound links
9. Amount of non linking content on the page
10. URL of the page – the relevance of keyword in the web address
11. Page Relevance – the relevance of words out of context
12. Page Authority – PageRank
13. Last date of page edit
14. Page Type – html, aspx, php etc

The On Domain Factors

1. Domain authority – quality of backlinks to the site
2. Age of domain
3. Relevant Authority – rankings on relevant keywords
4. Domain authority – number of backlinks
5. Domain Authority – PageRank
6. Domain Authority – rankings on irrelevant keywords
7. Domain relevance – the words making up the domain name
8. TLD – type of domain (eg. “.com”, “.edu”, “.gov” etc)
9. Alexa Ranking

The Negative Factors
For the negative factors – head over to Wiep’s post

For anyone who ever thought effective link building was easy – think again. The list above highlights the myriad of factors that are at play. More importantly it shows that link building is a highly involved process that won’t necessarily generate top results overnight.

Thanks to Wiep for undertaking the survey and bringing focus back to the important factors behind link quality.

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