When it comes to building inbound links for SEO purposes, quality is far more important than quantity. Not all links will have a positive impact on your search engine rankings and, indeed, links from a particularly disreputable source may even hurt you. So how can you determine whether or not a website is a good choice for inbound links? On the HigherVisibility blog, Adam Heitzman offers some tips for recognizing high quality SEO link partners.
Relevant Content
The content on the linking website should stay on topic and should relate to the content on your website. “Link partners that have unrelated content will not help you that much,” writes Heitzman, “so it is not worth your time to pursue them.”
Maturity
As far as the search engines are concerned, age equals authority. Links from websites that are older and more established tend to carry more juice.
Trusted Extensions
Search engines play favorites when it comes to domains. Because some extensions (.edu and .gov) are so tightly regulated (and more difficult to acquire), they’re generally considered a more trustworthy source for inbound links.
High Traffic
Websites that receive a high number of regular visits tend to be regarded as more credible in the eyes of the search engines. Traffic shouldn’t be a deal breaker when it comes to acquiring a quality link partner, but it should definitely be considered.
Reputable/White Hat Tactics
Avoid any website that uses spam, bad neighborhoods, or any other black hat tactics to generate traffic. Links from shady websites can actually result in your website getting penalized in the rankings, as most search engines tend to assume guilt by association.
High Google PageRank
PageRank (which, incidentally, was named for Google co-founder Larry Page), is a numeric rating from 1-10 that indicates how relevant Google considers a website. As with all of its algorithms, Google is notoriously tight-lipped on just how it calculates PageRank, but it’s definitely to your benefit to have a highly ranked site linking to yours.
Link Popularity
A high quality link partner should have a considerable number of reputable inbound links to its own site, including links from blogs and social media websites.