I think one of the most crucial moments of every search marketer is when you realize not every link is created equal. Hopefully, this happened early in your search marketing career.

Links have different values and a big part of a search marketer’s job (white hat, at least) is to acquire high quality links. Here are some of the things I consider in determining the value of a link. This post is, by no means, comprehensive. Feel free to add your criteria by leaving a comment. Also,

Is the link one way or reciprocal?
One-way links are much more valuable than reciprocal links. In fact, excessive reciprocal linking can hurt your site. I would only exchange links with a site if it was high quality and revelant.

Is the link contextual?
Contextual links, or links in the body of a page, give much more link juice than site wide links (like footer, header, or sidebar links). Ideally, the majority of your links should be in the middle of articles, blog posts, and similar content. If you’re having problems getting contextual links from quality sites, write remarkable, unique articles and offer them to the sites. By the way, site wide links still work well on Yahoo.

Is the link on a quality domain?
With domain trust being a huge part of Google’s algorithm, it makes sense to acquire links on quality domains. Don’t just look at PageRank. Check out the inbound links and rankings of the domain.

Is the link on a quality page?
This is similar to the previous question. Look at PR, inbound links, and rankings. Also, check out the page’s internal links.

Does the link have relevant anchor text?
Anchor text is still a huge part of SEO. One caveat: don’t spam. Make sure to vary your anchor text. If your target keyword is blue widget, use anchor text like great blue widgets, I love blue widgets, and blue widget guide. And throw in some non-keyword anchor text like click here and link to further avoid the spam filter.

Is the link on a topically relevant site?
I don’t think relevance is as important as the above criteria. However, I believe search engines will do a better job figuring out the topic of a site. I like getting links on topically relevant sites, because they send excellent traffic.

Is the link on a topically relevant page?
Look at the previous paragraph.

How many other links are on the page where your link is?
The lower the number, the better. I’d rather have a link on a PR3 page with 4 other links than a link on a PR4 page with 99 other links.

How much traffic will the link send?
Don’t forget that the point of links is to get traffic, whether directly or indirectly through the search engines. Some links aren’t that great in passing link authority, but they’re awesome in sending traffic.

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