The Quality of a Link
501 SEO professionals participated in a survey in order to build a better understanding of how the world values link opportunities and what they look for in a partner. Here is a list of factors that show what an SEO professional looks for when searching for a prospective link.
Domain Rank
78% of SEO specialists consider domain authority as their number one metric used to evaluate a potential link. Additional metrics that were chosen as a top choice by over half of the SEO professionals asked were the number of backlinks, site theme, site type, and rank.
Other Measures Used for Domain Metrics
Link Diversity Ratio
Site Traffic
Number of Pages on the Site
Number of Indexed Pages
Page Rank
40% of the SEO experts felt that when it came to page rank metrics, the backlinks to a page are the most important factor during the evaluation of a potential link. Also, it was found that overall, the SEO professionals found relevancy and domain location to be important aspects as well.
Other Methods Used for Page Level Metrics
Amount of content
Cache Date
Age of Document
Manual Check
A majority of SEO individuals reported to performing manual checks on prospective links. It was found that most look at the types of outbound links, amount of advertising, design quality and user experience, as well as the spelling and grammar of content as deciding factors. Also, the survey revealed that 38% of SEO professionals think about the likeliness to link all of the time when considering a link prospect and 4% never do.
Best and Worst Factors with Links
The factor that was found to be the best metric amongst the SEO professionals is the human element, meaning that the link must make sense from the user’s point of view. The factor that the SEO professionals mutually agreed to be a turnoff when considering a prospect is outbound links. They reported that having too many would make a website unstable.
Conclusion
Finding a link partner is not an easy task, as there are many factors that can affect the outcome of your choice. Using the metrics above to help you find out whether a linking prospect can benefit you or not will aid you on your goal to link-building success.
