What Are The Best Backlinks to Get For Your Site? What Makes One Link Better Than Another?
Weip.net posts one of the most comprehensive article on the link value I have ever seen. He asks 17 top SEO professional to rate values of a link and how important they are when considering the “weight” of a backlink. This article is sure to be much discussed and cited by SEO related blogs. Great work!
The article is easy to understand by beginners and old-timers alike.
The SEO heavyweights, like Bob Gladstein , Joost De Valk and Hamlet Batista all weigh in with their on opinion link values. ( What’s with Dutch and their innate understanding of SEO and search marketing!?)
If you want to have any kind of any Internet presence- you need to be aware of the value of a back link. A difficult idea to get across is that is not so much how many people are linking to you- but who and how.
Please take some time to read the article. You will learn more about backlinks in 1/2 an hour than you might in a month.
Some of the more controversial factors he proposes to his panel are value of different TLD’s Here is are my opinions based on my experience working as link builder for several years.
Top Level Domains
Does the type of domain matter? i.e a .edu site vs. .com , etc.
Is the value in the domain or the site? My feeling is that search engines do NOT give special treatment to .edu , etc sites. The links themselves would have the same value if the the TLD ended in .com . Edu and .gov sites are usually authority sites and this is the value they pass on ( backlinks and PR).
Type of Link- Which is better a text link or an image link?
I think they have equal value. I also think you have more flexibility with image links and keyword placement. Alt text is one of the more under used SEO superpowers.
Page Rank Domain Authority ;i.e Page Rank
This is very important. I would put PR either equal to or just above relevance.
Target Page- Where Does the link point?
Does it point to a sub-page or main page?
This is a tough one. A link pointing to a sub-page with the right keywords to me is better than a link pointing to main page with generic irrelevant keywords. i.e. Parenting site linking discussing board games linking using anchor text “play chess with your kids” in a post about board games for the family to my post on playing chess with kids while camping vs. same post, same anchor etc pointing to the main page of my RV site.
However, if the anchor text is “travel games” or ” games to play on the road” etc. I might want it pointing to man page of the RV site.
And what about extensions? .gov and .edu are hot?