Measurement of Link Value
-
Over the past few months I have encountered webmasters who claim to be using instruments far better than open site explorer but they will not disclose what they are. Are there better ways of determining the value of a link than OSE? Is "link juice" more important than page/domain authority where the link resides? Or vice-vesa. Any help understanding this would be appreciated. I do not want to offend other webmasters but I also do not want to be fooled by them either while negotiating a link exchange with them
-
thanks very much Ryan - Brett
-
Arguably the best tool presently available for checking links is Yahoo site explorer. OSE is very good and there are several other tools as well. There is not any tool I am aware of which is "far better" then OSE. At best, a different tool may be superior in one aspect of analysis. If anyone has a differing opinion I would love to hear it!
With respect to link value, there are numerous considerations:
-
What is the DA of the site
-
What is the PA / PR of the page?
-
How many links are on the page?
-
Where is your link on the page? Is it in content or in a footer?
-
What anchor text is used? Do you have solid anchor text such as "great website design"? Or is it a simple url link?
-
How likely is it that more links will be added to the page?
There are other considerations as well but the above are the top ones. Mik's suggestion of checking the cache refresh is excellent. It offers a view into the importance / PR of the page. There are so many other possible considerations such as if Google determines the link is paid, they will devalue the link. If the linking site is on the same C-block as your site, the link would also be devalued.
-
-
thanks very much Mik. Any thoughts on the issue of link juice which is often brought up by webmasters that I deal with?
-
Brett,
The authority sites are visited several times a day but for the most part I would not see a problem with a site that gets a visit weekly but if it is more than a month I would put less value on that link if that is the only valuation metric I am looking at.
-
Is there some threshold that is relevant such as every few days? less than a week? thanks
-
A good metric to check is how recent the cached version is. The higher frequency of the bot visits is a good indicator of value. Hope this helps
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
INTERNAL LINKS strategy on our website
Hi Moz-ers, Currently doing an audit of our website. I have two questions on links. How can I see the current state of my internal links? Also, how can I improve our internal links on the website? what is a good framework to follow what should I avoid Thanks, looking forward to learning more on Moz!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Eric_S
Eric0 -
Disavowing Affiliate Links - Domain or Actual Affiliate Link?
Hi everyone, Hope you're all having a great day, I have a question in regards to a site which I am about to disavow. Over the past 2 months a certain page of ours has dropped from the 2nd page, all the way to the 7th. I haven't been able to diagnose why, however, yesterday I discovered that a site has been using an Lafitte link on his sidebar, the link is a do-follow. Webmaster tools indicates that this site has linked to us over 24,000 times. I understand that this link could potentially ruin our rankings - however, in terms of disavowing, what is the best approach here? Do I disavow their domain, or do I disavow the actual affiliate link also? The link is placed within an image, once the image is clicked it redirects you to another link for a second then redirects to our money site. We have got in touch with our affiliate program and they have made the link a no-follow, however, we are pretty certain this site is causing issues for us and we want to go ahead and disavow. Thanks, Brett
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Brett-S0 -
OSE link report showing links to 404 pages on my site
I did a link analysis on this site mormonwiki.com. And many of the pages shown to be linked to were pages like these http://www.mormonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Planning_a_trip_to_Rome_By_using_Movie_theatre_-_Your_five_Fun_Shows2052752 There happens to be thousands of them and these pages actually no longer exist but the links to them obviously still do. I am planning to proceed by disavowing these links to the pages that don't exist. Does anyone see any reason to not do this, or that doing this would be unnecessary? Another issue is that Google is not really crawling this site, in WMT they are reporting to have not crawled a single URL on the site. Does anyone think the above issue would have something to do with this? And/or would you have any insight on how to remedy it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ThridHour0 -
'Nofollow' footer links from another site, are they 'bad' links?
Hi everyone,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | romanbond
one of my sites has about 1000 'nofollow' links from the footer of another of my sites. Are these in any way hurtful? Any help appreciated..0 -
Link juice site structure?
If we have a top nav with contact us, about us, delivery, FAQ, Gallery, how to order ect but none of these we want to rank and then we have the usual left hand nav.are we wasting juice with the top nav and would we be better either removing it and putting them further down the page or consolidating them and adding an extra products tab so the product pages are first.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
Widget Links Still Acceptable?
I own a funny video site that is getting about 1-4 of it's videos embedded on various sites daily. In todays form, is widget link still acceptable? This would show up under the video embed. Example: Funny Dog Video From Site Brand Or is it best nowadays to just have Video Provided By Site Brand
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | superlordme0 -
Any good link buying companies ( http://www.text-link-ads.com )
Hi guys I have been passed this website: http://www.text-link-ads.com Has anyone ever used text-links ads before?? Can anyone please show me the way and suggest any really good lin buying companies? I am really fiding it hard to find good places to place inbound links into our website.. Thanks Gareth
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GAZ090 -
Internal followed links query
hi guys, im hoping to get some help with a a question i have about internal followed links. I analysed my site (selling adult toys) on open explorer today against some of my competitors. what i found my internal followed links and total internal links are extremely low compared to the other sites. here was my stats internal follwed links: 177 total internal links: 178 i have over 2000 pages on my website. which i believed to of had a good internal link structure. when compared to my competitors theres was in the thousands. i have looked to see if i could spot any 'no follow' tags but nothing. my site is christiarasextoys.co.uk if anyone can help me out here id really appreciate it
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | skyenicole0