Hi everyone,
I am discussing inbound link factorsand their impact on rankings in the Google SERPs. This deals with how Google weights links coming in to a page on a given site from other external sites. The clickable text in a link is called anchor text.
For Google, the anchor text of a link coming from an external site is a confirmation of the actual intent of the recipient page. Rand at SEOmoz discusses link attributes with 37 top SEO gurus.
This is a very important factor because the owner of another site who is no way connected to your site affirms the content on your page by linking to a page on your site with appropriate anchor text. If you can manipulate other site owners to giving links to you with the anchor text of your choice, clearly there is a pecuniary relationship and it is not natural linking.
1) Anchor Text of Inbound Links:
There is high consensus amongst the experts that anchor text of incoming links to a site is very important as it gives Google a confirmation of what the page is about from external unbiased sources. There have been examples of sites which have not had much content but have ranked solely on the basis of anchor text of incoming links.
A few experts feel that because of Googlebombing in the past and manipulation of anchor text through paid links etc, Google does not overly rely on this factor. A site owner can get into trouble if the anchor text of all incoming links to her site read nearly the same. This is not possible as owners of various external sites will not link in the same way to the page on her site and this is highly unnatural. High agreement.
2) Global Link Popularity of Linking Site:
This is a contentious issue. Some feel that the if linking site has itself lots of incoming links from variety of domains, then a link from such a site to your site can be valuable. Others dispute saying that the popularity of a domain matters when all other factors are level, especially the Toolbar Page Rank (TBPR). Highly disputed.
3) Topical Relationship of Linking Page:
This relates to whether the linking site is on the same topic as the recipeint site . This is very important that the topical nature of the content on the linking site and the linked to site are similar. A few feel it has no effect on Google. Average agreement.
I personally feel that if a page on my site was on polo shirts and I had a link coming in from a high Page Rank wedding favours site, it would still be not that useful when seen from a user’s viewpoint. A user surfing the wedding site is interested in wedding related products/services and the site owner is doing a great disservice to her users by plonking in a totally irrelevant link to a polo shirts page.
4) Link Popularity of Target Site Among its Topical Peers:
This relates to the link authority of the linked to site amongst its topical peers on the web. A section of experts feel that this has got nothing to do with ranking high in the Google SERPs. Others feel that the authority of a site is measured by the the number of inbound links from the same industry/community, in other words, all very topically relevant. Average agreement.
5) Age of link:
The age of the inbound links to a site is a measure of trust. The longer a link is in existence, the more valuable it is and it increases the authority of the recipient site. A few feel that links take longer to mature and gain the ability to pass link juice. Others feel it is speculation and/or hard to make a call. Average agreement.
6) Topical Relationship of Linking Site:
The topical relationship of the linking site does matter according to some of the experts. If the whole linking domain is relevant to the linked to site, then the site wide factors including site theme can affect the rankings. Some feel that the page content of the linking site should be more relevant to the content on the linked to site. Average agreement.
7) Text Surrounding the Link:
There is high consensus among the experts that the text surrounding the link is very important as Google is attaching less importance to the anchor text itself. The context in which an incoming link is placed reflects the naturality of the link. Chris Boggs says that an experiment he conducted on Google Image Results shows that lot of weight is given to the text surrounding the image apart from other image factors. High level of agreement.
8) Internal Link Popularity of Linking Page Within Site/Domain:
This refers to the strength of the page from which an inbound link emanates to your site. Some of the experts opine that if the linking page is well linked from other pages on the site it is resident, then it gains a lot of strength by virtue of good internal linking structure. A single link from such a powerful page on the external domain can boost the ranking of the page to which it is linking. Others disagree. Average agreement.
9) Temporal Link Attributes:
This relates to the time at which the link was created/edited and the duration of its existence. The experts feel that the mature age of links contribute to the strength of the page on which they are resident. Others think that creating and editing links temporally for the sole purpose of trumping the competitor in the SERPs is akin to manipulation. Average agreement.
10) Domain Extension of Linking Site (edu,gov,com,co.uk etc):
Some of the experts feel that .edu domain is inherently more powerful than others because of the trust associated with them. Getting links from edu sites and manufacturing links to such sites is not considered easy. Moreover the large number of IBL (inbound links) from powerful domains makes edu and gov sites more trustworthy than the rest.
Others think that a .com site can also be as powerful as edu or gov sites if they get links from the right places. An edu domain itself does not guarantee any superior power or authority. As example, students’ pages do not rank too well on their own though they are hosted on the edu root domain. Average agreement.
11) Google Tool Bar PageRank of Linking Page:
It is a divided house with almost half the experts agreeing that the toolbar page rank though not an accurate measure of actual page rank atleast correlates to the value shown on the toolbar. It still holds some relevance in that it indicates the measure of links flowing into the page. Page Rank value also helps the bots set crawling priorities and helps determine if the pages are worthy of entry into the Google Index.
The other group say that the toolbar page rank is hardly updated and does not even reflect the true page rank value of the linking page. Rand has also mentioned in his posts in SEOmoz that the page rank is made up of several factors like the domain trust, domain rank, the actual page rank of that page, the page rank of the domain etc. All these are merged into a single PR value which is quite confounding. Average agreement.
To see the individual comments of all the experts, you can read the Search engine ranking factors article on SEOmoz presented by Rand Fishkin.