Not all links are equal

The value of an inbound link is determined by many factors; learn how to get the most from each of your inbound links.

You can maximise the value and potentiasl of each inbound link to you website by following some simple guidelines. If you follow the guidelines well, and get many backlinks, you will improve your search engine rankings.

Most valueable inbound link sources

There are many sources of backlinks for your website. Some are more valuable than others. To maximise your link building effort you should aim to get as many links as possible from the most valuable sources

1. Leading topic authority site

   The most valueable inbound link source for a webpage is from the homepage of the leading website of the topic of the webpage. If you have a webpage about iPods, the most valuable inbound link source is from Apple's iPod main page. If your page targets the features of an iPod, and you have choosen the keywords of the page as 'ipod features', then the most valuable link would be on the Apple's iPod main page, and the link anchor text would be 'iPod features'. In reality gaining this example backlink would be impossible. For a less commercial topic you may be able to approach the leading website. In the case of our example I would try and get some forum sintaure links from the iPod forums. If you can get a ink from the homepage of the topics leading website, get a link from any page you can.

2. Forum signatures from topic related websites

   It is unlikey that you will be able to get a high quality inbound link from a leading website for your websites topic (see point 1 above). The next best thing is a link from a leading website for your websites topic. Using the iPod example again, if you cannot get a backlink from Apple's website, or from another leading website, try and get a forum signature from the leading websites. This is normally easy to do. Read about gaining forum signature links.

3. Web directories

   Web directories continue to be a great way of building quality backlinks for your website. Web directories are easy to find and use. If you pay for links you can have many inbound links with just a few days. Read more about gaining backlinks with web directories.

4. Blogs

   Inbound links from blogs are considered reasonable valuable, as blogs are personal, and a link from one is considered a good vote from someones personal website.

5. Non-topic related websites

   A backlink from a website with a unrelated topic to our own carries little weight. Backlinks from unrelated websites can actually trigger the Google Sandbox for new websites, and should be avoided. More established websites can trade links with unrelated website, but the time and effort is better spent on the other items in this list.

Important link elements

Each link has several important elements

Here is an example: Example link

• Anchor text - The text seen by the visitor: 'Example link' in the example above
• URL - The web page the visitors visitos when they click the link. www.webdirectoryguide.com in the example above.
• Title - A tag that appears when the user hovers the link, similar to the alt tag of an image. Hover the example to see.
• There other elements of a link, such as target and class, that are outside the scope of this article, as they do not impact the value of the link.

Inbound link value

You probably already know that an important part of SEO is the gaining of more backlinks to your website. The more backlinks a webpage has, the higher the website will appear in search engine results. Whilst the number of backlinks is important, more important is the parameters used in the backlink. Search engines not only count the number of backliks to a page, but they examine the several factors of each link. These factors allow the search engines to build a picture of what each page is about. The important factors of an inbound link are

• Anchor text - Include your primary keyword(s) in inbound links to reinforce their importance.
• Title - Add your primary and secondary keyword(s) to the title tag.

The text around the link - search engines also examine the text around the link. This builds a bigger picture of the topic of the websites that link to a webpage. Links from topic related websites are worth more than those of blogs or web directories, which cover many topics.