SEO Checklist - Links - internal, inbound, outbound

17

Anchor text of inbound links

As discussed in the Keywords section, this is one of the most important factors for good rankings. It is best if you have a keyword in the anchor text but even if you don’t, it is still OK.

18

Origin of inbound links

Besides the anchor text, it is important if the site that links to you is a reputable one or not. Generally sites with greater Google PR are considered reputable.

19

Links from similar sites

Having links from similar sites is very, very useful. It indicates that the competition is voting for you and you are popular within your topical community.

20

Links from .edu and .gov sites

These links are precious because .edu and .gov sites are more reputable than .com. .biz, .info, etc. domains. Additionally, such links are hard to obtain.

21

Number of backlinks

Generally the more, the better. But the reputation of the sites that link to you is more important than their number. Also important is their anchor text, is there a keyword in it, how old are they, etc.

22

Anchor text of internal links

This also matters, though not as much as the anchor text of inbound links.

23

Around-the-anchor text

The text that is immediately before and after the anchor text also matters because it further indicates the relevance of the link – i.e. if the link is artificial or it naturally flows in the text.

24

Age of inbound links

The older, the better. Getting many new links in a short time suggests buying them.

25

Links from directories

Great, though it strongly depends on which directories. Being listed in DMOZ, Yahoo Directory and similar directories is a great boost for your ranking but having tons of links from PR0 directories is useless and it can even be regarded as link spamming, if you have hundreds or thousands of such links.

26

Number of outgoing links on the page that links to you

The fewer, the better for you because this way your link looks more important.

27

Named anchors

Named anchors (the target place of internal links) are useful for internal navigation but are also useful for SEO because you stress additionally that a particular page, paragraph or text is important. In the code, named anchors look like this: <A href= “#dogs”>Read about dogs</A> and “#dogs” is the named anchor.

28

IP address of inbound link

Google denies that they discriminate against links that come from the same IP address or C class of addresses, so for Google the IP address can be considered neutral to the weight of inbound links. However, MSN and Yahoo! may discard links from the same IPs or IP classes, so it is always better to get links from different IPs.

29

Inbound links from link farms and other suspicious sites

This does not affect you in any way, provided that the links are not reciprocal. The idea is that it is beyond your control to define what a link farm links to, so you don’t get penalized when such sites link to you because this is not your fault but in any case you’d better stay away from link farms and similar suspicious sites.

30

Many outgoing links

Google does not like pages that consists mainly of links, so you’d better keep them under 100 per page. Having many outgoing links does not get you any benefits in terms of ranking and could even make your situation worse.

31

Excessive linking, link spamming

It is bad for your rankings, when you have many links to/from the same sites (even if it is not a cross- linking scheme or links to bad neighbors) because it suggests link buying or at least spamming. In the best case only some of the links are taken into account for SEO rankings.

32

Outbound links to link farms and other suspicious sites

Unlike inbound links from link farms and other suspicious sites, outbound links to bad neighbors can drown you. You need periodically to check the status of the sites you link to because sometimes good sites become bad neighbors and vice versa.

33

Cross-linking

Cross-linking occurs when site A links to site B, site B links to site C and site C links back to site A. This is the simplest example but more complex schemes are possible. Cross-linking looks like disguised reciprocal link trading and is penalized.

34

Single pixel links

when you have a link that is a pixel or so wide it is invisible for humans, so nobody will click on it and it is obvious that this link is an attempt to manipulate search engines.