It's a known fact that no two links are equally the same, in this research I attempted to see every two links as equals. While this obviously makes it impossible to create a 100% accurate piece of content, this - together with the dozens of interesting comments- results in a document that might be of value for everybody who's somehow envolved in building links. The grain of salt that comes with this research is far being outweighed by the value of the present data.
While some might use this document for entertaining purposes only, these results and factors can be enterpreted by everybody as an
indication that, while lots and lots of different factors come into play of the process, building links sure isn't rocket science.
It's way cooler.
Wiep Knol
In the style of SEOmoz' Search Engine Ranking Factors, this page includes the opinions of 17 well respected, international SEO and Link Building professionals on nearly 40 factors that possibly influence the value of a link. My opinion about each factor has been included into every score as well. Although not every possible influencing factor, nor every possible opinion has been included, this page covers the majority of the factors and is pretty accurate. At least, in my opinion.
The idea behind this research was to determine which factors professionals from the field of SEO consider to be of influence on the value of a link and/ or on the potential amount of link juice that a link can pass. Because most of us understand the value of links in terms of traffic, this research mainly focuses on the value that search engines may allocate to a link.
Every factor has been rated on a scale from 1 to 5 by the participants:
Section 4 of this document contains seven possible dampening factors. Here, dampening doesnt necessarily mean that these factors have a negative effect (e.g. as in a penalizing effect) on the link in question, but it only means these factors might be able to make the link of lesser value. These factors could have als be named "possible link juice reducing factors", but dampening factors was shorter. Every dampening factor will be highlighted with (DF) in the Top 10 below.
These factors have also been rated on a 1 to 5 scale:
Like stated before in the intro, no two links are equally the same. Also, no two search engines are equally the same. This is why all results below are relative, but nonetheless pretty interesting as well.
This page is also available as a full color pdf or printer friendly pdf.
Patrick Altoft
BlogStorm
Martijn Anschütz
M4M Zoekmachine Marketing
Hamlet Batista
Hamlet Batista dot Com
Jim Boykin
We Build Pages SEO Company
Bob Gladstein
Raise My Rank SEO Services
Peter van der Graaf
Peter van der Graaf
Wiep Knol
Wiep.net
Michael Martinez
SEO Theory
Debra Mastaler
Link building campaigns and link training
Maurizio Petrone
Esperto SEO
Arturo Ronchi
3D Live Statistics
André Scholten
André Scholten
Ralph Tegtmeier
Cloaking aka IP Delivery for optimal SEO
Barry Schwartz
Search Engine Roundtable
Joost de Valk
SEO & Blogging
Peter da Vanzo
Link Juicy
Aaron Wall
SEO Tools
Eric Ward
EricWard.com - Link Building Strategies
The first 9 questions will focus on the link factors. This means only factors directly related to the link itself and no on-page or on-domain stuff yet.
This set of 14 factors discusses on-page factors that might (or might not) influence the value of a link. In stead of factors that are part of the link or are in the link's direct surroundings, the focus is on the pages that lists the link here.