6.4 The smartest way to see what value links bring

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These factors I'll be talking about have a separate column each in SEO SpyGlass software and help analyze links. Even if you're not using this tool, I recommend you to read what goes below, and you'll learn pretty much useful stuff.

Just go through to be clued in — and after you read all these things you'll have two options — sit and try remembering these things like ABC, or get the No–Brainer SEO surprise SEO SpyGlass is preparing for you.

Let's start.

Backlink Page column shows you the exact URL from which the backlink comes. Try to hover your mouse on any entry and click the small three–dot icon to the right of the column.

Click the three–dot icon

This opens the web page in your browser — and lets you see what it's about and whether it really corresponds to your topic. Sometimes you can even find info on how much an inbound link from this page would cost you.

Moreover, here in the Search Engines Data tab you can easily see if a link comes from a homepage or from a deeper page. And if you compare all backlink pages in the column, you can easily identify sitewide links (links coming from all or practically all pages of the same site).

Then, Webpage PR. This is the Google PageRank we talked about not long ago in Chapter 4. In this case, it's the PageRank of the exact page where the link stands, at the moment it was last time announced by Google. It's the same PageRank you'd see in Google toolbar, but it's conveniently arranged in the software.

Google PR in the toolbar

Google PR in SEO SpyGlass

Let's jump to the Domain PR column now. Here you see PageRank of the domain of the webpage from which the link comes. Remember I told you — domains pass over their PageRank to inner pages of the website. So even if you get a link from www.example.com/here_you_go.htm that has PageRank 0, but its domain www.example.com has PageRank value of 6, you've got a good chance to get some of this high domain's PageRank in the future, and the inner page is only a mediator.

The Title column, quite obviously, shows you the title of the page where the link stands. Remember this Q–Factor — Keywords in the page's title and body? Look at the pages' titles to see which of them contain your keywords. Those that do can bring you better value.

Links Back — I know this may seem strange to you at first, but sometimes Search Engines will tell you that there's a link from www.somepage.com — though it's no longer there. That's because Search Engines can't update their indexes each day. Still SEO SpyGlass checks if the link really exists, plus, it checks whether links are really taken into account by Search Engines. For example, it won't count "nofollow" links as real backlinks, because, as I told you in Part 5: No one's gonna cheat you: verify your links, although Search Engines know about "nofollow" links, they don't count them when deciding how to rank you.

Anchor Text — has to do with right anchors. Look which anchor text your competitor's using. Does it contain your keywords? Quite often, it will give you an unexpected idea for your own anchors and even keywords that really work.

Anchor URL — this column shows you the exact page to which the backlink points (the one that opens if you click a backlink). Good to know, to decide where your own inbound links should lead.

For example, let's think your major keyword is soccer. In this case, your #1 competitor is www.soccer.com. As soon as you've checked its links with SEO SpyGlass, you can check the column "Anchor URL". And here's what you see:

Anchor text and anchor URL

Most of the links go to the homepage www.soccer.com. A good part of links also go to inner pages — to the pages with images of equipment, jerseys and other soccer–related stuff. A huge portion of links lead to inner pages where NSCAA's products are sold. If you check further, you'll see that all these links come from NSCAA's site. I mean, if you're selling their products, you've got chances to get their links — to the very pages from which these products are sold.

Check other inner pages to which your partner's backlinks lead — and you'll have a good idea of how to arrange your own links.

Anchor URLs are a great thing to know by the way. Just think, now you know not only from which pages your competitor has backlinks, but also, to which pages they point. This helps you figure the structure of links to your own site: is it enough to get 1000 backlinks leading to your homepage www.buy-my-product.com, or it's better to get 600 links to www.buy-my-product.com, 300 links to www.buy-my-product.com/soap.html and 100 links to www.buy-my-product.com/shampoo.html

Outbound Links — this is for this Q–Factor: How many outbound links a page has on it? The more outbound links a page has, the smaller portion of its PageRank each of those pages it links to receives. If you're getting a link from a page with too many outbound links, possibly you won't be getting much of its PageRank. So think of this value too.

Total Links — It also has to do with PageRank. If there's a site A with the page A1 having PageRank 7, and this page links to the page B1, the good PageRank of page A1 goes not only to page B1 of the other site. It also gets passed from page A1 to other pages of the same site A (through the so–called internal links). That's why it's good to know the total number of links a page has — and this is an extra factor SEO SpyGlass gives you.

Link Value — that's a factor calculated with a rather complicated formula, from a page's PageRank, number of inbound and outbound links and other factors. The higher link value, the better results you should expect if you get a link like this. See these color markers? Links marked green have the best link value.

Link value color markers

Domain — see domains on which your links may sit: you'll easily find competitor's links from the same domain, for example sitewide links. Besides, if a page's domain contains your keyword, this underlines the page's relevance to your word.

For instance, if you sell flower pots and optimize for the keyphrase pots for flowers, and you get a link from www.indoor-flowers.com/partners.html, this link may appeal a lot to search engines, because it comes from a topically related page that's got a relevant domain name.

IP address — that's a cool SEO SpyGlass trick that allows you to follow Search Engines' logics. The IP Address column shows you the exact IP addresses from which links to your competitor come.

So what's the use of knowing IP addresses? You can find sitewide links that can be useful for you no less than to your competition. You can also see if your competition has links that're of no SEO value at all and cannot help increase your rankings. And you'll easily follow this SEO advice: to get more credit from search engines, try getting links from different C–class IP blocks.

Country — find out in which country a linking site is hosted. It's a known fact: if you're promoting a site in Google.co.uk (Google in the United Kingdom), this Search Engine will like to see you've got links from other UK sites.

DMOZ — we already talked about Internet directories. DMOZ is the most respected free directory, and it's good to know whether the website you're getting a link from is listed there.

Yahoo! — that's the biggest paid directory on the web that also brings a lot of value to a website and its pages.

Alexa Rank — it's also the SEO SpyGlass "bonus factor". Alexa Rank shows you where a site ranks compared to all other sites, based on how much traffic they're getting each 3 months (therefore sometimes Alexa Rank is also called Traffic Rank). The more traffic, the higher a site to the top in Alexa ranking. The #1 site has the biggest traffic ever.

Visitors of a site–that–links–to–you see the link and part of them click it — so the more traffic a the partner's site has, the more visitors your own site will get. If you're buying links for traffic, look at Alexa Rank. When sites have good traffic, they normally rank within the first 100,000. But the closer Alexa Rank to the first place, the better. Anyway, links from sites not even in 100,000 aren't worth paying for. You got the idea.

Domain Age — the same as "Age of the partner's site". As I told you before, domain age has been quite important recently. Sites under 1 year are considered very young, those from 3 years old and older are good. And, for instance, 8–year–old sites enjoy all the goods of being on the Web for long. They are very trusted by Search Engines.

A deep look at all these factors lets you see the sweetest places to get backlinks from. As soon as you figured out what links you want to have, it's time to email website owners and discuss whatever ways to get a link you choose, from exchange to purchase — that's totally up to you.

Here SEO SpyGlass gives you a hand again. You've got the Contact Info column. Where possible, the tool will extract websites' contact data and arrange it neatly for each link. That speeds up your link building: you don't have to dig for contacts — just use email addresses you see here.

I told you not even once that SEO SpyGlass has got a special surprise for you. Think it slipped off my memory? No way. Now we've come to that — just turn the page.

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