In Part 1 and Part 2 of my blog series on What Makes A Good Link, I discussed the significance of the relevancy of the link, and the age of a domain. Assuming that you’ve stayed on the relevant path, and have a 10 year old link which seems to be within our own site’s subject matter, it’s time to assess another variable in the link building equation: the ability to acquire the link.

Part 3: Ability To Acquire The Link

Since I love dogs, I’m going to keep rolling with the dog bed example. Your site sells a dog bed, and you’re scouring the web for blogs, directories, and just about any resource related to dog beds. We figure if we begin our search in Google using the query “dog beds,” then start by looking at the top ranking site for this search phrase. I mean after all, what could be more relevant and more powerful of a link than the #1 ranking site for our targeted key phrase?

Our search reveals that www.fetchdog.com has a category on DogBeds. This page scores well on age, is super relevant, has solid PR, a good number of backlinks (don’t worry, I’ll go over PR and back links in future posts) and certainly indicates to me a powerful link.

However, they sell dog beds too!

As a competitor site, that’s ranking for the same term we’re aiming to rank for, I’m fairly certain they’re going to turn down our link request. This site falls into one category of sites that you should generally pass in your link research efforts: competitors.

Another type of site that you should usually pass on are large news sites like CNN, MSNBC, and CNET.com which seem to rank for everything nowadays. The reason they rank high so often is because they embody so many things that Google loves: reputation, content, freshness of content, age, having thousands of sites link to their articles, and authority. Never be surprised to see them pop up in your search results. If your “dog beds” search brings you to CNN’s article on “Outrageous Hotel Perks for Pets,” consider it another site to ignore during your link building research.

Other types of sites and pages I typically ignore:

• Magazine Sites – These are usually similar to the larger news sites.
• Irrelevant Directories – It’s not too uncommon to come across a non-relevant directory that’s of low quality and borderline spam.
• Pages from Xanga, Geocities, Angelfire, Tripod – These sites are usually much older personal sites and are rarely updated anymore. Trust me. Move along.
• Irrelevant Blogs – Sometimes you’ll come across blog posts that may be relevant to your search, like this one on dog beds. But the general blog subject does not seem to revolve around dogs.

Save yourself time in your link building research and exclude these categories in your searches!

Although my example of analyzing the top ranking site for “dog beds” didn’t turn out to be a link candidate, this is a good example because this happens a lot when you’re looking for quality links. Move along to the next site and keep looking for sites that match your criteria.

In Part 4 of “What Makes a Good Link,” I’ll discuss how important PR (PageRank) really is when examining a potential link. Until then, keep these concepts in mind when deciding whether or not to pursue a link!

Bobby Pham, Search Team Link Development Specialist, has been with Intrapromote since 2008, and brings 5+ years of experience in link building and search optimization. At Intrapromote, Bobby has worked with large clients to increase their backlink profile through a fundamentally sound link building approach. His enthusiasm for Link Building in general is refreshing in an industry where many become jaded after a year or two. Bobby is always looking for new ways to build relevant links for his clients, leading to increased online visibility and brand exposure.

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