Infographic: 20 metrics that influence a link’s quality

Our new infographic focuses on what makes the quality of a link. Based on 20 SEO metrics, we have ordered them from the most important one to the less important one.

Infographic retranscription

Based on one of Rand Fishin’ Whiteboard Friday, this infographic is a summary of link metrics and what makes the value of a link. Those 20 metrics are ordered from the most important to the less important one.

1# Follow VS no-follow

NoFollow and DoFollow still matter for an effective link building strategy. Dofollow will still have a higher impact on your rankings.

2# Domain authority

Domain authority refers to how important is the site you are prospecting from a content, relevance and quality perspective.

3# Internal versus external

A link from an external website will for sure better impact your rankings.

4# Quality of the page’s other links

You don’t want to be associated with a website linking to cheap websites with shady links.

5# Spam signals

Google will lower sites based on lots of spammy links.

6# User engagement

If a website is visited a lot, has a low bounce rate and a good time on site, Google will consider that site as qualitative.

7# Anchor text

While an anchor text does have a better impact than an exact match anchor text does, a link is still relevant whether or not you get the anchor text you were looking for.

8# Relevance

Relevance is important and your own perception is enough to determine if a website evolves in the same field as you. But links can also be qualitative without being in your exact industry, so get a mixed link profile.

9# Editorial integrity

While judging the editorial integrity of a website can be tough, keep in mind that Google considers how people regards this content.

10# Topical authority of a source

It refers to how authoritative is a website in its field. Linking to websites that rank in the top 10 position of your area is a great thing while this same website could globally be less authoritative.

11# Location on page

If a link is located in the footer, in the sidebar or in the ad area and is a DoFollow, it is likely to be regarded by Google as an advertising link.

12# Prior links from this domain

Link quality and getting a few links from authorities and influencers is highly efficient! You will develop your credibility. But don’t only get links from same level websites.

13# Author authority

Author authority is not a true link metric anymore. But it can still be valuable in terms of influence.

14# JavaScript vs HTML

JavaScript does not influence a link’s value but some forms of it stop bots to crawl your pages.

15# PageRank

PageRank is dead so it should not worry you that much. You can use the OnCrawl Inrank to calculate your internal page popularity.

16# Source depth

Nowadays, Google crawls everything. Except you have pages at depth 16 and more, they should all be crawled on a regular basis.

17# First link to target in HTML

If you have two links on a same page pointing to you, Google will only consider the first one to pass the anchor text and ranking signals. But the second link will still pass user engagement, clicks, traffic, visibility, etc.

18# Text versus image

There is no difference between a raw text link and an image link.

19# Link age and page age

With Wayback Machine you can easily know how old is a page or a link.

20# Speed of link acquisition

If you are doing White Hat SEO, you don’t need to worry about speed acquisition because it will take time to get qualitative links.