Being able to break down what makes a link valuable is essential to creating an effective link building plan. Knowing the components that make a valuable link will help optimize your best links and avoid wasting time with risky, low value link building strategies.

A Link’s Value Can Be Analyzed By:

• The authority and trust of the linking domain and page
• Where the link is and if the link is within the content of the page
• The anchor text of the link
• The type of link, for example is the link featured within an article or a comment?

Further reading: How Search Engines Can Judge the Value of a Link

Two practical ways to gauge a link’s value are:

• If the link is easy to get, it probably won’t be very valuable or its value will be short lived
• If a link provides a lot of referral traffic, then it probably passes significant value

The Questions This Section Will Answer:

• What types of links should you build (or avoid) to add the most value to your site or a specific page?
• How can we analyze the value of domains and pages?
• What should the anchor text of the links be?
• What links and link building strategies should you avoid?