How important is an incoming link?

These days i get a lot of link exchange requests. Especially for the “SEO India” link exchange offer that’s running. I haven’t declined any link requests for the SEO India offer but if i hadn’t been running this, there are certain things that I’d have looked into and decline some link exchange requests as well.

When some one is linking to you, you need to ensure that the site you are linked by meets Google’s standards.
Well, Google doesn’t give any importance to the volume of links that’s coming in because, it’s something that you can’t control. If you’ve good content, people automatically link to you and there’s nothing you can do to review them.

But at least when you are aware who’s linking to you ( when someone’s ) you can select from the options you have.So what is it that you should look for?

- What is the age of the domain/blog that you are being linked to?

The age of a domain is important, the more the age the better reputation(PR) you get. Google thinks that when a very old website(with good content of course) links to you, it means you’ve been recommended by an authority. So make sure that you get maximum links from older domains rather than blogs and sites that just sprouted up in the last rain.

Here’s how you can determine the age of a website -

http://web.archive.org/web/*/www.website.com

Use this URL replaced with the site going to link to you and you will get the age of the site.

- How many sites link to the site that’s linking to you?

As you know, Google believes in votes and recommendations - and the community concept. Therefore, if a website(Site A) which is already recommended by 100 people , recommends to you Site B, then Site B will carry all the good will of Site A. So it’s always good to check how many incoming links the site that’s going to link to you has got already.

Here’s how you check it on Google - link:http://www.website.com (Didn’t you know this before?)

- How many .edu and .gov links backlinks has the site got?

As you know, edu and gov links are considered reliable by Google. Therefore when Site A links to Site B, and if Site A has 100 edu backlinks - all that is carried forward to Site B’s reputation. So count on fingers how many edu backlins the site has got or run this operator query on Yahoo!

For determining edu backlinks - linkdomain:www.website.com +site:.edu -site:.com -site:www.website.com
For determining gov backlinks - linkdomain:www.website.com +site:.gov -site:.com -site:www.website.com

There are other factors too that will help you determine if you should accept a link exchange/buy a link. Which i will cover in the next part of this topic..let me know your thoughts.

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