5 attributes of the perfect link

Inbound links are half the battle in search engine optimization, but not all inbound links are equally good. Here are five characteristics of the perfect back-link.

1. Anchor text

For maximum benefit, inbound links should have anchor text that is totally relevant to the target page. If the anchor text of the link matches words within the h1 tag on the target page, the effect will be even more powerful.

2. Quality of the source page

Links will be more beneficial if they come from a page whose topic is highly relevant to the target page. In other words, if the link points to a page about SEO, it will be more beneficial if it is on a page that is also about SEO.

3. Links embedded within text

The most powerful links are embedded within a block of high-quality, highly relevant text. Links should be part of a sentence, and that sentence should be part of a block of text of at least 300 words. Links that are not part of a sentence and are isolated from the page's main body of text tend to be less beneficial to the target page.

4. PageRank

The whole point of Google PageRank is that it determines how much SEO benefit it can pass to other pages through its links. The higher the PageRank, the more beneficial the links will be.

5. The number of links on the source page

The link will be more beneficial to its target page if it is one of only two or three outgoing links on the page. In general, the more links there are on the page, the less benefit each one will pass to its respective target page. If there are hundreds of links on a page, their target pages will not get as much benefit.