Individual Link Value
-
We understand the PA, DA, trust and all of that. My question is, is there a process or formula anyone uses that shows an individual links value as to the link juice it passes. The old Domain Juice seemed to be that, but after further investigation (And Rand setting me straight) I now understand it's not a good metric.
Today, we use PA divided by the number of external links on that page to get some sense of an individual links actual value to the site or page we link to. I understand this is a very sloppy system, but seems to be the only choice we have?
It's based on this simple thought. If you get a back link on two different pages, and both are equal in every way, except one has 3 outbound links and the other has 30, the link from the page with 3 will be significantly stronger as far as passing juice.
So... anyone using something to determine an individual links value? I did ask the SEO staff, and they do not current have it.
-
I believe that the problem is.... people are spending too much time worrying about the value of a link and not enough time producing something worth linking to.
-
Nobody knows but Google... but I think that advertising links and reference links (usually) have very different formats.
-
you mention reference citation. My question to you is does the google algo actually look out and read titles such as references ? As it would in a similar way to spot advertising links ?
-
Rather than use numbers I would use qualitative measure....
- How relevant is the site?
- Where is the link on the page? (in footer?... in contextual paragraph?.... in sidebar?... above the fold?.... in reference citation?
- Is the link on a kickass domain or a dog?
I think that these are much more important than numbers.
-
Ryan, yes there are a lot of factors. But .... going back two page example. Two pages of the same value. One has 3 outbound links, the other has 30. Clearly in most cases the page with 3 is better. In other words, if you have this situation 100 times, you might see it proving correct 70 or 80.
I doubt that figuring out several of the SEOmoz metrics is much (if at all) more difficult than the one I am describing, and a Link value would be of huge.
Every metric we see on reports is in fact a guess. PA, DA, Trust, Cblocks, Backlinks.. none can be completely trusted and we all use these tools with that understanding, and the hope that they are at least generally correct. What would be any different in a link value report that took as much into consideration as possible?
Can you imagine the time savings and efficiency acceleration of Link building if such a tool existed and was even somewhat accurate.
I think SEOmoz attempted this with the old Domain Juice passed metric. But seeing the formula for it, I can understand why they felt it was not very helpful.
-
I am not aware of any solid tool that provides this information. You may find a tool which estimates or otherwise provides a link value, but the challenge is that guesses are being stacked upon other guesses.
If someone responds "yes, try the Link Valuation Tool from Company X" my questions would be:
-
What metric is being used to value the link? PA? DA? PR? If PA/DA are being used, then those metrics are limited by the Linkscape crawler and the various factors concerning it's use (i.e. 1-2 months behind, issues mentioned by Carin, etc). If PR is being used, then the tool's PR is a guess and may be quite different from Google's PR
-
How is decay being handled? Is the PA/DA/PR being fully distributed? Or is the natural decay being calculated, and if so how? It's another guess factor.
-
How is the weighting of links being handled? The SEO consensus is that links in content are given more weight then links in footers and other site-wide links.
There are other factors such as multiple links to the same domain, multiple links to the same page, etc. I feel there are too many unknowns for a tool to provide a meaningful link valuation. I would love to be proven wrong. Such a tool would clearly offer great value to SEOs.
-
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Spam links with high DA
I'm running through the spam analysis and noticed a few links that are considered to be 9+ on the spam score (high spam level), but some of them have DA of 60 -75. How can this be possible? When I view the sites they appear to be be pretty low quality. If i'm considering disavowing a site should I focus on spam score or DA? A DA of 75 is a pretty reputable standing.
Moz Pro | | STP_SEO0 -
Is It Necessary to Remove The Inbound links With Spammy Score?
Hi Friends, I am new to this community. I just checked my inbound links using Moz tool and I came to know that there are some inbound links with spammy score. So, should I remove those links using disavow tool? Awaiting for the reply.
Moz Pro | | Flyin.com0 -
I have a client with a bit over 100 inbound links but Open Site Explorer shows total links on Subdomain as over 66,000, how can this be?
I have a client www.woodard247.com that shows only a bit over 100 inbound links. using the Open Site Explorer, they are a well trafficed local site and are not doing any grey hat or black hat techniques. However the rankings for their main keywords have suffered recently and we cannot identify any duplicate content or keyword stuffing issues. We have never purchased links or used link building software. Now for the main question: When we run Open Site Explorer it shows only a bit over 100 inbound links on the page and the domain, but the subdomain shows over 66,000 total links! How can this be possible? Could this be a problem? How can I find out what these links are since Open Site Explorer and Seo Spyglass both show only a hundred or so?
Moz Pro | | tjkirgin0 -
Dead links-urls
What is the quickest way to get Google to clean up dead
Moz Pro | | 1step2heaven
link? I have 74,000 dead links reported back, i have added a robot txt to
disallow and added on Google list remove from my webmaster tool 4 months ago.
The same dead links also show on the open site explores. Thanks0 -
Non-Recognition of Links
Hi All, I asked about a client last month and have had to do some other digging to try to find out what's going on with its Google rankings. According to our link-building spreadsheet, we have got up to 50 links (from 50 domains) in process of being actioned and a large proportion of these are actually in existence. There are two questions:- 1. Open Site Explorer only recognises 3 domains - as I know that other domains exist and are pointing (mostly 'followed'), what can be the reason OSE doesn't recognise this? 2. What can be done to encourage these external links to be more easily accessible by OSE and, presumably other bots? Other Points:- 1. I initially thought it might be crawl blocking issue causing the rankings, but Bing/Yahoo rankings are slowly dragging themselves upwards. 2. Robots.txt is not blocking any of the site 3. Pro on-site analysis for the target keyword is 'A' 4. The website's stats per OSE are better than some competitors in the top 20 except on the root domain issue, which is why the above point is important. Link building for other clients has worked really well without hiccups and with general gradual recognition, so any tips from more experienced folks out there would be gratefully appreciated. Many thanks, Martin
Moz Pro | | Nobody15609869897230 -
Competitive Link Analysis
How can I make the a new report for the Competitive Link Analysis? My report has a date from two weeks ago and I would like to see an update.
Moz Pro | | CalgaryRealtor390