Strategies and Tips for Determining the Quality, Popularity and Merit of a Web Site

One of the core elements of any optimization and Web site promotion campaign involves the acquisition of incoming links from third-party Web sites. Achieving page popularity on the Internet works kind of like a democracy, in that every vote counts. In this context, an incoming link is a vote, because when another Web site points a link to your Web site, they have, in effect, placed a vote for you.There is a major difference between this system of Internet “voting” and what happens when you cast a vote for your favorite political candidate. A vote in a governmental election is valued the same as every other vote. On the Internet, though, search engine algorithms take into account not just the volume of votes, but also the quality of those votes. On the Web, all votes are not created equal.

Some votes are simply worth more than others (meritocracy). If you’re limited on time and money, and if you’re working to develop a strategy for building incoming links to your Web site, it’s important to look at incoming links more as endorsements of varying value, rather than as equal votes. Think about popular products and successful political figures. When they’re endorsed by well-known, trusted entities, these products and people tend to be valued more by the public. This is equally true of the way search engine algorithms calculate the worthiness, or value, of a Web site. Incoming links from stronger Web sites, such as major news sites and educational resources, are considered to be more trusted and authoritative than links from a blog that just popped up two months ago. This isn’t to disparage the new blog, its owner or its actual value and relevancy, but when you’re running a business with limited resources, you’ll get much more bang for your buck (and your time) by acquiring an incoming link from an established, quality site than you would from several brand new blogs.

Here are some tips and tools to help you quickly identify the strength (or potential strength) of a Web site. It usually only takes 2 - 3 minutes to perform these steps, but the payoff can, over time, prove to be very beneficial and well worth the trouble. Whether you are going to be requesting a direct link, exchanging links, purchasing text link advertisements or buying space for sponsored content articles, these tips can help you to get the most out of your inbound links. Please note that every step should only be used as an estimator to help you get an overall picture of the strength and potential of a particular Web site. There are many factors that contribute to a Web site’s value, so don’t put too much emphasis on any one measurement.

Before you begin the steps below for potential Web sites, getting a benchmark is recommended. This means you should have at least a basic understanding of the information and how it pertains to site strength. The best way to do this may be to start with your very own Web site. Once you know your own traffic volumes, sales/ad conversions and overall popularity, you can compare this information directly to other Web sites’ stats. By doing this, you’ll be able to assess easily how popular the site you are viewing is in relation to your own, and whether or not it is worth your time and effort to do the necessary work involved to solidify the partnership.

1)      Check the PR (PageRank) of the Web Site and its Subpages

While many SEO’s argue that PageRank is dead, it may still play a factor in helping you to determine how new a Web site is, or if that site  is capable of passing strength to your page. As a general rule of thumb, new Web sites often have a PageRank of 0 - 2, while more established Web sites that have had time to age and acquire additional links may have a rank of 3 - 4. Web sites that have a PR of 5 - 7 can generally be considered more or less authoritative in their particular industries. It is important to note that because of ever-changing PageRank algorithms, the use of Google Toolbar’s PageRank statistic should only be used as a preliminary indicator when doing your research. Even though a Web site may have a PR0 through PR3, it can still be highly valued by the search engines, especially in non-Google results pages.

Insofar as subpages are concerned, the PR bar can be an indicator of whether the Web site has a good internal linking structure (see #4 below), as well as how popular the subpage is. Generally, the PR of a subpage will be lower than the homepage PR. Therefore, even if the page has a PR0 - PR3, it can still be an important page on the Web site, and it will more than likely pass valuable link popularity and relevancy over time.

Also consider that the PR of a given Web site should grow over time. So even though it may be a PR3 now, it may become a PR5 within the next 12 months. Therefore, discounting a Web site or subpage only because the PR is low would be a mistake.

Don’t assume that just because a Web site has a low PR that it is not worth your effort. PageRank is a Google-specific measurement and does not apply for other search engines like Yahoo or MSN. Yahoo and MSN utilize completely different measuring systems, so while a site may not be considered ‘strong’ by Google, it could be a major player on other search engines.

2)      Check the Number of Incoming Links (Backlinks) to the Web Site

By visiting some of the major search engines like Google, MSN, Yahoo and Alta Vista, you can get a good idea of how many incoming votes, or backlinks, a particular Web site has acquired. There are a couple of ways to do this:

• Visit each of the Web sites main search pages and use the following operator:
  link:http://www.yourdomainname.com/
• Utilize Linkworth’s LinkRank Tool to quickly pull a report from four major search engines. This tool will ask you to enter your domain name and will pull the data directly from the search engines.

Each search engine will likely provide a different result. Google, for example, likes to keep most of the incoming links secret to help protect their ranking algorithm. Yahoo Site Explorer, on the other hand, provides a full view of incoming links, including links within your own site. To get an accurate reading of incoming external links on Yahoo, be sure to filter out links from your own domain.

Also, be sure to take a look at the actual results from running the “link:” operator. Sometimes, a Web site may have acquired thousands of links from a single third-party Web site because of footer or other global links. While those links still have value, they are usually discounted to some extent. If a Web site has 10,000 incoming links, and 9,999 are from the same third-party Web site, there’s not as much value there as you’d think at first glance. If, however, a Web site has 100 incoming links from 80 different third-party Web sites, it’s probably much stronger than the previous candidate.

3)      Visit Some of the Backlinks

When performing step #2 above it might be a good idea to visit some of the backlinks your candidate Web site has linking to it. This can benefit you in a couple of ways. First, it can give you an idea of the quality of the Web sites pointing to the candidate site. Secondly, it can give you even more potential linking partners. If the candidate Web site’s backlinks are showing up at the top of the “link:” operator results, it means that that third-party Web site may also have some potential linking value.

Side note for Google backlinks results: As mentioned above, Google generally shows fewer inlinks than Yahoo, MSN or Alta Vista. Empirical evidence suggests that backlinks displayed with Google’s “link:” operator can be quite valuable, so targeting the backlinks of candidate Web sites as additional candidates may be a good idea.

4)      See What a Search Engines Sees

Determining whether or not the menu and other navigation areas on a Web site use SEO-friendly linking is a must. This is especially true when exchanging or purchasing text link advertising on the site. Little or no value is added to your Web site by acquiring links that search engines can’t see (or follow*). Additionally, if the search engines are not able to follow links within the Web site properly due to poor architecture and internal linking, they will have difficulty in accurately scoring the important pages of the site.

When researching client Web sites and potential partners, we utilize the Poodle Predictor tool or SearchEngineOptimism.com’s Simulator  to help us mimic what a search engine would see when spidering the site. 

If you are looking to place a link to your Web site on a candidate Web site’s subpage, make sure that the linking structure to the subpage is spiderable. In some cases, the subpage where you would like to place a link may be a secondary or tertiary page, so determining how to get to the page may require you to reverse engineer the linking path. This should be easy if the Web site has a good architecture. If it doesn’t, you can also use the “link:” operator mentioned above, or use the PR bar to see if the page has any assigned value from Google.

*Verify that outgoing links on the web site can be followed by search engines. To do this, you’ll need to view the code using your browser’s ‘View Source’ feature.  Make sure that the hyperlinks pointing out to other web sites do not have the ‘NOFOLLOW’ attribute. The ‘NOFOLLOW’ attribute on a hyperlink tells search engine spiders that the link is not trusted and should not be followed, therefore no relevancy or link popularity is passed to the target web page. While “NOFOLLOW” links may have some benefits for your web site, this is a topic for another article.

5)      Check the Alexa Traffic Rank

Visit http://www.alexa.com/ to get an indication of the worldwide traffic rank of a particular Web site. Note that Alexa calculates traffic statistics based on Web sites visited by individuals who have the Alexa toolbar installed on their browsers. Due to this, the traffic rankings provided should only be used as an estimator of potential traffic, rather than a definitive statistic.

It is recommended that you first perform an Alexa analysis on your own Web site. You’ll get a better idea of what the numbers actually indicate when you can compare them to your own site’s stats and analytics.

6)      Check Rankings for Primary Keywords and Keyword Phrases

What all of these Web statistics really boil down to is how popular a particular Web site is for its primary and secondary keyword and keyword phrase searches. To see how well a particular Web site is positioned, simply find some of their primary keywords by looking at its main menus, homepage or <TITLE> tags, and type them into a couple of the major search engines. If the Web site is showing up in the first 50 - 100 positions, then it’s probably worth getting a link from, especially if its keywords fall in line with your own.

If you have difficulty finding the site in search results, be sure to check the number of results for that keyword. If there are 50,000,000 pages competing for the keyword you searched for, consider that maybe the competition is just very stiff. The ultimate goal of this step is just to see if the search engines have picked up your candidate Web site and consider it meaningful for something. So, even though it may not be showing up for a single primary keyword, it may very well be listing for other searches. Try using some of the full page titles from articles and content on the Web site in your search query. If it pops up in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages), then it has definitely been indexed and may be of benefit to you.

An easy way to check rankings of Web sites for a particular keyword or keyword phrase is to utilize the Linkworth SE Position Tool. You’ll need to be a member of the Linkworth community, but it’s free, so signing up is well worth it. This tool will save you many hours of research as it allows you to enter a keyword phrase and domain, and then checks the top 100 results on all major engines to see if the Web site is listed in the SERPs. Create a free account to use this tool by clicking here.

7)      Look for Fresh Content

When Web site owners care about their online business or personal Web sites, they will usually update their sites with information (such as new blogs) regularly. Look for dated articles or content pages to help you determine how often the Web site is updated.

Some Web sites don’t date their updates, and that’s okay too. Even though you may not see dates and can’t determine if the site is regularly updated, the major search engines can. One way to see how fresh the content is on a particular Web site is to use the WayBack Machine to give you a historical snapshot. Take a look at the Web site now and compare it to the last 6 months. Does the snapshot demonstrate that information is being regularly updated on the site?

8)      Use Common Sense

While there are tons of tools out there to help you perform site analysis, your decision will eventually come down to your overall impression of the Web site. If all of the indicators above seem positive, and you feel comfortable with the layout, content and overall feel of the Web site, then by all means partner with them.

If, however, some of the numbers look good, but the content and design are shabby, there’s never any new content, the site has been around since 1997 and you can’t find it in any search results (even on specific searches for which they should show up), then maybe that site isn’t such a great choice as a partner.

Humans, much like search engines, create “quality scores” based on our experiences at a particular Web site. Use your judgment to determine if the candidate Web site works with your own goals. It may be true that the Web site you are looking to partner with is brand new, has very few backlinks, 15 total pages and a horrible Alexa and PR ranking. But, it may also be true that the person who owns the Web site really wants to make it succeed and will do anything in his power to make it happen. That counts for a lot. So, don’t discount someone just because they’re a noob. Even the biggest, most successful sites had to begin somewhere. Don’t forget to consider the prospect of growth and long-term potential when creating partnerships.

Conclusion

While the steps described above may seem overwhelming at first, incorporating them into your standard link building strategy will pay off. It may take a while to complete each step when you first start using these tips, but with practice, you’ll be able to cut your time down to less than 2 - 3 minutes for preliminary analysis of a Web site.

Keep in mind that no single step is more important than another, and that the sum of all these steps equals a comprehensive and useful whole system for analyzing a Web site’s relevancy to yours.

Thank for reading.

Sincerely,

Miro Holy

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