1.) All Links Secured Must be from PR3 and Above Pages
Google and other major search engines do not place much importance on PR0 – PR2 links. This is owing to the fact that such links can be secured by any website with extreme ease irrespective of the quality. So it becomes imperative that links must be from pages having a Page Rank of 3 and above.
2.) Links should be from Pages Having No More Than 50 Existing Links
Major search-bots used by Google and Yahoo! do not crawl below 100 links and start giving very less weight-age to links that are after the first 50. So the links secured must be from pages having less than 50 numbers of links on their resource page and must be at-least within the top 30 links.
What if the link has been moved down after the initial addition?
If you feel that the link partner has shifted your link down after the initial addition, you can approach them again to get the links shifted back to its original position or break the deal.
3.) Links should not be from a Framed Page
A framed page is a page that has two or more pages attached together through frames. Framed pages do not pass on PR and hence a link from a framed page is as good as non-existent.
Process to identify if a page is framed or not:
If a page is framed:
‘CTRL+A’ shows only one section of the website highlighted
The URL of all pages remain the same
When scrolling up or down, one panel of the website remains static
Example of a Framed Page: http://www.iconarchive.com
4.) Links should be Direct
It is extremely important that links given should directly link to our website and should not be redirected as redirected links are not crawled by the search bots.
Process to check if the link is direct:
Right click on the link and select ‘Properties’. If the ‘Link Address’ shows the site name then the link is direct. If the ‘Link Address’ shows some other website name then the link is indirect.
5.) Links should be Crawlable
The links should not make use of elements that will make them uncrawable. (An uncrawlable link is a link that cannot be crawled by search-bots)
How can links be made uncrawlable?
Links can be made uncrawlable by making use a ‘Nofollow’ tag in the HTML code of the link or webpage. For Instance: <a href=”http://www.sitename.com” rel=”nofollow”>
Links can also be made uncrawlable by using a Robots.txt file (Please follow link to find out more about Robots.txt).
Process to check if the link is Crawlable:
Identifying Nofollow Tags for a Particular Link: Firefox automatically marks links that use a nofollow tags. (Please make sure that the option to find ‘nofollow’ tags is selected in your alexa-searchstatus toolbar.) The links with ‘nofollow’ are marked with bulleted borders in pink color.
o Instance: http://www.linkhaul.com (In this page the links on the footer with anchor text, NY Freelancers and Drupal Web Design use nofollow and are marked in pink.)
Identifying Nofollow tags for a Page: Some sites make use of Nofollow links for the whole webpage. This can be identified by checking the source of the page. To check the page source the following procedure can be followed:
o Right click on the web page for which you need to check the tags
o Select ‘View Page Source’
o Check the code inside the <head> Code </head> tags
o Check to see if the code contains the following Meta Tags;
§ <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex, nofollow”>
§ <meta name=”robots” content=”index, nofollow”>
Identifying faulty Robots.txt files: Not many websites use a Robots.txt file. Some do it for legitimate reasons and some others do it to keep certain pages from getting crawled. To check the Robots.txt file on a site, the following process can be followed:
o Look for the Robots text file by visiting http://www.sitename.com/robots.txt
o If the file exists you can see the commands inside
o Check to see if the folder/file on which your link is placed has been disallowed.
6.) Links should not be on Dynamic Pages
Dynamic pages are pages that are created on the fly and do not have a permanent URL and this is the reason why links on the dynamic page do not get proper PR.
Dynamic pages can be identified by checking the URL of the page on which the links is placed. Check to see if the URL has dynamic elements like “?, #, $, % etc.”
Example of a Dynamic URL:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000DZH60O/?ref=amb_link_id=1473342_3/104-9623766%-1401504?n=502394
7.) Links Should Make Use of Full Site URL
All links should make use of full site URL including ‘HTTP’ and ‘WWW’.
For instance: http://www.icongalore.com and not http://icongalore.com or www.icongalore.com
8.) Link should be only on the Keyword
The link secured should lie strictly on the keyword alone. It should not include any other symbol or term.
For instance: XP Icons and not 1.) XP Icons or * XP Icons
9.) The Link Page or the Page on Which the Link Exists should be cached
Page on which the link exits should have a cached history by Google and Yahoo! Cache history can be checked using the Google Toolbar.
