Search Engine Optimisation Web Log (BLOG)
Editor: Matt Paines

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What's a Link Worth?

Anyone involved in promoting a web site will understand the need to solicit inbound link popularity. Long gone are the days of reciprocal linking so many SEO's have little choice but to acquire their links buy paying for them. So what is a link worth?

There are several issues to consider when link building. Firstly has got to be the amount of traffic the link could generate, and the potential return on investment.

Secondly there is gathering links from a purely SEO point of view. The primary consideration needs to be - does the link deliver "search engine value"? The easiest way to decide this is to start with Googles toolbar. If the page has a PageRank and has an accurate cache then it's a good start. Next is to consider the number of links on the page. The outgoing more links, the less benefit each link will provide.

Consider the following; to explain PageRank you have to grasp the difference between two specific elements, there is PagePoint Score (PPS) and PageRank (PR), they are very different.

PR0 = 1 page point,
PR1 = 8 page points,
PR2 = 64 page points,
PR3 = 512 page points,
PR4 = 4096 page points,
PR5 = 32768 page points
PR6 = 262144 page points,
PR7 = 2,097,152 page points,
PR8 = 16,777,216 page points,
PR9 = 134,217,728 page points.

Let's assume you gain a link from a PR5 site. Which means that it has a page score of between 32,768 page points, and 262,144 page points. Very good you might think. Now just assume the page in question has 100 outgoing links on it. So if the PPS is divided by the number of links, your site will benefit between
327 and 2,621 PPS. Which if you had a single link from a web page with a PR value of PR2 to PR3 it would have the same value.

So the answer to the question, if your sole reason for buying links is to advance your position in the search engines a link from a PR5 or PR6 might be very attractive, until you consider its actual value against the amount you are paying for it.

M.P

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