Criteria for determining a "quality" link

Hi guys. As I'm starting to work on my backlink campaign, I've been trying to put together a list of criteria to help determine if the links I'm getting qualify as "quality" links. Can you review the list below and tell me if you agree with it, or if there are other criteria that should be added?

Criteria that can indicate that a link is a "quality link" (all need not be present):
1. The page the link is on has a higher Google Page Rank than we have (our site has an approx. Page Rank of 6 out of 10)
2. The link is a "deep" link - to an internal, relevant page of our site, not necessarily to the main page
3. The site is a .gov, .org, or .edu site
4. The text of the link has our target keyword phrase in it
5. We did not pay for the link, and we do not link to the site on our site
6. The link does not have a "nofollow" attribute (which stops the search engine from following it, like the links on Wikipedia)

Personally I think your list is pointless. A quality link is really any link you can get. All links help to some degree.

Links bring 4 things (IMO) Trust, topical relavance, Geographical relavance and Page rank. The benefit you get from the link depends on your sites ability to use the things the link brings.

Of these trust is the most valuable and Page rank the least valuable (IMO).

I do not understand what you are hopeing with that list.

Hi gazzahk, thanks for your reply!



I've seen many posts that mention "quality" links, so I guess I was just trying to jot down some of the ways that I can know if that is what I'm getting.

Also, I thought that might be an interim measure of success, being able to say "look, we got a new link that is a quality link" in case it doesn't change our rankings right away.



So you are saying that each link 1) makes the search engines trust your site more or less 2) makes them consider your site to be relevant to the topic of the linking site and the keywords used to link to you 3) makes them consider your site to be relevant to the geography of the linking site and 4) influences your Pagerank (which other people call link juice)?

Just want to make sure I'm completely understanding what you're saying.

Thanks so much for taking the time to reply and help me learn this!

Yep mostly. Except Link Juice is just a generic term that includes all four of those things. PR in itslef is the least valuable of those things. If you are looking at PR then PR of the Home page is a better indicator then PR of the actual link page in terms of site strength. In a general sense a site that has PR 6,7,8,9,10 are strong sites (very, very,very superfical indicator - check out the site). The only other thing PR is much good for in relation to links is that a page with PR is in the index where one that has no PR may not be in the index.

You do not need to get all foor of those things at the same time. But you do need to get all four of them to do well in your desired SERPs. Focus on getting links from sites that you think are likley to be highly trusted sites. But get any links you can...

Best of luck ...

OK, great. Thanks so much. =)