How to identify good links??

[KSA]

I've done a search on the site, and have picked up bits and pieces from other forums. I'd like to get the info all in one place, if you experts will help me out.

How can you tell if a link is good? Its easy (I think) if the link is just www.domain.ext. Is it true that if there are any other characters in the link, then the link won't be credited by the search engines? Or, are only some types of characters red flags? I saw a link recently that had "redirect" in the link string. Is that bad? If there was a fairly clear rule to follow, that would be great!

Then, I also read about link pages being cached or not. Is it possible to have a "good" link, but still get no credit for it because the page isn't cached? I'm not even sure how someone would avoid having a page cached. To be safe, do you need to check each link page to see if it is cached?

Hope this makes sense in terms of what I'm trying to figure out. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Kathleen

[Paz]

It's hard to give a definitive answer, but there are people out there who will promise to exchange links with you, but use multiple methods to hide or devalue their reciprocal links....

Off the top of my head: nofollow metatag, server commands robots.txt, javascript, buried or orphaned links... and I'm sure there are others I don't know about!

I don't have a definitive answer for you, but I would advise you to check each link manually. Can you find the links page from the front page, and how many clicks do you need to get there? Use a search engine spider simulator to look at how the page would appear to a search engine....

Less reliable but you can have a quick look in the backlinks of other people in the directories (using Yahoo). Do the backlinks show? If a backlink doesn't show - doesn't mean they're cheating though! Links take time to mature...

It's not easy, but I hope it's a start!

Cheers,
Paz.

[KSA]

Paz,

Thanks, that is a start.

Since the quickest test is just looking at the link string, is there anything that appears there that would make the link worthless before I even start to check other things? If the web address is buried in a search string, is that always a bad link? Any ideas on how to do a quick elimination from looking at how the link is constructed?

Thanks again,

K

[Paz]

Hi K

You've posted some good questions and some of the seniors here will have to help me out, but there are no easy answers to your questions, and things are very dynamic at the moment with many of the pages I have been reading on the subject out of date in less than a year.
I'll post some thoughts and some suggestions if you don't want to learn php scripting ;) , but wait around for some more opinions.

[QUOTE=KSA]
Since the quickest test is just looking at the link string,[/QUOTE]
Yes, but looking at the link string is the least reliable method....

Sometimes the link can be there, plain as day, and you can click on it and go to the the page it says... but a search engine might never see it, or follow it to your site because it's either:
hidden from from one (in a frame for example),
forbidden from following one (by a metatag or some other exclusion method) etc etc etc
[QUOTE=KSA] is there anything that appears there that would make the link worthless before I even start to check other things?[/QUOTE]

if your pagerank toolbar were greyed out.... maybe
A cursory look at the source text .... possibly

I review a directory by hand and imagine I'm a would-be user. Then I read the source code of some of the pages, read the robots.txt, scan the links page with a bot simulator, look at the site in google, look for references in the site with google, check for a cached page in Google, check the page of interest and compare it with the cached one, look at the original page 5 minutes later to see if it's randomly generated.. etc. It takes about half an hour, and then I reckon it's probably safe.
[QUOTE=KSA]
If the web address is buried in a search string, is that always a bad link?[/QUOTE]

I'm guessing you mean www .somedomain/modules.php?name=weblinks&lid=999 where 999 is a database link...

Not necessarily a bad link, but I'm always suspicious of them. However, I often submit anyway especially if the directory is relevant to my websites... In any case, the search engines, especially Google, are getting better at following such links and giving you credit for them.
[QUOTE=KSA]
Any ideas on how to do a quick elimination from looking at how the link is constructed?[/QUOTE]

Nope..... haha

Seriously, these are difficult times, and there are all kinds of dirty tricks being played by webmasters, and SEO penalties being issued by the search engines.
I would suggest you avoid reciprocal link exchanges until you get a bit more experience. In the mean time, submit to niche directories that are specific to your product and look like resources rather than lists of urls.

After you've tried it a few times you will get a feel for it and you can submit to the reputable open directories (lists are submitted to the "directories" forum regularly).

Last two things.
Use a different email address to your "office" one, because you might get a lot of spam later.
Keep a record (I use a database) of the directory url, the url you submitted, when, title, description, keywords, passwords, and status (accepted, pending, refused etc.) It slows you down at first, but you won't regret it later!

Hope this helps!

Cheers,
Paz.

[KSA]

Paz,

Thanks so much. I had a feeling the answer would be "it depends". But, you know us newbies - we live in hope of something simple!

I'll keep tracking the thread for other posts, and I'll study yours and try it out with some of the directories.

Thanks for furthering my education.

Kathleen

[Web Gazelle]

To figure out if a link is good I do the following...

1. I look at the link in the code by viewing the source. It needs to be href="http.www.yourUrl.com" no cgi=blahblahblah or garbage like that.

2. I watch the PR and make sure the bar isn't greyed out. I don't worry about a 0 PR because that could change on the next update.

3. On dynamic sites I watch to see what happens to the PR when I go to a category. If it drops to 0 then I know that I my get a link but it aint going to pass any PR to my site.

Hope this helps.