Now I realise this will seem like a very naive and dumb question, but what is the current monetary value placed on text links from, say, a PR4 site?

(note: I'm not looking to buy, sell or exchange links).

I'm not talking specifically about paid links. I'm talking about natural links that pass on Pagerank (without the nofollow tag). How do you put a monetary value on them?

I guess the only way to value natural links is to look at prices charged for paid links. But this is an area of which I know very little.

I suppose that values depend on various factors. For example:

- Where the link appears (homepage, sitewide, etc)

- Anchor text, and whether the site paying for a link can specify the anchor text and surrounding text.

- The number of other sites linked to from that site/page.

- Whether or not the link looks like a paid link.

Am I right? Are there others?

Ultimately it will be the websites overall popularity that will determine the value of placing links on the site. Look at yahoo business directory listing as an example. They can get away with charging a lot because of their overall popularity.

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Link value is very subjective. A link on WebMD is worth a lot to a healthcare company, and nothing to a gun dealer. Relevance is the key here.

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There are so many variables it's impossible to do this. Does the link use anchor text that is a very valuable keyphrase for you? Or is it just your domain name linked? Is it from a site that is in your field? Is it from a site with an .org or .edu tld, or from another authority site such as wikipedia? Is it from their front page or buried five levels deep? Is the accompanying article flattering to you or is it a pr nightmare? Does it bring you traffic that converts, or traffic that just wastes your bandwidth? Is it from a good web neighborhood or a bad web neighborhood?

And that's just off the top of my head. I'm sure others can make that list of variables much, much longer.

And how should you rate each variable? None of us knows.

I think there are many more important things to focus on than putting a dollar value on a link. For instance, getting lots more of them . . .

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They are no hard fast rules on how much a link should cost. Of course you should be aware that selling and buying links goes against the Google guidelines.

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Does Google sell links? If yes, shall I block GoogleBOT from visiting my site like I did with http://www.w3toolbar.com/

Here is the robots text file for that site.






What is the implication?

1. If other SE's index those links collected and ranked by one that has surfed the internet since the start surfers using these SE's may find valuable information, that is not available on Google.
2. If that site gets additional content, that content will not be available on Google.
3. Personally, I can easily live without Google, but not so easily without webstandards set where they belong.
4. Google decide what to do on their sites. So do other webmasters on theirs.
5. If it becomes a general tendency, Google can end up as a garbage collector.
6. Personally I do not like web standards that prioritizes what Google "call spammers" to serious webmasters. I have written elswhere how the rel="nofollow" attribute can easily be used to sell links behind the scene. Simply nofollow links on the site that are not sold and follow the sold links. By using sophisticated statistical methods and algorithms it is possible to hide that for BOTS. If it is discovered, the Google "spammer" has made enough money to continue with new sites constantly lying ahead of Google. They will thank Google and laugh at serious web masters following Google guidelines in every detail. I am sure a lot already thank Google.
7. Now Google have made their own "no follow center". I think I prefer not to follow that center.

P.S.
Norwegian Government has implemented one of the best web standards that I can think of if you look at the footer ot the above mentioned site that was deindexed by Google. There you find a link starting with the following anchor text "Site of MultiFinansIT: Organization number ... ".

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Easy - as with anything else you are buying or selling, it's "worth" what a buyer is prepared to pay for it.

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Andy Fletcher, not the famous one.

It is not so easy when a large company in my personal opionion:

1. Try to impose their standards on other companies, that is again IMO not the best.
2. That same company can directly or indirectly be suspected of trying to "monopolize" the worlds link base.

P.S: Are links ranked by human beings content? Again look at my above site if you disagree.

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I've been selling links from my sites and usually I based my pricing on the pr and the traffic it gets. But there are buyers sometimes that don't care about traffic but more on pr, so it depends. Also the age of the domain matters, if its for several months with pr not dropping then you can price more.