What the Heck is a low quality link

[Tubby]

It seems we all have a different view on what exactly a 'low quality link'

Feel free to tick the box (multiple choice) of any description you consider to be low quality.

[williamc]

That is about the jist of it, and that is exactly how Google wants it to be. The more confused people are, the more they will keep sending google huge lists of sites that sell links. IMO, any link is still good if it meets simple criteria: 1. it is not deindexed or badly penalized. 2. is relevant to clients site and is worth getting the link for traffic as much as anything else.

[Tubby]

I started the thread with a light hearted list of twenty five options - but I have not posted it yet - I shall return.

Unfortunately It seems I cannot retrospectively ad my list (25)
(I used to be able to)

So just for fun here was the option I intended to offer for you to select from.


1 Links from content page to Main page
2 Links from Main page to content page
3 Links from forum posts
4 Links from directories
5 Signatures from forum posts
6 50 Directory links (same link text)
7 50 Directory links (different link text)
8 link to a chicken egg site (from Chicken (topic) page)
9 link to a viagra site (from Chicken (topic page )
10 Blog, text link to my page
11 Textually related block link to home page
12 (blog) text link to an unrelated topic page
13 (blog) textually related link to content
14 reciprocal link with unrelated topic
15 reciprocal link with related topic
16 3 way (links to A - link back from B)
17 Site wide links in header
18 site wide links in footer
19 500 inbound links from Bloggs
20 1000 inbound links from blogs
22 nofollow links
23 image links
25 pages with 100 plus links

members can let us know the numbers of the ones they feel are safe . . or dangerous.

[SteveGerencser]

That's easy. A low quality link is one that never sends you traffic that converts in to clients/customers/purchases/sign ups.

[Tubby]

Easy for you you to say Steve. . But many members would ask. . . How many of those do I need to rank in Google? - or -Will 1000 of them get my site "Penalised" ?

[SteveGerencser]

Easy for you you to say Steve. . But many members would ask. . . How many of those do I need to rank in Google? - or -Will 1000 of them get my site "Penalised" ?

All of them.

[mjtaylor]

If I have a viagra site, there is nothing wrong with links from pharmaceuticals, probably. It's about relevance. And yes, I would prefer that site to have a spam free link profile, but if it can drive convertible traffic (think BMW on a summer day, hair flying in the wind ) should I turn down the link?

I like to use SEOMoz to assess quality. If a page has decent page and domain authority, I like that, too.

The page/site should be:

Relevant content (and title, too, ideally)
Quality in my eyes - in other words, I should feel proud to be associated with it.
Indexed by Google
Have some Page/Domain Authority in Google
Have respectable rank for some primary keywords

Other considerations: where will my link be placed? Best of all, I like a contextual link within content, of course. Are blogroll or sitewide links entirely discounted? Again, the ability to drive traffic counts more than what Google thinks, but I am not sure we really know Google's weight for links. If the site is quality, a link from the footer or side bar has value as far as I can tell from my own site link profiles.

And there's nothing wrong with reciprocal links. I see plenty of real estate and fishing sites that do well with a preponderance of those sorts of links.It also makes sense that a fishing site would get a link from a local hotel, and might link back to say thanks ... It's all about balance and relevance.

The other site's link profile should be broad - links from forums, blog commenting and directories are fine when mixed with some higher quality links. If Google discounts all of those types of links there would be little to recommend most sites.

[morestar]

I'm not too sure that links that will get you traffic are considered the best links. If I got a link let's say from SEOMoz, in an article, to my website, even with great anchor text, and even if there was traffic to the site, the traffic wouldn't be considered qualified - qualified in the sense of someone actually in need of my services. At most, people would click the link just to see what/why I was linked to but now the question would be why would that link be good for my rankings, when it's actually useless to the users of SEOMoz?

So I don't know about the traffic idea, there's definitely more to it...

[shailender]

It seems we all have a different view on what exactly a 'low quality link'

Feel free to tick the box (multiple choice) of any description you consider to be low quality.

We all have heard that, you should try to get links from niche sites... but you should also focus on keep variations on your links.

It means if we're not getting links from niche sites then they would be considered as low quality??
But keeping variations on your links doesn't mean that we should also try to get links from unrelated websites??

[kgun]

It seems we all have a different view on what exactly a 'low quality link'

Feel free to tick the box (multiple choice) of any description you consider to be low quality.

In my opinion the answer is simple. A low quality link is an insemantic link.

Generally if you ask 10 persons you will get 12 answers.