Incoming links test
From SiteRay wiki
| SiteRay Test | |
|---|---|
| First appeared: | Sitescore 1.0 |
| Applies to: | All versions |
| Type: | Individual test |
| Scored: | Always |
What does it do?
Counts the number of links found pointing to this website, in particular 'quality links'.
Why is it important?
The volume of quality links correlates highly with how well regarded a website is by search engines. Websites with many links generally score far higher. Link building (i.e. purposely obtaining links to a website) is a large part of effective Search Engine Optimisation.
Links are also an excellent means of measuring how prominent the website is on the Internet – i.e. prominent websites will generally attract more links all by themselves.
Example results
How is it measured?
The number of links counted by Google (worldwide) and Yahoo (worldwide) is measured. Higher numbers of links count towards a higher score. The Google counts as 'quality' links, and Yahoo counts as total links.
Note that this number of links reported by Google is far lower than the equivalent reported by other search engines, such as Yahoo. This is intentional, as Google is far pickier about what it will count as a link, and much more representative of the value of those links.
Technical explanation
The score is calculated on a logarithmic scale. Low numbers of links therefore make quick increases in score, with higher scores requiring very high volumes of links. This mirrors (approximately) the behaviour of Google's PageRank.
Google is much pickier at counting links, which is one of the reasons their results are generally considered more accurate. Among other criteria, they are know to exclude links that:
- Come repeatedly from one website (e.g. in the footer of every page)
- Come from a set of related webservers (e.g. similar / identical IP addresses)
- Come from a set of websites which appear to reference each other exclusively
- Come from sites that reciprocate the link
- Come from blacklisted websites
- Come from brand new websites
- Come from websites filled with some user generated content (e.g. Wikipedia)
- Are invisible or nearly so (e.g. white text on white background)
In effect, Google are very good at eliminating most of the common tricks for generating artificial links, which people have used to trick search engines in the past.
Common problems
Some people argue that the number of links pointing to their website is far higher. We intentionally only count links of a certain standard, as these are what counts mostly towards a positive search engine ranking (see [#How is it measured?|How is it measured?].
If your website is new, it make take a month or two for search engines to uncover any links to it.
How to improve this score
Obtain more quality links to your website (see link building).
How to use this test effectively
If the score for this test is low, consider investing in link building. The resulting increase in search engine placement is likely to be considerable. Otherwise we recommend people check the number of links they have, and that it is always increasing (this should happen automatically, as nearly all websites accumulate more links over time).
Future developments
In Sitescore 3.1, this test is being expanded to provide more detail on link sources, and to exclude itself for Development websites.
