Reply to Link Building Best Practices Question: How do I determine good link targets?

Asked by Steve...

"What signs do you look for to determine what a good link is?"

First my generic answer then I'll be more specific. Generic answer: A good link target will be different for every site you are seeking links for. Specific answer: For example, let's say the site you are seeking links for is devoted to everything about the history of Jazz music, like this one http://www.apassion4jazz.net, then an example of an absolute highest quality and trusted target site would be
http://www.wku.edu/Library/dlps/rsrchguides/dept/html/music.html

Why? Many reasons. First, always look for the INTENT of the target site. In my example above the intent of this library based music web guide is pretty evident. That site isn't there to sell links, barter links, swap links, trade links, triangulate links, or any other silly link scheme. The intent has nothing to do with any search engine. That site exists as a resource to help people. And whether or not this target site EVER sends even one visitor to apassion4jazz.net, really isn't important from a link building standpoint. What's important is that a link from that site and others like it send incredibley powerful signals of trust to the search engines.

The beauty of this is it doesn't take many such signals/links to get to a point where the engines will then, by extension and association, trust apassion4jazz.net as well.

And as this search result shows, they obviously do.

Eric Ward
Link Building Best Practices

NOTE: To ask a link building related question, click the Comments link below, or the Post a Comment link at the bottom of any individual post.