Jason Lee Miller, a staff writer over at WebProNews reports on some interesting research from Fortune Interactive in Inbound Link Quality Declared #1 in SEO .
The research (conducted round the keyword phrase ‘laptop’ using the company’s proprietary SEOLogic technology) provides empirical evidence that the QUALITY of an inbound link is the most relative important off-page factor while the QUANTITY of an inbound link is the least relative important off-page factor. (See What makes a Quality Link?)
Key points from the research include:
- In-Bound Link (IBL) Quality. This is a measurement of key elements on the page containing an in-bound link which, in combination, influence the link reputation for the target of the link. This is the only factor that had the same level of relative influence across the search engines and happened to be the most influential in all cases.
- In-Bound Link Relevance. This is a proprietary measurement of the topic/keyphrase relevancy of the content on the page containing the in-bound link. Yahoo™ and MSN™ place the same level of importance on this factor but not as much as Google™.
- In-Bound Link Title Keyword Density. All three search engines differ on the level of importance placed on this factor. Google™ assigns more importance than the others, followed by MSN™ and then Yahoo™.
- In-Bound Link Anchor Keyword Density. Google™ and Yahoo™ assign the same level of importance here. MSN™ places more importance here than the others, the second most important overall among its other factors.
- In-Bound Link Quantity. Yahoo™ and MSN™ place equal importance on this factor, but still to a lesser degree than Google™ does. It is worth pointing out that not only is IBL Quality of most relative importance among off-page factors across the board, but IBL Quantity is of least relative importance among the off-page factors across the board.
- Title Keyword Density. This is the most influential on-page factor for the competitive landscape in Google™ as well as in MSN™. Yahoo™ assigns the same overall relative degree of importance to it as MSN™.
A summary of the research is available here: Executive Summary SEMLogic Findings.
And for a slightly acerbic view on link quality, read Michael Martinez in the SEOmoz blog, What’s in your link quality? Michael makes some excellent points on ‘editorial control’.
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