When it comes to orgnic seo I have come to the conclusion that you can divide your campaign into two separate and vital components:

1. Getting the website right
2. Getting inbound links from other pages

This page is about inbound links and the vital role they play and a scale of measurement which I use to evaluate the strength, potency or power of a link back target.

My link strength evaluation formula:

Page google PR divided by the total number of outbound links that page has. For example if a page has a pagerank of 5 and it already has one outbound link on it, and then if a link to your website is placed on it, the total pagerank is divided between both of your links giving a power of 2.5.

You can use the search engines to build a list of backlinks that a competitor site has, if you check the pr and number of links on each backlinking page then you can score each backlink your competitor has. If you add up the total scores of all links then you have your competitors overall link strength score.

You will be surprised about how low this score is, it ends up being the same as a pages pagerank, more or less…

You will then see that you can outrank a competitor with as little as one or two backlinks. Providing that you evaluate the link strength of each backlink you are seeking in advance.

Innevitably you will find out, even after scanning 20 thousand websites, that the average reciprocal links page only delivers a strength of 0.13 units because the average pr of a page is 4 and the average number of links is 30.

You would also discover that any pages with no pagerank are worth 0, and having scanned a total of 100 thousand websites I conclude that more than 99% of free directories and free links pages are worth 0.

Will be continued…….