Link Basics

PageRank is a dead metric. Google has not updated PageRank since late 2013 and has announced that they will not update PageRank in the future. This does not necessarily mean that Google no longer uses PageRank internally, it just means that they will no longer provide publicly available PageRank updates.

PageRank is a score that Google gives a webpage based on the strength of its backlink profile… that is a culmination of all the links pointing to that page.

However, PageRank is not just the result of adding up all of the back links that point to a page, but of actually using an estimated 46 different factors for calculating the weight passed by each link. Not all links are created equal. There are lot of different types of links, lots of different types of websites and lots of different types of relationships between websites. Some links can help you more than other and some links can even hurt you. But, the easiest way to think of it is that links pass link juice, and Page Rank is how Google quantifies how much link juice a page is getting.

The anchor text of a link is the actual words that are used to create the hyperlink on the webpage… therefore, anchor text only applies to text links as opposed to image links. The anchor text of a link gives search engines a strong indication of what that page is about. This is a big factor in passing PageRank link juice because PageRank is passed in relation to a keyword. When there is no specific keyword associated with the link, Google can see that someone thinks the site is a good resource (and that is good), but when there is a keyword (such as “San Diego Real Estate Agent”) then Google can see that someone thinks the site is a good resource for “San Diego Real Estate Agent” and the site will climb the rankings for that query and closely related queries.

Title tags should be associated with every text link. Title tags are a 508 accessibility attribute, that means that programs that make webpages accessible to blind people use the title tag to help the blind person understand what the link leads to. For this reason, title tags are supposed to be descriptive and provide a concise explanation of what the target page is about. Because of this search engines take the title tag into consideration as an indicator of what words and phrases the target page is about. This makes is a great element to use for SEO purposes.

When you scroll over a text link that has a title tag, after a moment a little box will show up and display the title tag text.

The proper format for a text link consists of 3 elements: The URL of the target page (the href), the title tag, and the anchor text. The syntax for a properly formatted text link is:

<a href=”URL” title=”Title Text”>Anchor Text</a>

It is typically recommended that both the title tag and the anchor text should be a match for the keywords that you want the target page to rank for.

An alt tag is to an image link what the title tag is to a text link. Title tags are not valid for an image link. Images that are also a link utilize alt text in the same way and for the same reason as title tags on text links. However, in addition to an alt tag, images should also include Schema.org markup to provide search engines with even more information about the image (which is discussed in the Technical Optimization course lesson about Schema.org Markup).

When you scroll over an image that has an alt tag, after a moment a little box will show up and display the alt tag text.

At it’s most basic, an image link should include the following syntax:

<img src=”URL of image” alt=”Alt Text” />

Contextual links are the most powerful type of links you can get. A contextual link is a text link to your site that comes from within the body content of another page.

For instance, if you are getting a link from a news article or a blog, the link would come from a keyword or phrase within the story. The reason contextual links are so powerful is because they are able to provide search engines with context. In other words a search engine can understand the topic being discussed and can draw the conclusion that your page must be relevant to that discussion. When someone is writing content, if they choose to link to your page, it must be because your page elaborates upon a certain aspect of the topic. These are exactly the types of links that Google wants to see.

Google’s guidelines state that any link that is advertising related or has been paid for, should include the element rel=”nofollow” within the link. This indicates to Google that you have paid for the link, and Google will not allow PageRank to flow through that link. Basically, the rel=”nofollow” element just torches the PageRank so the link will not help your site rank better in Google. As soon as Google introduced penalties for things like buying links for the purpose of manipulating their rankings, they had to give webmasters a way to legitimately promote their sites through link building, while providing those same webmasters a way to legitimately avoid incurring a Google penalty. The “nofollow” tag allowed this to happen.

It should be understood that, for a site that is involved in heavy promotion and becoming popular, a certain amount of “nofollow” links is expected. In fact it indicates that the site is making efforts to utilize legitimate channels for link building. However, if you nofollow every link that you build you would probably never be able to reach the top of Google’s search results. Just be aware that some of your links should be nofollowed and that having a small percentage of these can potentially give you some indirect benefit by making your “dofollow” backlink profile look more legit.

DoFollow links pass PageRank. There is no special mark-up that makes a link a dofollow link… simply the absence of the rel=”nofollow” element makes the link a dofollow link. For a link to pass PageRank and directly influence your rankings in Google it must be a dofollow link.

The term “Transactional Links” indicates a text link that utilizes optimized anchor text. It doesn’t mean that money is changing hands, however it does mean that the optimized anchor text is passing PageRank that is associated with a specific keyword phrase. This holds SEO value and has the ability to manipulate Google’s search rankings.

For instance, if you have a page that you want to get ranked for “San Diego Real Estate Agent” then a link from another website that uses the phrase “San Diego Real Estate Agent” as a link to point to your site is considered a “Transactional Link”. This is because the anchor text of a link gives search engines a strong indication of what that page is about.

This is a big factor in passing PageRank link juice because PageRank is passed in relation to a keyword. When there is no specific keyword associated with the link (meaning that the anchor text is a generic term like “click here” or just the URL of the target page), Google can see that someone thinks the site is a good resource (and there is some general SEO benefit). But, when a keyword is used for anchor text (such as “San Diego Real Estate Agent”) then Google can see that someone thinks the site is a good resource for “San Diego Real Estate Agent” and the site will climb the rankings for that specific query and closely related queries.

To be clear, we are talking about off-site navigational links. The term “Navigational Links” is used to describe links that are not associated with a particular keyword. Typically this includes links that use anchor text like “click here”, “visit website”, “read more” or just the URL of the page that the link is pointing to. These are still good links, but not quite as valuable for a targeted SEO strategy as Transactional Links. Still, if you are using link building methods that Google can clearly see are paid or self-promoted, such as Press Releases, Syndicated Articles, or advertorials, then you should either use Navigational Links or “no-follow” the links… and a navigational link is still much better than a “no-follow”.