How to establish a link value

Like many of the other members of this forum, I buy links almost on a daily basis - but I usually pay an "heuristic" price: that is, I don't have a clear and objective method for calculating the "right" price for a link. People often talk about a good or bad neighborhood and other criteria, but how the heck to you measure that?!?

Therefore, I started thinking about creating a scale (and maybe an online tool, who knows...), and I'd like to have your help.

A link "value" is, from my point of view, determined by these factors (in order of importance):

1. SEO strength of the page (calculated using, for example, SEOmoz good tool) -> this gives you an idea of the page current and future "strength"
2. Alexa rank (I know it's not accurate at all, but al least it's something!) -> gives you an idea of the traffic you might expect from the link
3. "proximity" of the topic to yours (just give a number from 0 to 10)
4. # of outbound links on the page (the fewer, the better)
5. ratio OBL/text
6. current Google PageRank of the page (yes, that stupid green bar) -> c'mon, we all know we want to raise ours!

Obviously I'm talking here about "normal" links we usually see on sale on this forum, a link from CNN or the BBC would always be appreciated...

 

The topic itself should also make a difference as well as the actual (human) quality. Though of course that is hard to implement in a tool.

 

We as a group should establish guidelines/rules to define values of links, based on all factors.

Take out the guess work, take out the bidding

 

Thanks for your reply - I don't fully agree with you, I think what counts is the "closeness" of the pages topic to your sites topic, and you can (kinda...) measure it

What I am after is a way to say: yes, this link is "objectively" worth $XX - the way we can do this is list the judgment criteria (that's what I started...), give a weight to each one of it and then give them a monetary value.

Anybody interested in helping me?

 

I'd be willing to offer my input

You could easily whip up a calculator of some sort

 

That's exactly what I'm after - I think we can develop an automated tool that will evaluate links (obviously there can be "irrational" reasons for buying a link at a higher or lower price, luckily nothing is totally rational in this world...)

 

Thanks a lot!!

First of all, do you think the list of criteria I listed above is correct/complete?

 

I would think so. However, isn't Alexa rank taken into account in the 'page strength' calculation?

 

I think we should take the PageStrength tool as a start but, for example, give a higher weight to the Alexa rank and make it optional in the LinkValue tool - since it takes into account the traffic rank of the main domain, not of the specific page

 

The link location, size and color are also very important, maybe not for SEO, but remember links can also send traffic .

Also Google reads the first 100kb of a web page if your link is in the footer of a big page it may not be followed, right?

 

Good point - would that translate (in an automated tool) into an higher value for links placed more toward the "top" of the document? Would you guys agree on that?

 

Could be

 

here is one tool that I came accros...I think on DP

 

Great tool, thanks! I'd like to take it a step further, thou, trying to think of an automated way of calculation a link's value - but it has some very good ideas...