Which links are most powerful

[vkpolar]

If I am analyzing a competitor website, how can I see which websites are the most powerful to get links from? I am using Opensite Explorer.

[RickyShockley]

Hi Igor!

While there are many different attributes that can make a link valuable to your specific site, a very over-arching method for checking link quality would be to sort by Domain Authority. This will give you the most authoritative sites that link to your competitors. Please keep in mind that it does take some investigation to sort through this list to find high quality opportunities.

For example, a competitor may have a link from a Wordpress blog that shows a 100 for the Domain Authority number. In reality, that blog may have very low Page Authority, may actually have low authority and low readership.

I'm a fan of Eric Ward's golden rule. Review link opportunities and if they provide your site with an opportunity to earn some quality referral traffic as a result, then they are likely "good" links to pursue. If not, it may be better to pass.

Diversifying your traffic sources through quality links is much more valuable long-term than simply pursuing links to obtain better search rankings.

Let me know if that makes sense and I'll do my best to help and/or elaborate!

-Ricky

[David-Kley]

Getting the right links is a complicated answer, but I will try to help with a list style format. Here are the questions you should ask yourself:

1. Does the site I want links from fit within my audience? If someone sees my link on a site, is it relevant to where they will be compelled to click on it?
2. Does the linking domain have a high pagerank, page authority and domain authority?
3. If I get a link from the domain, is the link a "followed" or "no-follow" link?
4. Even if the factors listed above are high, do I want this site linking to me? 
5. Do other sites like mine link from this site? Is it releavnt to my industry or service? Is it local in nature or nationwide?
6. Is it a paid linking platform? Sites that you can get links from for $5-70 are generally not good places to get links from. Google has become very harsh on paid links. Even if it looks tempting becaise you see a competitor doing it, try to think of the long term health of your site.
7. Look at where your link will be placed. If it just gets dropped on a directory page full of competition and links, I doubt you will get any value from that. Not only from a user perspective since they will not be able to find your link amongst the clutter, but also from an SEO perspective.

Hope this helps!