Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog

Putting a Price on a Link – Jim’s Value Indicators.

I’ve been asked a few times recently how we evaluate the value of a link.

Maybe one day I’ll make a public tool that shows how we value a link….but not today.

However, I will show 2 screenshots of one of our earlier link value tools….Version B4 (We’ve been through several versions, and continue to modify and improve it).

http://www.webuildpages.com/lvt-tool/lvt-tool.htm (Older version)
(don’t ask me about the co-citation stuff please….I’m not going to comment on that, and it’s changed some since that version).

I also blacked out the price we’d charge for a link like that.

Keep in mind that we don’t go for homepage links (99% only powerful subpages), and we work on getting links within the content area of webpages (something that looks like this), and sometimes we add co-citation (something I don’t want to talk about today). And yes, if we can get our ads above the fold, with a nice banner to boot, that’s even better (but not always possible).

So there’s how we valued links last month.

How much do you think a link like this is worth? (Taking into account that we don’t know how much traffic this ad will bring….so you’re guesses on worth will have to be strictly on the link value, not on the traffic value (sorry Matt)).

Anyone out there think that this is evil?

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25 Responses

  1. are thoose 56 external links from that specific page or domain?
    i would guess $50 $75/month range

  2. Jim, how much do you think this sports man is worth?
    He is pretty experienced, he is 29, he has won national championship 3 times, he is in national team for 8 years.

    What I would like to say is that very important part is topic of the site. If this site is for example travel site (hotels bookings, fly tickets, …) the price will be much higher than in for example funeral services.

  3. I´d like to add that value of a link depends on defined goals of the participating partys and what they want to achieve by buying/selling these links.

    If the seller has calculated how much he needs to gain from selling links to have a good feeling and it´s $50 each link and month that´s fine for him.
    If I feel I need to buy one of these links and I think it will bring some notable targetted traffic (or some great link juice) and it´s worth $100 for me, I do not feel ripped when I pay more than he expected, nor would he if I bought them for 50 bucks.

  4. From the webmaster who is selling the link’s perspective, you’d also want to calculate any planned improvements on the page. IE if you invented a new item and know it’s going to spread like crazy, you know the value will increase way more than what it currently is.

  5. I’ve been writing about link evaluation and related topics at SEO Theory. I would never look at the Toolbar PR for a page. Nor would I give any consideration to how many .EDU links it has. Not that I undervalue the power of well-organized .EDU domains, but that cuts out a lot of valuable real estate.

    Nor would I want a link from a page with a cache date more than 30 days old. And I’m being extremely generous in saying that much.

  6. I’d say between $75 and $100 bucks a month. Yeah, not all .edu links are necessarily great but if you have 200+ there’s probably a few in there that are really great.

  7. Gzlatin – you hit the nail on the head “Yeah, not all .edu links are necessarily great but if you have 200+ there’s probably a few in there that are really great. ”

    And that’s the point of checking for .edu backlink…it’s just one gauge of trustworthyness of the site and the page.

  8. Hey Jim,

    that looks like a fantastic tool – I like the manual evaluation of relevancy – really bringing in the site / link relevancy for the client…

    Amusing you won’t talk about co-citation… is there anything new? you already wrote so much about it that I don’t know what you could still add 🙂

    cheers
    christoph

  9. Jim wrote: “….edu backlink…it’s just one gauge of trustworthyness of the site and the page. ”

    .EDU links may or may not be indicators of value and trust. They can be gamed (and ARE being gamed) just like many other types of links.

    However, my point was not that there is less value in .EDU links but rather that your screen capture gives the impression that sites which don’t have .EDU links don’t have as much power or potential as sites that do have .EDU links.

  10. yea…..I was just looking for one measure of trust to help our link ninjas…and that was the 1 I choose…seems easiest…not the best…but easiest….I’m assuming the sites we’re contacting aren’t SEO’s…thus they’re not gaming the system….we try not to contact SEO’d sites when requesting ads….no offense to all of us reading this, but we run from SEO’s that want to deal (links) with us.

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  12. Hey Jim, you stated that you don’t go for Home Pages. What if you use that linking tool on the link you provided and a home page is the strongest link (page with the most links), then would you use a Home Page?

  13. How about doing some research? Find a set of random websites and make some offers. I would be very interested in the result.

  14. Hi Jim, I came to this article from Rand Fishkin’s guide to Build Links. It kind of gave me an idea of how to value links, but can you write an article listing the most common aspects to have in account when valuating links? Thanks.

  15. Really cool tool. I wouldn’t pay more than U$50.
    Jim, would you share with us any other cool tool that you use for link analysis? 🙂
    Do you like SEO Spyglass?
    Thanks

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