Search Engines measure your web site’s credibility in terms of its perceived importance by other websites, which is shown whenever web sites link to your web site. Therefore, acquiring inbound links is vital to achieving a prominent position in the Search Engines. Of course, one-way links from reputable, relevant sites are where the real value lies.

Here are 6 factors that will enhance link quality:

1. The web site that is linking to you needs to be reputable. This is determined by Google’s Page Rank (a measure of incoming links) and Trust Rank (a measure that is based on human editorial opinion).
2. The relevance of the web page that is linking to you is also important. Therefore, you need to make sure that it is really appropriate for that web site to be linking to you.
3. The higher up your link is located on the page that is linking to you, the more valuable that link is.
4. There should not be a lot of outgoing links on the page that is linking to you.
5. You need to make sure that your link anchor text (the “clickable” phrase on the page that links to your site) is relevant and keyword-rich instead of simply saying something like “click here.”
6. You also need to vary your link anchor text. This will make your links look more natural, which Search Engines also like.

All of this needs to be done gradually and should point to more than just your web site’s home page so as to also increase your credibility.