This article explains what link weight is and how it is transferred from one website to another. It briefly describes what TIC and PR are and how they contribute to link weight. Five key criteria that influence link weight are also discussed in detail.
Link weight is an important factor that determines a website’s position in search engine results. It also affects overall site ranking since the quality of backlinks reflects the authority of the resource. The higher the link weight, the faster a site can reach top positions in search results.
The transfer of link weight occurs from one website to another. The website providing the link is called the donor site while the one receiving the link is referred to as the acceptor site.
Characteristics of Link Weight Transfer
The donor site passes certain metrics to the acceptor site such as TIC and PR, which directly affect how high a site ranks in search results.
TIC (Yandex’s Index of Citation) indicates the authority of a website. It evaluates the quality of links pointing to the site and uses a special algorithm developed by Yandex that considers the cumulative weight of all incoming links.
PR (PageRank) is Google’s ranking system that considers both the quantity and quality of links pointing to a page. While Google officially stopped using PR for content ranking in 2016 (or so they claimed), in practice this metric — albeit modified — still holds some relevance.
What Influences Link Weight
There are several key factors that significantly impact the value of a link. These include:
- Anchor text
- Number of links on the page
- Age of the link
- Surrounding text
- Placement of the link
Anchor Text
Anchor refers to the clickable text used as a hyperlink. There are three main types of anchor texts: thematic anchors, abstract anchors, and URL-based anchors.
Thematic anchors naturally fit into the context of the content and relate directly to the topic.
Abstract anchors contain generic phrases like “click here”, “read more”, or “see this page”.
URL-based anchors use the actual web address as the clickable text.
Number of Links
A large number of outgoing links on a single page reduces the individual weight of each link. From a search engine’s perspective, such pages become link donors and may lose their own ranking over time. It’s not advisable to buy multiple links from the same donor site as this can negatively impact the link’s effectiveness.
Age
Generally, older links carry more weight than newer ones. However, in some cases, the value of a link may decrease over time due to the overall spam level of the donor site.
Surrounding Text
The anchor text should blend naturally with the surrounding content. Both should be thematically aligned and contextually relevant. If the link appears forced or unnatural within the text, its effectiveness will be reduced.
Placement
It’s best to place links near the beginning of an article. Links positioned higher up tend to pass more weight compared to those located at the bottom of a page.
