number of links on a page

[3rd eye]

When someone links to you how much do the other links on that page affect your link.
In other words, an inbound link may boost your link popularity by x, however if there are 10 other links on that page does that mean that your link popularity will now be x/10?

[ihelpyou]

No one knows that answer. We all have opinions about it and many have been discussed in here from time to time. Do a search in here on the subject to see the opinions. Other than that, it only stands to reason that if your link is the only link on a page, you get more credit for it. How much more? Hard to say.

[Advisor]

To learn how Google calculates it, do a search in here for info on PageRank. There are lots of threads and links. The formulas are around, if you like that kind of stuff!

Good luck!

Jill

[Curt]

I had a very similar question. Ever since I talked to another link partner in one of my reciprocal link circles, the number of links per link page was raised as a determining factor. If the page that linked to you had too many other outbound links on it, he said a link from such a page was worth almost nothing. He went onto say that any links page that had more than 30 outbound links on it, each outbound link worth was so diluted that getting a link on such a page was almost worthless.

So far I have no concrete evidence of this. However, I must say that because he uses that method, he has achieved some very respectible ranks under what I consider hard to rank terms. Basically the gist of his comments was this:

A link from a page with just 9 other outbound links was worth more than a page with 19 other outbound links and that page is worth more than a page that has 29 other outbound links. A page with more than 30 has even more diminished value. According to him, if a page with 75 outbound links has a link to your site, that link is not helping your page rank.

Of course this is taken from the point that all other ranking criteria for each of these pages are equal and the only differentiating criteria is how many outbound links there are on the reciprocal link page. I asked this question in another forum but I got similar feedback. I thought that since there seemed to be more seasoned web promoters here that I would find a more definite theory. Alas, it appears nobody really has any clear idea on this.

I would say keep each link page to no more than 30 outbound links per page just incase it is being factored in. The engines do not like link farms and so far the link farms take on the format of lots and lots of endless links like FFA pages. Theoretically, it's suppose to be much better to spread 100 links across 4 pages than to cram all 100 links onto 1 page.

I suppose the next question would be, what do engines consider link farming and what can get a page flagged for link farming? And, if link farming is against the rules, where does that leave real directories? Perhaps it's the reciprocating action that triggers link farm flags. If that's the case, the engines are trying to dictate how we link to one another. It's all getting quite crazy if you ask me. I don't have an answer—just more questions and nobody knows for sure.

[JustTrying]

Very good questions Curt, and I would tend to agree with your comclusions.

Of course, Doug is correct that nobody really knows the Google algo (or any other major SE's algo) as that information is not made public.

With most of these SEO techniques the correct answer as to whether or not they are good or not usually always seems to be "whatever is the most common sense approach."

Or, phrased another way, "since SE's don't like SPAM, is this technique in question more likely to either be considered as something SPAMMY, or might this technique contribute to something SPAMMY." If the answer is yes, then the technique is probably a long-term loser (even though sometimes a borderline SPAMMY technique may seem to work for a while); and conversely, if the technique lends itself to increasing the quality of the SE's database content, then that technique is probably a long-term winner.

This particular link approach would seem to create better quality link pages for the SE's (30 or less links of carefully thought out accurate thematic keyword descriptive text), and therefore should be a winning idea for the SEO. Reality is always the best judge for theories though. Give it a try.

Just my 2 cents worth...