Most web site owners know that the number of links pointing to your site (link popularity) is very important. However, often the source of these links (link quality) is overlooked.

That is why it is essential for every web site owner to continually monitor both link popularity and link quality. Using a tool such as the Checker and Link Quality Checker from Elixir Systems will give you the necessary statistics on your links and your competitor's links.

Here are some of the statistics you should monitor:

Total Inbound Links to your Home Page
Most sites linking to you will be to you home page. This statistic should show the total links both including and excluding internal links.

Total Inbound Links to Your Whole Site
You should know the total amount of links going to you whole site. This is a good figure to compare with competitor sites.

Quantity of Deep Links
These are links to pages other than the home page. These links are a valuable indicator of the quality of a site. Bought links tend to go to the home page whereas organically grown links tend to go to internal pages. These internal pages get a boost from these offsite links and are an often overlooked by web site owners.

Deep Linking Percentage
The deep link percentage is the number of deep links as a total of the overall links. This generally ranges from 5% to over 80%. Having a deep link percentage of over 30% appears to indicate a nicely linked site. This is the minimum you should strive for.

Yahoo Directory
Does your site have a link from the Yahoo Directory? One of the most important directories on the internet currently is the Yahoo directory. The Yahoo directory is seen as a trusted link and is worth more than links from most other sites. The nice thing about Yahoo is you can get a link fairly easily for the price of submission. Once in the Yahoo directory it