Check snippets of content in Google, especially anything in H tags, bold, or anchor text. Does Google return the site for any of these searches - are they in the SERPS (Search Engine Result Pages)?
How are anchors to other sites doing? (There’s a great firefox extension for this http://www.webmasterbrain.com/seo-tools/firefox-extensions/seo-links/ )
How are internal anchors doing? Especially longer ones, if available
Is it showing up in the backlinks of other sites it gave links to (especially in Google, Yahoo is meaningless for this purpose)? If showing, are links labeled as “supplemental” or not?
Now check same on index page.
Then do a [site:www.example.com] search – how many pages listed? How many actually shown if you click all the way to the end? How many supplemental?
How many backlinks shown for site? Are any listed as supplemental? Any good links in there?
GO TO TARGET PAGE (where link point to, i.e., your site), but this should only be done after the link has been on the host page for 2-3 cache cycles.
Is the link showing in Google backlinks? In Yahoo?
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Are you ranking in SERPS for anchor text of link?
If you do all the above, you’ll get a good picture of the value of a link or a site. But for a quick check, it’s enough to look at the cache, the [site:www.example.com] search for supplemental results, and a few snippets from content text, title or headers. Also, note PR - a 0 or grey PR is bad, but high PR is not necessarily good.
