While you might have used Google PageRank just like many others to determine your link value, Google pays attention to several other factors to do the same. You too should consider several other metrics that provide link quality data to help boost your rankings.
While tools such as Citation Flow from Majestic SEO and Trust Flow can be used to calculate PageRank values, you also need to consider other metrics that can provide a deeper evaluation of each link. Link relevance along with keyword relevance is an important factor that should be considered since major search engines such as Google and Bing provide higher importance to both keywords and links that are relevant to the linked page. Hence, receiving links from a trusted source would provide leverage to your rankings as well.
In addition, external links from trusted sites also please most search engines and convince them to boost your rankings. Another factor that could impress search engines is the number of times your webpage gets tweeted, liked, or basically shared with others. If your pages are being shared with people of authority in the eyes of search engines, then these factors will help your website and you should study these metrics in great detail.
Major search engines such as Google also consider the placement of your links on a webpage to determine the chances of viewers clicking on the link. Google also uses data from Google Analytics to find out if viewers did actually click on the displayed link.
In addition, you need to consider bounce rates to figure out how many viewers visited your page only to bounce back to the results page and visit another website. Websites such as compete.com offers tools that can help you monitor how viewers interacted with specific pages on your website. The size of your audience visiting, browsing, and clicking on links on your website can also catch the eyes of major search engines.
All the above metrics can help you calculate link quality and link values that can be further analyzed to improve your campaign and in turn, rankings. The rising importance of social networking sites as well as quality links should be exploited to the fullest to please major search engines such as Google and Bing. Pleasing search engine algorithms rather than trying to manipulate them will bear better results in the future.