Be careful with links
Links make the Google world go round – but it’s not just a case of more = better. Quality is the most important consideration when evaluating potential link prospects.
So how do you know if you want a link from a website or not?
Metrics (Page Authority/Domain Authority)
Easily accessible through the Moz Bar browser attachment, Metrics are your straightforward, quick, and dirty page analysis tool, which will give an indicator of site quality.
If you’re working with a huge sample of data, an easy way to reduce it is to eliminate anything under a certain mark quickly, for example, no less than DA 18.
Whilst this is a great time saver, it’s essential to remember that by taking such a broad approach to culling potential URLs, you risk missing out on a couple of hidden gems that might be nestled within the spam infested wasteland below your stated threshold.
According to 84.6% of UK SEOs, relevance is the main metric used to assess the quality of a backlink.
Activity
A website still riding the fumes of their mega-blogging-2023 summer is all well and good, but if they’re not producing new content – what are you achieving by placing a link here?
This is the sort of link you might waste time or resources pursuing if you stuck rigidly to evaluating websites based on metrics – yes it’s an authoritative domain (for now), but its influence is declining rapidly, and with no new content, it will soon cease to be relevant.
Interaction
It’s important that the websites we’re looking for foster interaction within their community. You’ve slaved away on this infographic/longform article/hilarious meme for weeks, and you want to share it with the world right? Pitching to sites with vibrant communities means that your content is much more likely to be engaged with.
You’re looking to spur discussion, capture readers’ imaginations, and maybe get a share or two rather than quietly slip into the “Archive” with your post footer serving as its own tombstone epitaph—“0 Comments.” Scary.
Existing link profile
If a link prospect looks too good to be true – it probably is.
“Wow! This site has such great metrics – and it has so many referring domains! It must be extremely authoritative to attract so many links right? And they’ve laid out their terms so clearly – I can see right here at a glance who to contact and how much a link will cost me!”
It’s important to dig into a potential prospect’s link profile, at least quickly. It should be immediately obvious if the site is propped up on some sort of dodgy directory/link wheel scheme or other unsavoury foundation.
As with everything in link building, you’re looking for link profiles that appear as natural as possible.
Context
If you were to successfully acquire your link, where would it appear on the page? Is the site already stuffed with suspiciously over-optimised anchor text?
If so – the site is probably one to avoid.
Sites that are willing to brazenly display commercial, keyword rich anchor text links throughout their content are openly flouting Google’s Guidelines and are eventually going to suffer the consequences.
Anchor Text
What do the existing links on the site look like? If they’re making frequent use of over-optimised commercial keywords then they’re likely to be on the receiving end of a manual action penalty at some point.
You really don’t want to be around when that happens, so steer clear! Anchor text should be as organic as possible.
If you’re in any doubt, ask yourself these questions:
Will I ever have to remove this link?
Is this link ever at risk of getting you in trouble with Google? Consider Google’s existing guidelines, and changes they’re likely to make in the future.
Just because you can get away with it now, doesn’t mean that will be the case forever.
There’s nothing worse than actively harming your campaign.
Would I be happy to show this link to my client?
If there’s any niggling doubt in your mind – chances are you wouldn’t want to show it off to your client!