How to analyze the quality of a link
Posted: Wed Jan 22, 2025 8:54 am
Affinity, theme and naturalness
The most important point when it comes to getting a link, one of the factors that will help us decide whether a link is of quality or not, is the subject matter and affinity.
Google knows how to interpret the expertise of the websites it crawls, and if a page that is an expert in our market niche links to us, it must be because we offer valuable content and it is worth considering us. In addition, it is most natural to receive links from websites that deal with content similar to ours.
Affinity has always been one of the most important factors when evaluating a link, but as I mentioned previously, with the latest updates that the big G has been launching, the theme becomes more important than ever.
To give an example, let's imagine that we have a website selling snowboards and we are given the opportunity to receive a link from a website, a blog that deals with winter sports. In this case, it would be very interesting to get it due to what we have mentioned, and we could also be more permissive with certain factors that are used to evaluate links and that we will see later, since the affinity is such that it is worth sacrificing somewhat poorer metrics for a link with such a valuable theme.
Incoming/Outgoing Domain Ratio and SPAM
Another thing that I take into account when evaluating a link is to see the number of sponsored links that the website with which we have the opportunity to collaborate has. For this I usually look at two things:
Improve your SEO!
Ahrefs has a tool that allows us to see both the number of domains that are linking to the website, as well as the number of domains to which the website is linking. With this data, we can evaluate a ratio of the number of incoming/outgoing links, since a website that receives few links and takes out many could be considered a link farm, and receiving a link from this interior designers email database type of website can be more negative than positive.
For example, if we analyse the domain of the Infojardin forum, one of the most typical websites used to obtain free dofollow links by spamming on a gardening forum, we can see how the forum receives 25,000 links, of which 18,000 are dofollow.
If we look at the number of domains it links to, we see that there are 55,000 links, of which 43,000 are dofollow. This is a ratio of more than double the number of outgoing links than incoming ones. And clearly if we look at the posts that are published on the forum, it is clear that it is more than spammed, and a link from this page has little to no value.
Another way we use to detect SPAM or an excess of sponsored links on the web is to go directly to the website with which we are going to collaborate and open the last 10 posts. If we see that many of these, or even all of them, have links to external websites (and especially of poor quality) it is another reason why we would reject a collaboration with the media.
Metrics
One of the most basic factors is metrics. It is of no use to sponsor a website that has no traffic. For this, we generally use the tools we feel most comfortable with, in my case it is Ahrefs. There are people who use Moz's DA and PA, or Majestic's Trust Flow, although I stopped paying attention to these metrics a long time ago.
When we are presented with the possibility of collaborating with a media outlet, the first thing I do is run the domain through Ahrefs, and at a quick glance I usually look at the estimated amount of traffic. In the end, Ahrefs cannot know the traffic that a domain receives, and based on my experience I have seen that what Ahrefs says is always quite different from what is in analytics, but if one thing is clear, it is that this estimated Ahrefs traffic reflects the SEO status of a website, since it is calculated based on the position of the keywords in relation to the volume of the same for which the domain ranks. I also usually look at the traffic trend, since sometimes we can find a domain that has a very negative trend and this link is not worth it.
Here, for example, we see that this domain has a very positive trend and a very high amount of traffic. A priori, and if the rest of the factors we value are met, we could be talking about a good quality link.
Improve your SEO!
We can also look at the number of keywords that rank in the top 10 and their trend, although this is usually a reflection of traffic but it never hurts to keep it in mind.
Position and depth of the article
Another very important factor is knowing where on the page the sponsored link/article will be placed. With experience I have learned to ask where on the website the agreed link or sponsored article will be placed. Although it is not common, sometimes we can find some smart guy who sells us a link from a website with very high metrics, a link that at first seems like a bargain, but then we realize that not everything that glitters is gold, and they have placed the link in a subdomain that is not linked from any main website and has poor metrics. It can also happen that they place the article in such a remote place on the website that the benefit we get from this link is zero. Obviously this happens very rarely, but it can happen, and to avoid it it is always better to know the position in which our link will be placed.
One of the rules we use to assess this is the crawl depth rule, that is, the number of clicks you have to make from the home page of the website to get to the article. If we count the home page as a crawl depth of 0, the normal thing is that our article is at a depth of 1, that is, one click from the home page. Generally, except for exceptions (e.g. affinity), we do not usually accept a link that is further than a crawl depth of 2 clicks from the home page.
Of course, we cannot always follow this rule to the letter, since sometimes a website will link us, for example, to a crawl depth of 5, but the page directly above it is a URL with a lot of traffic and authority. In this case, we might be interested. After all, it is necessary to have a certain analytical eye to be able to detect these situations.
Conclusions
Google is becoming more strict and intelligent when it comes to detecting sponsored links. That is why we need to make the most of our resources to avoid investing them in a link that will not bring us anything. I hope that this little guide can be of help to you, and I would also like you to comment if you have anything else in mind when evaluating a link.
The most important point when it comes to getting a link, one of the factors that will help us decide whether a link is of quality or not, is the subject matter and affinity.
Google knows how to interpret the expertise of the websites it crawls, and if a page that is an expert in our market niche links to us, it must be because we offer valuable content and it is worth considering us. In addition, it is most natural to receive links from websites that deal with content similar to ours.
Affinity has always been one of the most important factors when evaluating a link, but as I mentioned previously, with the latest updates that the big G has been launching, the theme becomes more important than ever.
To give an example, let's imagine that we have a website selling snowboards and we are given the opportunity to receive a link from a website, a blog that deals with winter sports. In this case, it would be very interesting to get it due to what we have mentioned, and we could also be more permissive with certain factors that are used to evaluate links and that we will see later, since the affinity is such that it is worth sacrificing somewhat poorer metrics for a link with such a valuable theme.
Incoming/Outgoing Domain Ratio and SPAM
Another thing that I take into account when evaluating a link is to see the number of sponsored links that the website with which we have the opportunity to collaborate has. For this I usually look at two things:
Improve your SEO!
Ahrefs has a tool that allows us to see both the number of domains that are linking to the website, as well as the number of domains to which the website is linking. With this data, we can evaluate a ratio of the number of incoming/outgoing links, since a website that receives few links and takes out many could be considered a link farm, and receiving a link from this interior designers email database type of website can be more negative than positive.
For example, if we analyse the domain of the Infojardin forum, one of the most typical websites used to obtain free dofollow links by spamming on a gardening forum, we can see how the forum receives 25,000 links, of which 18,000 are dofollow.
If we look at the number of domains it links to, we see that there are 55,000 links, of which 43,000 are dofollow. This is a ratio of more than double the number of outgoing links than incoming ones. And clearly if we look at the posts that are published on the forum, it is clear that it is more than spammed, and a link from this page has little to no value.
Another way we use to detect SPAM or an excess of sponsored links on the web is to go directly to the website with which we are going to collaborate and open the last 10 posts. If we see that many of these, or even all of them, have links to external websites (and especially of poor quality) it is another reason why we would reject a collaboration with the media.
Metrics
One of the most basic factors is metrics. It is of no use to sponsor a website that has no traffic. For this, we generally use the tools we feel most comfortable with, in my case it is Ahrefs. There are people who use Moz's DA and PA, or Majestic's Trust Flow, although I stopped paying attention to these metrics a long time ago.
When we are presented with the possibility of collaborating with a media outlet, the first thing I do is run the domain through Ahrefs, and at a quick glance I usually look at the estimated amount of traffic. In the end, Ahrefs cannot know the traffic that a domain receives, and based on my experience I have seen that what Ahrefs says is always quite different from what is in analytics, but if one thing is clear, it is that this estimated Ahrefs traffic reflects the SEO status of a website, since it is calculated based on the position of the keywords in relation to the volume of the same for which the domain ranks. I also usually look at the traffic trend, since sometimes we can find a domain that has a very negative trend and this link is not worth it.
Here, for example, we see that this domain has a very positive trend and a very high amount of traffic. A priori, and if the rest of the factors we value are met, we could be talking about a good quality link.
Improve your SEO!
We can also look at the number of keywords that rank in the top 10 and their trend, although this is usually a reflection of traffic but it never hurts to keep it in mind.
Position and depth of the article
Another very important factor is knowing where on the page the sponsored link/article will be placed. With experience I have learned to ask where on the website the agreed link or sponsored article will be placed. Although it is not common, sometimes we can find some smart guy who sells us a link from a website with very high metrics, a link that at first seems like a bargain, but then we realize that not everything that glitters is gold, and they have placed the link in a subdomain that is not linked from any main website and has poor metrics. It can also happen that they place the article in such a remote place on the website that the benefit we get from this link is zero. Obviously this happens very rarely, but it can happen, and to avoid it it is always better to know the position in which our link will be placed.
One of the rules we use to assess this is the crawl depth rule, that is, the number of clicks you have to make from the home page of the website to get to the article. If we count the home page as a crawl depth of 0, the normal thing is that our article is at a depth of 1, that is, one click from the home page. Generally, except for exceptions (e.g. affinity), we do not usually accept a link that is further than a crawl depth of 2 clicks from the home page.
Of course, we cannot always follow this rule to the letter, since sometimes a website will link us, for example, to a crawl depth of 5, but the page directly above it is a URL with a lot of traffic and authority. In this case, we might be interested. After all, it is necessary to have a certain analytical eye to be able to detect these situations.
Conclusions
Google is becoming more strict and intelligent when it comes to detecting sponsored links. That is why we need to make the most of our resources to avoid investing them in a link that will not bring us anything. I hope that this little guide can be of help to you, and I would also like you to comment if you have anything else in mind when evaluating a link.