Backlinks are great boosters for a site’s searchability and credibility. You can usually get them from syndicated content or reliable guest posting. But not all backlinks are created the same. So, how do you check the quality of one?
Daryl Rosser has a great YouTube channel for SEO education. He put together a 23-minute video on how to audit your backlink profile and screen potential links.
Here’s your helpful checklist to qualify the metrics and value of a link:
- Basic link qualification – Daryl used Ahrefs to check out links on a snapshot level by seeing if the domain rating is over 30 and if it has strong traffic numbers.
- Checking backlinks on backlinks – Not only do you want to see backlinks for your own site, you also want to do this for the sites you are acquiring links from. Usually, you can tell from a list of sites that are “spammy,” irrelevant, or legit just from their URL. If you are seeing huge jumps in backlinks, it’s time to investigate where they could be coming from (comment bots and spammy guest posts being the usual suspects).
- Understanding traffic consistency – To get into the weeds of vetting a new link, you’ll need to see where its traffic is trending. If it’s down-trending, hold off on acquiring that link. If there are wild spikes, even up-trending ones, there might be something fishy going on.
- General site must-haves – If you are looking to get syndicated content from a site, make sure they have a quality site that isn’t a private blog network site (PBN) or has been repurposed.
Check out Daryl’s full video for all the little link deets.
