Most link building goes wrong before the first outreach email is sent. The target list is built from a spreadsheet of domain scores, nobody opens the sites, and three months later the client has forty links from pages no human has ever read.
We vet every site by hand before we pitch it. It's slower, and it's the main reason our links keep their value. Here's what we look at.
The question underneath every check
Would this link make sense if search engines didn't exist? If a real reader of that site might follow the link to your business and find it useful, you're probably fine. If the only reason the link exists is to pass ranking value, search engines are built to notice, and you're paying for something with a short shelf life.
What a site has to pass
It's a real publication
We look for named authors with a history, articles that someone clearly edited, and signs of an actual audience: a newsletter, social accounts with real engagement, comments from people who aren't bots. A site that publishes forty unrelated "guest posts" a week fails this immediately.
It covers a related subject
Relevance at the site level and at the page level. A home improvement blog linking to a roofing contractor makes sense. A general "business news" site that also covers crypto, dating, and lawn care makes much less.
Its outbound links look normal
We scan who else the site links to. If a plumber's link would sit next to casino, essay-writing, and supplement links, the site is selling to anyone, and search engines have probably noticed.
It ranks for its own topics
We check whether the site gets search traffic for the subjects it writes about. A site with impressive authority scores and almost no organic traffic is a warning sign. Search engines may already distrust it, and if they won't send it visitors, they're unlikely to value its links.
The page will be indexed and stay up
Placements on orphaned pages, in "sponsored" sections that are blocked from search, or on articles that quietly disappear after six months aren't worth much. We check that similar existing pages on the site are indexed, and we recheck our placements later.
A customer might actually click it
This is the simplest test and the one that catches the most. If we can't picture one of the client's customers reading that article, we move on.
Metrics we treat as hints
Domain Rating, Domain Authority, Authority Score and similar numbers are estimates made by SEO tool companies. They're useful for sorting a long list and spotting obvious junk. They're also easy to inflate, and they say nothing about relevance or real readership. We use them to decide which sites to look at first, never to approve a site on their own.
The same goes for estimated traffic. A tool's traffic graph is a rough model. What we care about is the shape: steady or growing is good; a sudden spike followed by a collapse often means the site was hit by an update.
Where good links usually come from
- Original data or research that journalists and bloggers want to reference
- Expert commentary for writers covering your industry
- Local organizations: chambers of commerce, trade associations, sponsorships, and community groups
- Partners, suppliers, and manufacturers who list the businesses they work with
- Useful guides that other sites recommend to their readers
- Existing mentions of your brand that don't link yet
- Broken links on other sites that pointed to an old page of yours
A note on paid placements
Some legitimate publications charge for sponsored articles. Google's spam policies treat buying links that pass ranking credit as a link scheme, and they ask that paid links be marked with rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow". When a placement involves payment, we tell the client, and we're honest about what kind of value it carries. Sponsored coverage on a site your customers read can still bring referral traffic and visibility. It just isn't the same thing as an earned editorial link.
Pace and anchors
Real coverage arrives unevenly but steadily. We build at a pace that matches the client's size and industry, and we keep anchor text varied and mostly natural: brand names, page titles, plain URLs, and the occasional descriptive phrase. A wall of exact-match anchors is one of the easiest patterns for search engines to spot.
If you'd like us to look at where your current links come from, and how they compare with your competitors', send us your site.