Module 2 — Judging link quality

How to look at a link opportunity and decide, with evidence, whether it is worth anything.

 Checklist

-   Name the topic the linking site is actually about, in one sentence, without using the words "general" or "lifestyle".
-   Check that the specific page — not just the site — covers the subject your page covers.
-   Read the paragraph the link would sit in and ask whether a reader would click it.
-   Pull Trust Flow and Citation Flow together and look at the ratio, not either number alone.
-   Compare the site's Topical Trust Flow categories against your own subject.
-   Confirm the exact URL is indexed in Google, not just the home page.
-   Look for internal links pointing at the page; an orphaned page passes almost nothing.
-   Check the publication cadence and whether posts have named, traceable authors.
-   Look at the About page, the contact details, and whether a real organization is behind the site.
-   Check registrant, hosting, analytics and ad IDs when several candidate sites look suspiciously alike.
-   Score the opportunity against your written rubric and record the score, so you can audit your judgment later.
-   Reject anything that only scores well on one dimension, however impressive that dimension looks.

 Lessons

2.1. Relevance: the metric nobody sells you — https://www.advancedlinktraining.com/course/link-quality/relevance-first/
2.2. Authority metrics and their limits — https://www.advancedlinktraining.com/course/link-quality/authority-metrics-and-their-limits/
2.3. Traffic, indexation, and whether the page is alive — https://www.advancedlinktraining.com/course/link-quality/traffic-indexation-and-liveness/
2.4. Reading a site for footprints — https://www.advancedlinktraining.com/course/link-quality/reading-a-site-for-footprints/
2.5. Building a scoring rubric you will actually use — https://www.advancedlinktraining.com/course/link-quality/building-a-scoring-rubric/

AdvancedLinkTraining.com — a resource by Hartzer.com