How to know if a website is worth putting a link on?

[cmuknbb]

Hello all,

Wondering if someone could please help me.

I'm currently in the process of building more links to improve my keywords but how can I tell if the website is worth putting a link on?

I only really want to input links of websites with good traffic.

Thanks,

Beth

[cmuknbb]

Great, thanks so much for your tips and help!

[cmuknbb]

Great thanks for help!

[David-Kley]

Agreed. Spy on Web is a great tool.

Most of the sites that are bad news are pretty transparent. Tons of links, high home page rank, with 0 page rank on subpages or category pages where your link will be posted. Look closely at where your link be be placed. If the page has a ton of links to other companies, low page rank, and just plain seems....unnatural, its best to stay away.

Of course, you could always use the MOZ tools and see inbound links of your competitors, or high ranking sites within your niche.

[KeriMorgret]

If you sat down for lunch with someone from a search engine and they looked at the link, would you be comfortable or squirming?

[GPainter]

Great tip there Robert, you can also use majestic SEO's bad neighborhood checker and spy on webs got a great tool too!

[boballanjones]

Chris has given some great advice there. As a side I'd also recommend checking the site you are linking from doesn't come from a 'bad neighbourhood' and have lots of spammy links pointing to it. You can do this by checking on opensiteexplorer and checking the of quality external links and that they themselves also come from a relating category/niche.

[GPainter]

Hi Beth,

There are lots of different things but the first one is for me always : is it the same category/niche?

What I mean by this is are users of that site going to find the link helpful or useful or is it unrelated and not helpful?

e.g. its not much use having a link to your gardening blog on a space rocket site now is it!

Next up the Moz tool bar is very helpful it will tell you the domain and page authority which can be good indicators of nice sites. There are lots of other toolbars too like Majestic Seo etc.

Finally go with your gut, if your gut says its good or bad its probably right and if you're ever not sure just leave it be.

Remember Google is trying to give the best results for the user if you follow the same advice you can't go too far wrong with Google or your users.