What are the lowest acceptable metrics for a link?

[inhouseseo]

I understand there is a subjective, human factor when deciding to link to/from a site.

Nonetheless, what are the lowest Moz or Majestic metrics that are acceptable when building links. At what point do you say this site doesn't have the profile I would want?

I am looking to clean up the backlink profile of a site. Also, I would like to set a criteria for building links in the future.

I appreciate your thoughts on metrics when it comes to link building.

[Andy-Halliday]

Like others have said, DA is just a number and in today's Googles eyes, it's all about relevancy of the page, rather than the page authority.

Also a site might have a high DA, but if the link juice doesn't pass down to the page where the link is, DA is irrelevant.

how about looking at links in a different way. Instead why not image Google doesn't exist and the only way to get relevant traffic to your site is from other websites talking and sending referral traffic (through a link). You would then only place links where you know you would get decent traffic and sales - think like this and you will get the relevant links and rank nicely. DA and numbers are irreverent then, it's all about relevancy

[davidangotti]

While I understand you are looking for the lowest metrics that are acceptable, I think that is the wrong way to go about it. The focus should not be on the metrics and instead on the users and the relationship. In fact, if you hone in on only authoritative sites, your link footprint will appear very unnatural. Basically, it is unnatural to have ALL authoritative links and that does not look good to the search engines.

There was a great post by James Finlayson on moz last year. This post will hopefully do a better job explaining this than my brief answer:
http://moz.com/blog/how-guest-bloggers-are-sleepwalking-their-way-into-penalties

Although the post was about guest blogging, it definitely pertains to your situation as well. Imagine you arbitrarily decide that the lowest DA you want is 30. Your link graph will look a ton like the unnatural one under the Link Quality section. Instead, just focus on building relationships and links where it simultaneously profits users and your brands and the outcome is guaranteed to be good.

[Travis_Bailey]

All of the numbers are borderline arbitrary. I would simply state; "Don't be stupid." That will get you further than anything.

[MickEdwards]

Chasing the domain authority for links is not really as straight forward as that.

1. Domain has DA of 50 but not really related, is starting to crack with poor content etc
2. Domain has DA of 15 is spot on in terms of directly related content and quality.  It's a new site and looks like it will develop.
3. A good link profile will have a natural mix of low to high DA, with an upturn for the most common 30-50 DA.  This will include a good sprinkling of no-follow.  When researching I tend to filter 25+ but keep an open mind on everything.

For cleaning up a profile you can't look at those measurements, you need to go into each site and manually check out it's content and history, its own link profile and make a judgement if you are in the right neighbourhood. Of course directories, 'comments' links and badly placed 'articles', thinly veiled paid for (do-follow) are much easier to weed out.