Link building is an important component of SEO because inbound links are what help to convey trust to the search engines. Link building can be approached many ways. There’s an easy way and a hard way. Take a guess which one has the biggest impact on your SEO? If you think that link building is easy, it means that you’re probably approaching it the wrong way and the links that you are building aren’t really doing much good for your site. In fact, they could be harming the site. The links that are the most valuable today are the ones that take time to achieve and are based on relationships. If a link is easy to attain it should raise a red flag.
Avoid easy links from sites that have the following negative traits:
No Real Search Traffic and Drop After Core Updates
Modern spam networks (PBNs) use AI and clean premium themes, so a nice design is no longer a sign of quality. The ultimate metric today is organic traffic. Check the domain in Ahrefs or Semrush: if its traffic is close to zero or plummeted after recent Google Core Updates (Helpful Content system), the site is penalized. Buying a link there will harm your SEO.
Typical traffic collapse of a toxic link-farm domain after a Google Core Update. Avoid acquiring backlinks from sites with this specific visibility profile.
No contact information
A website should be easily associated with a business, organization, person, association, etc. If there is nothing listed on the site that confirms who owns it and you can’t find any contact information there’s a good chance that it’s just part of a link farm network.
Content covers a variety of topics
This doesn’t necessarily mean that the site is bad or spammy, but a site that appeals to a very wide audience and covers lots of different topics isn’t going to be a strong link for link building purposes. For SEO, a link should in some way tell the search spiders what the site is about. A link from a broad site that isn’t relevant might actually confuse the search spider. Look for links that are in some way related to your niche and there is a better chance that it will also generate traffic from target audience members.
Unnatural Outbound Link Ratio and AI-Generated Spam
ocial icons can be easily faked. Instead, look at the content and link outbound profile. If the site publishes dozens of low-quality, AI-generated articles daily covering completely unrelated niches just to sell links, it is a link farm. Google heavily filters such sites. Ensure the domain has strict editorial guidelines and high E-E-A-T signals.
Too many keywords
Related keywords on the site are a good thing. Maybe that’s how you came across the site in the first place. However, look a little bit deeper. Are the keywords on the page too many times? Sites that are stuffed with keywords don’t care about the website visitor and it’s likely that the site will incur some sort of penalty at some point.
Use advanced SEO metrics and common sense when deciding on where to build links. Make sure that the site has a clean history in Wayback Machine, ranks well in AI Overviews / Google Search, shows stable organic growth, and has a relevant target audience before acquiring a link
Avoid easy links from sites that have the following negative traits:
No Real Search Traffic and Drop After Core Updates
Modern spam networks (PBNs) use AI and clean premium themes, so a nice design is no longer a sign of quality. The ultimate metric today is organic traffic. Check the domain in Ahrefs or Semrush: if its traffic is close to zero or plummeted after recent Google Core Updates (Helpful Content system), the site is penalized. Buying a link there will harm your SEO.
Typical traffic collapse of a toxic link-farm domain after a Google Core Update. Avoid acquiring backlinks from sites with this specific visibility profile.
No contact information
A website should be easily associated with a business, organization, person, association, etc. If there is nothing listed on the site that confirms who owns it and you can’t find any contact information there’s a good chance that it’s just part of a link farm network.
Content covers a variety of topics
This doesn’t necessarily mean that the site is bad or spammy, but a site that appeals to a very wide audience and covers lots of different topics isn’t going to be a strong link for link building purposes. For SEO, a link should in some way tell the search spiders what the site is about. A link from a broad site that isn’t relevant might actually confuse the search spider. Look for links that are in some way related to your niche and there is a better chance that it will also generate traffic from target audience members.
Unnatural Outbound Link Ratio and AI-Generated Spam
ocial icons can be easily faked. Instead, look at the content and link outbound profile. If the site publishes dozens of low-quality, AI-generated articles daily covering completely unrelated niches just to sell links, it is a link farm. Google heavily filters such sites. Ensure the domain has strict editorial guidelines and high E-E-A-T signals.
Too many keywords
Related keywords on the site are a good thing. Maybe that’s how you came across the site in the first place. However, look a little bit deeper. Are the keywords on the page too many times? Sites that are stuffed with keywords don’t care about the website visitor and it’s likely that the site will incur some sort of penalty at some point.
Use advanced SEO metrics and common sense when deciding on where to build links. Make sure that the site has a clean history in Wayback Machine, ranks well in AI Overviews / Google Search, shows stable organic growth, and has a relevant target audience before acquiring a link
