If any of the items below are true, avoid getting a link from the site:
Rule #1 – The website is part of the many link vendors spreadsheets
You can check our Domain Blacklist sheet: DOMAIN BLACKLIST CHECKER
Rule #2 – The website looks like a PBN/link farm
PBNs used to be very easy to spot 10 years ago. Nowadays, people have gotten really good at making PBNs look like legit websites.
Here are some characteristics that can help you spot a PBN:
- all posts are on the homepage with infinite scroll
- no author is attributed to the website, or it simply looks fake
- the homepage links to external domains
- the website has inflated DA/DR
- there is a big gap in traffic across many years (10 years ago the domain might have had traffic, then it went offline, so traffic went to 0, and someone bought it a few years later to use as a PBN, so traffic went up again)
- if unsure, use archive.org to see how the website looked 3-5-10 years ago. If it was being used for something entirely different, it’s probably a PBN now
- the design of the website looks outdated/low-efforted
- footer or header contains outgoing links
- very high number of external links
- same subnet/IP as other domains – hosted in the same server with many other domains. You can use https://spyonweb.com to check whether a domain is doing this. Try running https://momma4life.com through that site, and you will see.
- they offer free guest posts to hide their crappy content/links
PBN Example – https://momma4life.com
✔️ Outgoing link on the homepage to a referral link for knives on Amazon.
✔️ Thousands of blog posts published since 2013 + another outgoing link on the homepage to a money page (selling firefighter trophies).
✔️ Outgoing link on the footer (sitewide link) to another domain.
Rule #3 – News websites with inflated DA/DR scores
Yes, I am talking about news sites with DA/DR 50+, a gazillion pages, and almost no traffic.
These are pretty easy to spot. Usually, they have a very low UR, while having a high DR. They also usually have 10,000+ pages. And they look like a news site.
News Site with inflated DA/DR Example – https://timebusinessnews.com/
Site has DR 72, but only 11K traffic. And most likely, that traffic is irrelevant. Also, this example applies Rule #4 – covering too many topics.
Rule #4 – The website covers 100+ different topics.
These types of sites cover every topic in the world. From tech to law, to your grandma’s cooking recipes.
It’s very easy to spot them because all their categories are usually showcased in the Header of the website, usually featuring many drop-down menus.
Google rewards websites with a strong topical authority. For example, Investopedia covers everything there is to cover about corporate finance, investing, trading, stock markets, etc. As a result, Google rewards it with better ranks.
Websites that cover 100+ different topics should be avoided, like the plague.
Website with no topical authority Example – https://blog.techygeekshome.info/
This website covers everything. SEO, social media, Google, travel guides, random news, education, TV, networking, business, entrepreneurship. Huge red flags.
Rule #5 – The website contains posts or links to CBD/casino/gambling/adult websites.
This could be in the form of a link insertion or even a dedicated guest post. The best way to find out if a website contains any “adult” content or outgoing links, is by going on Google and using the following search queries:
- Site:example.com “casino”
- Site:example.com “bet”
- Site:example.com “betting”
- Site:example.com “cbd”
- Site:example.com “nude”
This rule can be entirely ignored in case you are building links for a project in such niches.
CBD/casino/gambling/adult site Example 1 – https://ventsmagazine.com/
This site is an obvious PBN that also contains gambling content.
CBD/casino/gambling/adult site Example 2 – https://www.businessfirstonline.co.uk/
This one is a bit harder to spot, but deep in the site, there is plenty of gambling content and links.
Rule #6 – The website has lost more than 40% of its peak traffic
If a site used to get 100K monthly traffic, but at some point lost most of that traffic, that means Google most likely deemed the site to be of low quality.
They might have done something shady in the past and got punished for it. Or it could be a temporary drop.
Either way, we don’t want to be associated with it, so don’t risk getting a link from such websites.
When checking a website’s traffic, make sure to filter the data by ‘All Time’ or at least ‘5 Years’ to get the full picture.
Examples
https://counselheal.com has lost all of its traffic.
https://beststartup.co.uk has lost all of its traffic
https://momblogsociety.com has lost all of its traffic
https://artdaily.com had 1.1M in traffic at its peak. Right now, it has 3,000 monthly traffic.
If you look at just the last month of data, you might be tricked into thinking this is a good link-building opportunity. After all, the site drives 3,033 monthly traffic, it’s not 0.
But if you look at the chart for All Time, you will realize that this domain is utterly f***ed.
Rule #7 – The website has a high ratio of outgoing links vs incoming links
If a website has 20,000 outgoing links to different domains and only has 10,000 incoming links from other domains, then they are giving away most of their link equity. Getting a link from such a website means we would get a small fraction of that link equity since it is being distributed to 20,000 other sites.
❌ To find how many links a website is giving away, you can check the Outgoing Links and Linked Domains in Ahrefs:
✅ To find how strong of a backlink profile a site has, you can check the Backlinks and Referring Domains in Ahrefs:
- The number of Backlinks should be higher than the number of Outgoing Links.
- The number of Referring Domains should be higher than the number of Linked Domains.
- The ratio between Referring Domains (RD) and Linked Domains (LD) is more important than the ratio between Backlinks and Outgoing Links.
Example https://sippycupmom.com
- Linked Domains – 12,600
- Referring Domains – 6,257
- Outgoing Links – 146,632
- Backlinks – 33,326
Rule #8 – The website’s ratio of organic traffic vs indexed pages is low
Assume a site has 10,000 pages indexed, but it only gets 5,000 organic monthly traffic. That means each page drives 0.5 organic traffic monthly. That’s abysmally low.
If, on the other hand, a site has only 200 indexed pages and gets 4,000 organic monthly traffic, then each page is driving an average of 20 organic traffic monthly. Which is a lot better than 0.5.
- A ratio of 5 is terrible
- A ratio of 50+ is good
- A ratio of 100+ is excellent
Example https://counselheal.com
- Pages – 249
- Traffic – 107
- Ratio – 249/107 = 2.327 traffic per page, which is extremely low.
Rule #9 – The website has issued tons of invoices but has no clear monetization
After you have negotiated with a website to do a link insertion or a guest post, you might receive an invoice with a huge number, like invoice #00002356.
This means they have issued over 2000 invoices.
If they are not selling anything on the site (subscriptions, ebooks, services), then it’s very likely they have sold over 2000 backlinks to other websites.
This, in turn, means that their link juice is heavily diluted. Avoid working with such websites at all costs.
Examples of Sketchy Domains
Example: http://www.artechstudios.com/
Example: https://blog.techygeekshome.info/
Moz DA: 70
Ahrefs DR: 45
Traffic: only 1.5K
https://incrediblethings.com/work/create-accurate-pay-stubs-online-today/
Reasons:
- Traffic has dropped to almost nothing.
- Site contains 300K backlinks, but only 2K organic traffic
- Site contains guest posts for lawyers, gambling, etc which are unrelated to the site’s niche
