Back Links Management: A Matter of Life and Death for Web Sites

In popular parlance, backlinks are passport to soar high in search engine rankings and the noblest way to garner of referral traffic from popular sites.But the greed for obtaining higher rankings also unleashed the craze for buying links randomly from outside triggering unpleasant consequences that included site suspension and site blocking.

As Google started tightening the screws on backlink buyers and sellers with ruthless penalties, many intelligent site owners have started mulling the perils of buying backlinks without discretion and the need for following fair criteria in evaluation.

There is little surprise that a hardcore buyer now confesses that he spent $3 million for purchasing backlinks but refrained from doing so in recent years. His advice is that buying links super risky now.But the reality is buying back links is not a bad game provided there is sane selection of links. Of course, high risk looms if the purchased links ending spoiling a brand’s fame. So the onus is on the site’s management to purchase links cautiously for which some formulae are advised here.

Ways of Evaluating Links

Creating backlinks call for hard work. But the results are worth the work and what you get will be enduring links that take care of SEO and branding.Overall, the value of links is subjective. What may be good for a plumbing site may not be good for a personal loan company and the reverse is also true.The obvious risks in buying links are—one is the penalty factor by search engines plus the danger of buying irrelevant, spammy and toxic links spoiling a good and growing site.

Every growing site needs back links to earn more value beyond the SEO attributes. For that site owners need to follow many yardsticks in evaluating and finalizing quality links if they are buying.
How to Select Best Backlinks?

In choosing quality backlinks a combination of educated guesses and fair evaluation can help. The secret is searching for some qualities in the links than blindly pursuing them for the sake of ranking or imposing monetary value on them. Such a balanced approach will provide a better focus to move up in the value chain.

Getting Started

The foremost parameter in judging a good link is Perception score for which the component data must be human-derived and not toolset delivered.

Relevancy Score: Relevancy score is all about finding synergy and appropriateness on external sites before choosing links. A perfect link can be ranked 100 and a least relevant one at 1 over a scale of 1-100.One example can suffice. A site offering online coaching to insurance sales force can take a link from another site that delivers the best training techniques on insurance.Considering the high value, a high score is justified even if that is a competitor. But taking a site link from a fish retailer just because he houses some common audience may boomerang

Difficulty Score:

In this metric the most precious, hard to get link comes at 50 on a scale of 1-50 with easy to get link like the popular The Wall Street Journal going to the bottom end. In compiling the difficulty index, one important variable is the frequency of site uploading or publishing.Overall, difficulty metric is something very hard to get fully right. Only a ballpark approximation is what people usually get.

Another significant variable is a number of monthly visitors to a site though some sites attract heavy traffic to certain sections with no traffic to others.Also the site’s performance vis a vis competitors, use of no-follow links and the role of influencers in perking up the site will also matter.
Computing the Real Score
Once the Relevancy Score and Difficulty score are ready to do the analysis by adding and comparing them for a qualitative evaluation. That conclusion leads to perception score.

Intercoder Reliability

In case, the perception score is looking tilted or factually incorrect, use intercoder reliability as the next step. It involves using three sets of scores to arrive at a decisive evaluation. There will be three set of scores averaged to arrive at a number that is somewhere between approximate and accurate.

Hard Number Score: Unlike the past, Page Rank–the number Google had accorded for a site’s authenticity and reliability is changing. The “hard number” was ruling as the consensus star for link evaluation. But things have changed. New age tools such as Moz, Ahrefs and Majestic have crowded the market. New hard numbers are out that can better judge a link from the point of view of a parent site’s credibility.

Domain Authority:

In the new age hard score, the first metric is Domain Authority (DA). In case, some sections of a site have more links than others, Page Authority (PA) is considered. For others checking Domain Authority (DA) is fine.

Root Domains:Here the links a site has developed is judged on the basis of well-laid link metrics. Root domain numbers are critical in evaluating a link with many experts relying on the Total Links metric as a key variable.

Identifying Spam Sites:In case, substantial difference exists between the Root Domains and Total Links the site must be perceived as having major SEO issues. By tallying this differential with Moz’s Spam Analysis it is easy to take a call on avoiding those links that may eventually harm the buyer’s site.

Judgment Time:Once the whole data is pulled out, evaluation scores can b evolved. Weigh each metric before calculating the final score.Rank Root Domains of sites and start comparing them. Start ranking sites from highest to the lowest based on Root Domains metric.If there are more than 10 sites, segregate all sites into groups of 10. If the number is less than 10, each website must form its own group.

Now marks the groups from 1-10, with 10 marks going to sites with the highest number of links and 1 for the least number of links. Now aggregate the Domain Authority and the root domain metric to divide it by 2 to generate the “hard number score”.

To find the Perception Number score, add the Relevancy score and Difficulty score together. In the end, add the Perception score and Hard number score to get the final link evaluation score. Thereafter, make the final list by placing all high scoring sites at the top of your list.

Near Perfect Evaluation:

This method is not an all perfect system for showing quality backlinks. The “difficulty” score may still be tricky as easy links get parked in certain sections with no value to offer. But the formula is robust in prioritizing the links with quality load.

This also makes dedicated human check imperative on every site to decide on the links that can fit organically.Finally, keep a hard eye on Spam evaluation as adopting a link from a troublesome site can be fatal in the long run.