When building a prospect list for backlinking, we have to make sure that a backlink from a certain website will contribute to our domain authority, and not be a waste of time and money, or worse - harm it (check out my take on toxic backlinks). Usually, we rely on domain metrics to make this decision, and it's good for a quick check, but we should look deeper into the website we're considering to get a full picture since the popular metrics can be spoofed.
It's always good to remember, that those metrics, like DR/UR (Ahrefs), DA/PA (Semrush), TF/CF (Majestic), etc., are arbitrary, it's an estimation, based on the respective company's database and algorithms. In the past, there was such a metric from Google itself - PageRank, which was a real deal, but it was hidden from the public in 2016 (to make SEOs' life harder, I guess), and now we have to rely on third-party tools, which can be manipulated.
1. DR/DA/TF/CF
Maybe there should be a Captain Obvious warning here, but it seems like a lot of people are unaware of the fact that there are a lot of services that offer to increase your domain metrics, and it works. Just check out Fiverr, there are a lot of gigs that offer to increase your DR/DA/TF/CF. There are even some videos on YouTube that compare different services and show the results.
That's why we should take a closer look at the website's backlink profile. If their DR (or whatever) is high, but the backlinks are spammy, it's obvious that the metric has been spoofed and a backlink from this website would be worthless (at best) for us. It's somewhat awkward to explain what a "spammy backlink" is, usually you just get an eye for it after you've seen a lot of them, but here are some common signs (it's not a complete list, but it's a good start):
- backlinks from forums, blog comments, profile pages, etc. (not always a bad thing, sometimes the post/comment really contributes to the discussion, and the backlink fits organically there, but if thousands of them popped up in a short period of time, it's a sign of spam)
- backlinks from pages with a lot of external links
- backlinks from pages with low-quality/thin content
- a lot of backlinks with the same anchor text, which is not a website's domain name/URL
- a lot of backlinks from the same URL pattern (can be a sign of a low-quality PBN)
- a lot of backlinks from websites on the same IP or subnetwork (i.e. 100.100.100.1, 100.100.100.2, 100.100.100.3, etc.) - also a sign of a low-quality PBN
An easy way to get a quick overview is to check out the "Backlink profile" graph in Ahrefs. If you see a sharp rise, then a slow decline (which means that a lot of spammy backlinks were added in a short period of time, and then the targeted websites' owners started to gradually clean them up), or a sharp rise, then a plateau (which can be a sign of a low-quality PBN), it's a sign of metric spoofing.
Note
Almost every website has some spammy-looking backlinks, it's a normal thing since you can't control who links to you, and sometimes there are some weird auto-generated websites that do it, or it can be a form of ref spam (when someone places a backlink to your website in hope that you will notice it in your backlink analytics and visit the referring page; such pages usually contain thousands of links and some kind of ads). It's not a big deal, but if the majority of backlinks are spammy, combined with an absence of high-quality ones, it's a red flag.
2. RD:LD ratio
This is a kind of a follow-up to the first point. In the previous post we've discussed that the referring domains to linked domains ratio is an important metric, and it's a good idea to keep it at 1:1 or higher. But if a website has a lot of inbound spammy backlinks, and in turn hasn't placed/sold a lot of outbound ones yet, this ratio will be amazing. So, it's a good idea to check the quality of the referring domains, not just the quantity.
3. Organic traffic
Wait, what? If Ahrefs shows that a website has some organic traffic, it means that it has some keywords ranked in Google, and people are visiting it, which means it has enough authority. Some arbitrary metrics being manipulated doesn't sound too surprising, but traffic is real, right? Well, yes and no.
Some websites use a somewhat clever trick - they employ a form of what is called "programmatic SEO" nowadays (back in the '00s we called it "doorway pages"; it's not strictly the same, but the idea is very similar), which is a set of pages that are created automatically, with thin content, targeting low-competition keywords.
Slight detour: Doorway pages
The idea of "doorways" in general is to get traffic from Google, and then redirect it to the money website. Since the targeted keywords are low-competition, it's easier to rank for them, sometimes even with zero authority (simply because there are no other websites with content relevant enough to the keyword, which is usually very long-tail).
But wait, if the keywords are such low-competition, there should be no traffic, right? Well, yes, but the trick is to target a lot of them, and then the traffic adds up. Since the content is thin, the pages are generated automatically, and there can be millions of them.
It can be a useful technique to quickly grab some traffic, but it's not a long-term strategy, since Google is actively fighting against it.
So how can it be used in our context? There are some keywords that are low-competition but have relatively high search volume, for example, Windows error codes, or some specific software errors. Those are obviously not relevant to the website's main topic in 99.99% of cases. So if a website has a lot of pages targeting those keywords, it can have a somewhat decent amount of organic traffic, which, coupled with a high DR/DA/TF/CF, can at first glance create an illusion of a high-quality website.
Why is it a bad thing? Well, if a website is authoritative, it should rank for some competitive keywords. And if all of its traffic comes from low-competition keywords, which are also not relevant to the website's main topic, it clearly shows that the website is shady, and does not have the authority it claims to have.
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My name is Andrey, I'm a full-stack web developer, eCommerce micro-SaaS owner, and SEO specialist.
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