Honest Link Opportunity Evaluation

Authority scores are trivially manipulated and the entire paid link industry optimises for them, which means a high score is weak evidence and sometimes negative evidence. What you actually want to know is whether real people read the site and whether Google trusts it, and both can be checked in about ten minutes without any tool subscription.

The skill file

---
name: link-opportunity-evaluation
description: Use when a placement, guest post or partnership is offered and you need to judge it without the vendor's metrics.
---

# Honest Link Opportunity Evaluation

Authority scores are trivially manipulated and the entire paid link industry optimises for them, which means a high score is weak evidence and sometimes negative evidence. What you actually want to know is whether real people read the site and whether Google trusts it, and both can be checked in about ten minutes without any tool subscription.

## What you need first

- the exact URL where the link would sit, not just the domain
- access to search operators and the site's own visible content
- a rough price or effort cost for the placement

## Method

1. Search the site's own brand name and check it ranks first for it. A site that cannot rank for its own name has a problem you do not want to be adjacent to.
2. Look at the last twenty published posts. If they span unrelated industries with different author names and each carries an outbound commercial link, it is a link farm regardless of its metrics.
3. Check whether the destination page itself is indexed and has any organic traffic, since a link on a page nobody can find passes nothing.
4. Count outbound followed links on the page. A resource page or article carrying dozens of commercial links is diluted and looks like what it is.
5. Judge topical fit by whether a reader of that page would plausibly want your page next. This is also the only honest test of whether the link will send you clicks.
6. Ask what happens in a year - sites that sell links get cleaned out or deindexed, so weight anything paid as a temporary rental and price it accordingly.

## What this produces

A go or no go decision per opportunity with the specific disqualifying evidence recorded.

## Where this goes wrong

- using a third party authority score as the primary filter, which is exactly the metric sellers inflate
- accepting a placement on a site with an obvious write for us page and no editorial identity
- valuing a link on a brand new page that will never be linked to internally and so decays immediately

---

From the QuQi skill library - https://www.quqi.io/skills/link-opportunity-evaluation

What you need first

• the exact URL where the link would sit, not just the domain
• access to search operators and the site's own visible content
• a rough price or effort cost for the placement

Method

1. 01 Search the site's own brand name and check it ranks first for it. A site that cannot rank for its own name has a problem you do not want to be adjacent to.
2. 02 Look at the last twenty published posts. If they span unrelated industries with different author names and each carries an outbound commercial link, it is a link farm regardless of its metrics.
3. 03 Check whether the destination page itself is indexed and has any organic traffic, since a link on a page nobody can find passes nothing.
4. 04 Count outbound followed links on the page. A resource page or article carrying dozens of commercial links is diluted and looks like what it is.
5. 05 Judge topical fit by whether a reader of that page would plausibly want your page next. This is also the only honest test of whether the link will send you clicks.
6. 06 Ask what happens in a year - sites that sell links get cleaned out or deindexed, so weight anything paid as a temporary rental and price it accordingly.

What this produces

A go or no go decision per opportunity with the specific disqualifying evidence recorded.

Where this goes wrong

• using a third party authority score as the primary filter, which is exactly the metric sellers inflate
• accepting a placement on a site with an obvious write for us page and no editorial identity
• valuing a link on a brand new page that will never be linked to internally and so decays immediately

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