Not every backlink pointing to your site is actually helping you. Some might be doing nothing at all, and a few could genuinely be dragging your rankings down. The problem is that most people don’t check the quality of their backlinks they simply assume that more backlinks automatically means better SEO. Learning how to check backlink quality helps you identify valuable links, remove harmful ones, and build a stronger backlink profile.
Checking backlink quality isn’t complicated once you know what to look for, but it does require going beyond just counting how many links you have. This guide walks through exactly how to evaluate any backlink, whether it’s already pointing to your site or one you’re considering pursuing.
Why Checking Backlink Quality Matters
A backlink profile full of irrelevant, low-authority, or spammy links can actually hurt your SEO rather than help it. Regularly checking backlink quality helps you:
- Identify toxic or harmful links worth disavowing
- Understand which links are actually contributing to your rankings
- Evaluate new link opportunities before investing outreach effort
- Spot patterns that might look manipulative to search engines
Skipping this step means flying blind, you won’t know whether your link building efforts are actually working, or whether some existing links might be quietly working against you.
Step 1: Check the Linking Domain’s Authority
Start with a broad authority check using metrics like Domain Authority (Moz) or Domain Rating (Ahrefs). These aren’t official Google metrics, but they offer a reasonable proxy for how established and trusted a domain appears.
Generally, higher authority domains carry more weight, but don’t rely on this metric alone, a high-authority site with irrelevant content still offers limited value.
Step 2: Assess Topical Relevance
Ask whether the linking site is genuinely related to your industry or the specific content being linked. A marketing blog linking to your marketing SaaS makes sense. A gambling site linking to the same page doesn’t, regardless of its authority score.
Relevance is one of the most overlooked factors, and one search engines weigh heavily when evaluating link quality.
Step 3: Review the Page’s Actual Traffic
A domain can have decent overall authority while the specific page linking to you gets little to no organic traffic. Check the individual page’s estimated traffic, not just the domain-wide numbers, using tools like Ahrefs or Semrush.
Pages with real, consistent traffic offer more value, both for SEO and for potential referral clicks.
Step 4: Examine Link Placement
Where the link sits on the page matters. Links embedded naturally within the main body content generally carry more weight than links in footers, sidebars, or auto-generated author bio sections.
Check whether the link appears to be manually and thoughtfully placed within relevant surrounding text, or dropped in as an afterthought.
Step 5: Check the Anchor Text
Look at the specific text used for the link. Natural anchor text tends to include brand names, generic phrases (“click here,” “this guide”), or partial keyword matches. Excessive exact-match keyword anchor text across multiple links can indicate manipulation, whether from your own past link building strategy or someone else’s.
Step 6: Look for Signs of a Link Scheme
Some sites exist purely to sell links or participate in manipulative networks. Watch for:
- Sites with an unusually high number of outbound links per page
- Content that reads as low-quality, thin, or auto-generated
- Domains hosting content across completely unrelated topics with no clear focus
- Patterns suggesting the site belongs to a private blog network (PBN)
If several of these signs appear together, the link is likely more risk than reward.
Step 7: Verify the Link Attribute
Check whether the link is dofollow or nofollow. Dofollow links pass direct authority, while nofollow links don’t carry the same ranking signal, though they can still offer referral traffic value. A completely dofollow-only backlink profile can actually look unnatural to search engines.
Tools for Checking Backlink Quality
| Tool | What It Offers |
|---|---|
| Ahrefs | Domain Rating, traffic estimates, link details |
| Semrush | Authority Score, toxic link flagging |
| Moz | Domain Authority, spam score |
| Google Search Console | Direct view of links Google has indexed to your site |
| Majestic | Trust Flow and Citation Flow metrics |
Using more than one tool often gives a more complete picture, since each platform calculates authority and quality signals slightly differently.
A Quick Backlink Quality Checklist
Before deciding whether a link is worth keeping or pursuing, run through this checklist:
- Is the linking domain relevant to my industry?
- Does the specific linking page have real organic traffic?
- Is the link placed naturally within genuine content?
- Does the site show signs of being a link farm or PBN?
- Is the anchor text natural, rather than exact-match keyword stuffed?
- Does the domain have a reasonable authority score for its niche?
If a link fails several of these checks, especially the relevance and link scheme indicators, it’s worth flagging for further review or potential disavowal.
What to Do With Low-Quality Backlinks
If you identify toxic or harmful backlinks pointing to your site, you generally have two options:
- Request removal — reach out to the site owner asking them to remove the link
- Disavow the link — use Google’s Disavow Tool to tell Google to ignore the link when evaluating your site
Disavowing should generally be reserved for genuinely harmful or spammy links, not simply low-authority ones, since over-disavowing can sometimes do more harm than the links themselves.
Key Takeaways
- Checking backlink quality involves evaluating relevance, authority, traffic, placement, and anchor text together, not just one metric alone.
- Domain Authority and Domain Rating are useful starting points but shouldn’t be the only factor considered.
- Signs of link schemes, like PBNs or excessive outbound links, indicate a backlink is more risk than value.
- Tools like Ahrefs, Semrush, and Google Search Console each offer different angles for evaluating link quality.
- Genuinely toxic links should be disavowed, while borderline, low-authority links often aren’t worth the effort of removal.
Conclusion
Checking backlink quality isn’t a one-time task, it’s an ongoing part of maintaining a healthy, effective link profile. Relying on a single metric like Domain Authority tells only part of the story; relevance, real traffic, and natural placement matter just as much when determining whether a link is genuinely helping your SEO.
Building this kind of evaluation into a regular routine helps catch problems early and ensures your link building efforts are actually producing links worth having.
The OutreachOrbit applies this same multi-factor evaluation process to every prospective link before outreach even begins, checking relevance, traffic, and authority together rather than relying on a single score. That thorough vetting is part of why client backlink profiles tend to stay clean and effective, rather than requiring extensive cleanup down the line.
