CheckTrust.ru (check trust) is a service designed to analyze reference donors. According to the description on the official website of the service, knowing only two indicators (these are “TRUST” (a certain level of trust in the site) and “SPAM”), you can determine the “quality” of the link donor. These indicators are calculated using a special closed formula known only to the service developers.
Among other things, CheckTrust allows you to aggregate data from some services, which include SimilarWeb, Majestic, Webarchive, Linkpad, etc. For some reason, SemRush was removed from the service, although until recently it was possible to download data from there too.
The purpose of today's article: to compare CheckTrust data with the results of organic search results from Yandex and Google and determine what percentage of “low-quality” links each analyzed site contains. After all, if CheckTrust believes that donors who have not passed the check can harm the site, then such a site will never get to the top of search results for competitive queries. At least, that’s what the service’s developers and its ardent fans think.
Our testing methodology is extremely simple: we randomly selected 6 sites from different thematic niches, which are ranked for highly competitive queries within the top three results in Yandex and Google (three from each). Then we downloaded all the link donors of each of the 6 sites through the Ahres.com service (it allows you to collect the most complete data about the site’s link connections) and “ran” each donor through the CheckTrust service. Site positions were taken in the “clean” Chrome browser version 70.0.3538.77c in “incognito” mode in the Moscow region. Authorization in Yandex and Google accounts was not performed.
To classify donors, we used the “TRUST” and “SPAM” values recommended by the service. Separately, we note that we classified a donor as “quality” if it met even the minimum values for “TRUST” (from 31) and “SPAM” (up to 12). Those. one more point lower and CheckTrust would tell us that this is a “dump” and that under no circumstances should we buy a link on such a site.
The query “refrigerator repair” is 2nd place in Yandex as of 10/31/2018.
Number of donors: 321
Pass CheckTrust: 10 (less than 4%)
2. kross-feet.ru
The request “buy Nike sneakers in Moscow” is 3rd place in Yandex as of 10/31/2018.
Number of donors: 33
Pass CheckTrust: 5 (15%). Moreover, 3 out of 5 donors who passed the test are Yandex mirrors - yandex.ua, yandex.kz and yandex.by (links from the Yandex.Collections service)
Download test result: .
3. bestceramic.ru
The query “floor tiles for the kitchen” - 3rd place in Yandex as of 10/31/2018.
Number of donors: 475
Pass CheckTrust: 79 (less than 17%).
Download test result: .
The query “furniture reupholstery Moscow” - 2nd place in Google as of 10/31/2018.
Number of donors: 376
Pass CheckTrust: 37 (less than 10%).
Download test result: .
The query “iphone xs max buy in Moscow” - 1st place in Google as of 10/31/2018.
Number of donors: 125
Pass CheckTrust: 7 (less than 6%).
Download test result: .
The query “buying cars in Moscow” is 3rd place in Google as of 10/31/2018.
Number of donors: 121
Pass CheckTrust: 10 (less than 9%).
Download test result: .
As you can see, even such an express analysis shows that the presence of more than 90% of “bad” links in the link profile, according to CheckTrust, allows selected sites to successfully occupy leading positions in organic search results.
From here we can draw several conclusions: either the CheckTrust data absolutely does not reflect the real picture and was simply taken out of thin air, or the developers decided to play it safe too much, thereby weeding out a huge number of high-quality, but not the “top” donors, where it is simply impossible or disproportionate to get a link expensive.
We can only say for sure that when analyzing link donors, CheckTrust can only act as an auxiliary tool, but cannot be the truth in the first instance. For example, when the choice is between two very similar sites and, all other things being equal, CheckTrust indicators will be higher. In addition, as we said above, the service allows you to aggregate data from other services without purchasing additional tariffs. We have already talked about how to choose the right donor for buying links in our other article: .
It should be noted that the latest news on the CheckTrust website is dated December 2016, which may indicate that the service has left the active development stage. The lack of activity and “dangling” questions from users in the official thread on the Searchengines forum since July also do not inspire optimism. We will not say that the developers have completely abandoned their brainchild, but it is worth considering that in such behavior scenarios, the service data may not be updated at all. Keep this in mind.
Well, we wish you a good mood and a sea of search traffic!
List of parameters analyzed by the system in the "Donors" section:
Host (domain name) is the name of the computer that has this IP address. Using it, you can often easily determine the user’s provider or hosting company where the site is hosted.
Does not change when extending the registration period, changing the administrator or domain registrar. This parameter is often used to determine the age of a domain. Older domains are considered to have more authority and search engine trust. The "Web Arch" parameter can also be considered an analogue of this parameter.
Typically, domains are registered for 1 year; after this time, if the owner has not renewed it, the domain release period begins, about 30 days. During this period, only the former owner can renew it. Afterwards, the domain becomes free for registration by other users. Often, sites with some SEO parameters or a beautiful name are intercepted within seconds after being released by the registrars themselves and put up for auction. nic.ru is considered the leader in RuNet in terms of interception. Make sure your domains are paid for and renewed on time. Usually, registrars periodically send notifications by email about expiring domains of the owners, but as practice shows, this is not always enough, and usually the domains are located at different registrars.
The name of the person or organization, in English, that owns this domain. Also, a slash can indicate nic-handle, an identifier in the registrar database.
Mailing address of the owner or company involved in domain registration. Spam is often sent to these addresses because they are publicly available, so make sure that this is not your main mailbox.
List of DNS servers that support the domain. Using them, you can sometimes determine one owner or one hosting server on which the sites are located. Also determine where the domain is delegated (directed).
This column may also display Y.Mirror if the TIC or Y.Bar was checked.
Also, the indexed status of the page in Yandex based on the last check can be highlighted in color. Subdomains and sites participating in Sape will also be highlighted.
Participation of the site as a platform for selling links or articles on the largest exchanges on the RuNet: Sape, MainLink, LinkFeed, SetLinks, Xap, TrustLink, Propage, Liex, Seozavr, SapeArticles, SapePr, Miralinks, Gogetlinks, Blogun, RotaPost. Such domains are highlighted with a blue background.
TIC and domain adhesiveness
Thematic citation index of the site and check for cohesion with another site. If available in the Ya.Catalogue, the value is highlighted in bold.
This field also displays the number of Y.Mirrors of the site (glued by tits).
Checked simultaneously with the Tic value.
It is important that the referring sites are similar or related to your topic, thereby maximizing the weight of outgoing links.
The analogue of this parameter is Ya.Tematika in the Ya.Bar check. The site is not always located in the Ya. Catalog if a Ya. Topic is defined for it. They also say that such sites are located in the hidden part of the Ya directory.
Subject of the site. One of the parameters of the Ya.Bar value.
It is not necessary to have a site in the Ya.Catalog itself. As they say, such sites are located in the hidden part of the Ya directory. This parameter is often used to search for thematic sites for exchanging or purchasing links. Thematic sites are also used for this.
An analogue of this parameter is Ya.Catalogue in the TIC check.
This field also displays the following data: Source of information, Addressee, Sector of the economy, etc.
Site region. One of the meanings of Ya.Bar. Determines whether a resource belongs to one of 230 geographic areas. This parameter is often used to search for regional sites for exchanging or purchasing links; it became especially relevant after the introduction of regional search results. You can also search for sites by region using the verified whois ip of the server on which the site is located.
Google Page Rank of the page and checking for consistency with another site.
If the site is in the Dmoz directory, the value is highlighted in bold.
In this field you may find the following abbreviations:
- A sign of connecting several links to the same recipient page
- Picture in link
- Link without content (empty anchor)
- Link in space
- Orange fill means that the link is included in the tag
If the page is indexed by Yandex, you need to wait for it to be re-indexed so that your posted link is indexed. To check the indexing of the link itself, use the "Ya.Link Cache" check.
The number of incoming links to a site via Yahoo (linkdomain: ), including through links, so sometimes a high value does not correspond to high authority of the site.
Number of outgoing links from the site via Bing (linkfromdomain: )
Be careful because for some sites, Bing often returns a null value.
Our algorithm for recognizing "paid" links is used. Currently in testing stage. For questions about work, please write to us in feedback.
By analyzing the content of pages, it determines the use of the main popular “engines” for website management: WP, Joomla, Drupal, TYPO3, DLE, Magento, etc.
For manually added pages it says User.
It often happens that there are several recipients on one donor page, in which case the system itself will duplicate the pages and establish connections with the rest of the recipients. For such pages it will write - System.
Help on setting these parameters (or what they are for):
There is an opinion that search engines also analyze the IP addresses on which sites are located, and may possibly reduce the weight of donor links coming from the same IP or one subnet of IP addresses, assuming that most often these are sites of the same owner.
The cost of verification is $0.01 per 1000 requests.
This analysis will be useful for determining the hosting company serving the site and determining the geographical location of the site. Usually, but not always, it coincides with the region assigned by search engines and the geographic focus of the site.
Pay attention to the geography of your donors; with the launch of regional search results, this parameter received more weight among search engines, for more relevant search results taking into account the region.
This check includes 3 parameters:
- Hostname
- Provider name
- Country city
This check is possible only after filling in the site ip parameter. If the site's IP has not been verified, and whois ip checking is enabled, then the IP will be determined regardless of the settings.
Verification is not supported for rare domain zones and is not available for subdomains.
We do not recommend running this check for donors. Because often it is not necessary. Sometimes used to find donors of the same owner.
This check includes: This check includes:
- Whois Cr - domain registration date
- Whois Exp - domain expiration date
- Owner
- Email
- Dns
- Telephone
- Registrar
You can read more about these parameters in the description of the columns on the recipients page.
We recommend setting the "Follow" setting to the default to monitor expiring domains. In this case, the values will be updated for those domains whose expiration period is 30 days, 7 days, 3 days, 1 day, -1 day, -20 days, -30 days, -33 days. Domains that are being released and are in a status like hold since , free-date can have negative values. For free (unregistered) domains, occupancy checks will occur every 3 months. If you just need to update the values for all sites, select the "Refresh and Stop" setting.
The cost of verification is $1.0 per 1000 requests.
Participation of the site as a platform for selling links or articles on the largest exchanges on the RuNet: Sape, MainLink, LinkFeed, SetLinks, Xap, TrustLink, Propage, Liex, Seozavr, SapeArticles, SapePr, Miralinks, Gogetlinks, Blogun, RotaPost. Such domains are highlighted with a blue background.
This parameter is often used to analyze a site for selling links.
The cost of verification is $1.6 per 1000 requests.
The data is collected by directly parsing Internet sites and searching for selling links on them.
The cost of verification is $0.1 per 1000 requests.
- Obtaining the TIC value and checking for consistency with another site. In case of gluing, obtain the address of the site with which the gluing occurred.
- Checking for availability in Y.Catalogue and displaying the full path of the category.
- Also the definition of the main mirror of the site (“with www.” or “without www”). This parameter is filled in when analyzing TIC or Ya.Bar
Y.Mirror is a very important parameter when compiling a list of donors for a sheet of links, since pages with the right mirror are indexed much better. When posting these sheets on sites to speed up indexing or re-indexing, it is very important to take this into account.
The same applies to adding these pages manually to Ya.Webmaster, if they have not yet been indexed, in order to speed up indexing.
This check includes 4 parameters:
- Obtaining the TIC value according to Ya.Bar and checking for gluing with another site. In case of gluing, obtain the address of the site with which the gluing occurred.
- Determination of the main mirror of the site ("with www." or "without www"). This parameter is filled in when analyzing Ya.Bar or TIC.
- Y. Theme of the site, if assigned.
- Y. Site region, if assigned.
- Ya.Info (Source of information, Addressee, Sector of economy, etc.)
The cost of verification is $0.2 per 1000 requests.
If your link has just been posted, then you need to wait until the page is indexed or re-indexed so that your new posted link becomes known to Yandex.
The cost of verification is $0.2 per 1000 requests.
Number of website pages in the Yandex database.
The cost of verification is $0.2 per 1000 requests.
Number of site pages in the Google database, including subdomains.
By analyzing the number of indexed pages on a site, you can determine the likelihood of your posted link being indexed.
The cost of verification is $0.5 per 1000 requests.
The number of incoming links to a site via Yahoo (linkdomain:), including through links, so sometimes a high value does not correspond to high authority of the site.
Used for a quick analysis of the authority of the site.
The cost of verification is $0.2 per 1000 requests.
Used for a quick analysis of the number of outgoing links from a site. If the site is not a directory of links or something similar, then we can assume that outgoing links are selling out if the ratio of pages to the number of outgoing links is large.
Due to the large presence of SEO links, such sites may be under the search engine filter, even if they continue to be indexed.
Be careful that Bing (linkfromdomain:) often returns a null value.
The cost of verification is $0.2 per 1000 requests.
This check includes 5 parameters:
- Internal (local) links on the page
- External (outgoing) links on the page
- External SEO links on the page. Our algorithm for recognizing "paid" links is used. Currently in testing stage. For questions about work, please write to us in feedback.
- Contents of the title tag of the main page.
- Definition of a site management system. By analyzing the donor page code, the script determines the use of popular “engines” for site management: WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, TYPO3, DLE, Magento, etc.
The cost of verification is $0.03 per 1000 requests.
*some columns are still hidden, as they are at the final testing stage, if you need them, please contact support
That is, another site to which it links, statistical. Donor-acceptor bonds play a very important role in.
It is worth noting that the external donor cannot always transfer weight to the acceptor. A similar situation may occur if there is a rel=”nofollow” attribute that prohibits search robots from following this link, or meta tags that perform similar functions, but for all links on the page.
In general, the very concept of “donor site” appeared on the basis of the English expression “link juice”, which literally translates as “link juice”. So a scheme was invented that involved pouring reference juice from one container (that is, from the donor site) to others.
How to find donors?
You can find link donors using numerous link exchanges: , etc. You can also use other resources, for example, social networks, directories, forums.
For optimizers, such donor sites are very important, because their presence and number directly affects the position of the resource being promoted. In this case, significant emphasis is placed on the quality of the resource.
Some optimizers search for link donors independently, because it is cheaper, but if the quality of such a site is really important to you, it would be smarter to use link exchanges.
Parameters that need to be checked with link donors:
- compliance with the theme of the accepting site;
- assigned region;
- the number of outgoing links from the page and the site as a whole;
- volume of incoming link mass;
- site location in Yandex.Catalog;
- unique
The pain of external website promotion is the search for trustworthy, unspammed donors.
Trust is one of the most important indicators when choosing donors, along with traffic. The problem is that sometimes we focus only on the trust to the exclusion of other parameters. This automatically weeds out potentially good sites (with growing traffic or positive dynamics in the link profile).
Therefore, when choosing donors, it is important to maintain a balance.
Tools for assessing a trust:
To evaluate a site group trust, it is better to choose one tool and follow its recommendations. The fact is that all services evaluate sites using different algorithms.
In most niches, the lower threshold of trust can be considered:
- from 15 to ahrefs;
- from 10 to Majestic;
- from 15 to moz.
But these indicators are conditional. You need to stay flexible. For example, in new niches the level of trust can be lowered and priority can be given to traffic projects.
A narrow focus on one parameter is the first pain of the market.
The second is questionable service indicators. In the CIS, a popular tool for checking donors is checktrust, but the accuracy of its measurement in comparison with other services is questionable.
Here are some examples to prove this.
To better understand this, we asked experts to answer two questions:
- What is the best way to check trust and spam sites?
- Can you trust checktrust? Yes/no and why?
Oleg Galitsa, founder of Seo-Fix
It must be remembered that trust is a synthetic metric. But nevertheless, the developers of popular link checking services have developed such a little thing as a trust, which is based on the quality and quantity of incoming links.
For this reason, it is very desirable that everyone decide for themselves, after conducting a series of experiments, which links from which sites work.
Speaking globally, in addition to trust, as a belly, in my opinion, site traffic and the ratio to the number of pages are very important. Well, for example, the site has half a million pages and 5K traffic per month. You need to look at such a site in more detail before placing a link on it.
I use check trust for the initial analysis of a sample of sites. Moreover, I do not use Majestic, but Ahrevs (in the desktop version it is possible to add the Ahrevs API).
This is not a question of trust or distrust, but a question of understanding how it is calculated. If a site has a large number of outgoing links, then such a site will be marked as spam and will be eliminated from a large sample. I repeat, if you need to select high-quality sites from, say, 1000 domains as quickly as possible, then checktrust belly gauges are irreplaceable.
If there are a couple of dozen sites and you have the time and desire to carefully check the sites so as not to miss good sites, then only your eyes and hands. After all, there are, for example, directory sites, and for them it is completely natural to have a large number of outgoing ones.
Andrey Dzhilavdarov, SEO expert, founder of the Organika agency
What is the best way to check trust and spam sites?
First you need to understand what Trust and Spam are. The TrustRank algorithm was developed at Stanford University by Yahoo developers Zoltán Gyöngyi and Hector Garcia-Molina in order to separate useful pages from web spam. You can read more in the article Combating Web Spam with TrustRank http://www.vldb.org/conf/2004/RS15P3.PDF
In order to measure the trust of a site, you need to have a labeled sample of sites and count the number of transitions from the labeled trust site to the site under study. The fewer transitions, the more trust the site under study will have. This indicator does not play a big role when searching for suitable sites. Now let’s figure out what criteria for a site’s link spam can be identified.
The first component of spam is outgoing links. For sites that actively sell links, the number of different domains to which it links is greater than or equal to the number of pages of the site itself. The second component is incoming links to the donor site. If there are a large number of SEO links to the donor’s website, then there is a high probability that the donor has either already been filtered or will be filtered in the future. Thus, a non-spam site has a ratio of different domains linking to the number of site pages that is much less than one and there are no SEO links in the anchor list. Today, there are no publicly available services that allow you to reliably determine these indicators.
Can you trust checktrust.ru? Yes/no and why?
In terms of spam, the service can only be partially trusted. Checktrust.ru takes into account the total number of outgoing links from the donor's website, the number of links to unique domains, the number of indexed pages of the donor's website, the total number of incoming links and the number of incoming links from unique hosts to the donor's website, but does not take into account the SEO of its anchor list. Those. the service can clearly show the spam level of a site, but only in terms of outgoing links.
For a more adequate understanding, you need to look at the anchor list of each site found manually for the presence of SEO links. But the Trust indicator in the service does not give any idea about the effectiveness of the site. The checktrust.ru service is trying to build its Trust Rank indicator based on its own selection of good sites, but we do not know by what criteria the sites are selected. People often confuse Trust Rank and Page Rank, but they are not the same thing. The weight of pages with a high Trust Rank can be several times lower than those with a low one and vice versa.
Mikhail Shakin, author of the blog shakin.ru
What is the best way to check trust and spam sites?
These parameters can be checked in two ways: manually and using tools. The best option is to combine both methods.
I use the following technique to evaluate trust and spam sites.
First, I collect a list of necessary sites, for example, for posting guest articles. I check through the checktrust.ru service and leave those with a trust score of more than 33 points.
Next, I check the received sites manually. In addition to the appearance and impression that the site makes (like it or not), I evaluate its search visibility in Yandex and Google. This can be done through the serpstat.com service.
I draw attention to traffic sources on similarweb. It is important that the site has visitors not only from search engines, but also from other sites, social networks, e-mail services and direct traffic. If almost all of a site’s traffic comes from search, then this is a negative point, since the site is highly dependent on search engines.
Can you trust checktrust? Yes/no and why?
Yes, you can, but not in everything. This is an excellent service and I have been using it for a long time and constantly.
But when evaluating sites, I look at the trust parameter and pay almost no attention to spam. The reason is that the service considers all outgoing links from the site as purchased links. For example, if I post an article with a selection of 100 WordPress plugins and make a link to each plugin, then the spam parameter of my site will worsen, since the service will consider that this page is spammed with links.
If there was a mechanism that could distinguish between natural links and truly spam ones, that would be great.
Anna Yashchenko, author of the TOP database and blog seoandme.ru
What is the best way to check trust and spam sites?
The strategy will be a little different depending on what my goal is for analyzing donors. But in any case, I will use Chektrast.
Not so much for the sake of their own Trust and Spam parameters, but because of a large amount of other data - Webarchive, SimilarWeb, Liveinternet, Majestic, Linkpad, site indexing, on which exchanges it sells links, whether there was an AGS and various other things.
If I need to check hundreds and thousands en masse, then first, for each of the Trust and Spam parameters, I will remove bad donors according to the minimum threshold, go through other parameters and also clear out everything with the lowest indicators that are not suitable for my specific purpose. Then, depending on my goals and how much is left in the end, I will think about whether to clean it more harshly or start looking through it manually.
A number of parameters from Chektrast will show the volume of traffic - this is an important point, although ideally it would also be to look at what specific queries are driving traffic from search engines to a given site.
Checktrust is also an excellent service because the cost of checking all parameters for one donor is the same as checking one parameter. The price does not change, only the time of the analysis changes.
Can you trust checktrust? Yes/no and why?
Even if in some respects the picture from Chektrast is not accurate, their totality and viewing the site “by eye” will give me enough data to make a decision.
There are very good sites with high Spam according to Chektrast, for example, and they provide a noticeable amount of targeted traffic.
Anton Shaban, private SEO specialist
What is the best way to check trust and spam sites?
These indicators themselves of any services that consider a certain trust, spam, etc. cannot be interpreted one-sidedly. As a rule, these are derived from the number of incoming and outgoing links and some other characteristics of donors, which in some cases can deprive you of a good donor.
How to check trust: in general, the PS does not have this indicator as such; usually we are talking about the search engine’s attitude towards the site. Does he “love” him? If you understand the quality of a site, then you should look at IKS (Yandex), if we are talking about link characteristics, then the quantity and quality of the link mass (I prefer to look through Ahrefs, including DR, you can also look through software from my native Belarus https:// www.link-assistant.com/seo-spyglass/ - what kind of links are there). And site traffic and its dynamics (SimilarWeb) + visibility and its dynamics in Google (SerpStat, SemRush).
Spam essentially depends on the quality and quantity of incoming and outgoing links. If there are a lot of outgoing non-thematic ones, this is not very good. A lot of incoming anchors and strange links from forum profiles and runs are also not very good. But it is unrealistic to check this automatically, and manually looking for each site is pointless 😞 The quality of external links is often assessed by majestic.com (ratio of CF and TF), but again this is just a bummer, so as not to look at links to and from the site manually and evaluate massively and these values are taken into account by Chektrast when calculating Trust. I also look at the ratio of links from the site to the number of pages in the index (but this takes into account Spam from Chektrust).
Can you trust checktrust? Yes/no and why?
The problem here is that this is just a matter of “faith” in many ways 😊 We use service indicators, but I don’t strictly filter by them, it’s just additional data. I don’t use the final output of the service (Bad or Good donor). I sometimes look at the Trust indicator there, but the Spam indicator and the final donor assessment itself are in many cases questionable. I can’t say that devaka.ru is a bad donor, for example.
Alexey Volkov, CEO of Digital Tools
What is the best way to check trust and spam sites?
Can you trust checktrust? Yes/no and why?
Any automation is great. Because otherwise the specialist needs to check a large number of parameters manually. How many incoming links, how many outgoing, how many links on a particular page, topical relevance, how much content is on this page, is it technical. Any automation is great because it reduces the burden on the specialist. And it doesn’t matter how ultra-precise the methodology is used there. Because anyway, we still don’t know 100% certainty. All methods that allow you to determine trust are at the level of reverse engineering that is available to SEO specialists. Therefore, I think you can be quite normal and calm about the results that CheckTrust gives.
conclusions
- Trust is a synthetic metric. Any lower trust figures are just conventions. They can be taken as a basis, tested and adjusted during work.
- Spam is a conditional metric. If a site has too many outgoing links, checktrust considers it spam. This is not always true. For example, for directory sites, a large number of outgoing links is natural.
- Checktrust is a good service for the initial selection of donors, provided that you need to sort through a large number of sites. In this case, you can ignore spam and select sites only by trust level.
- When selecting donors, you cannot rely entirely on automatic services. There is a high probability of weeding out good sites.
- In some cases, checktrust indicators may not be entirely accurate. Then there is no need to cut loose and sift out the site. You need to check its traffic, traffic distribution, link profile dynamics. This especially helps to build the right argument when working with a contractor.
What do you think? Share in the comments - your opinion is interesting.
Many webmasters know that to promote a website in search engines, it is necessary to have links that would lead to the resource being promoted. Search engines, having indexed them, will improve the position of the web portal in the TOP of search results.
Site owners try to get as many links as possible in various ways, and these methods are usually free. Newly-made webmasters are most often not ready to spend money on buying links. The reason, as a rule, is psychological rather than material - everyone is afraid that their money will go to waste, that finances will be spent ineffectively.
In order to learn how to buy quality links, practice is necessary, because everything comes with experience. But practicing while wasting money is scary. However, how can you learn how to effectively buy links without losing money? The answer is simple - adopt other people's experience. But it is important that the experience turns out to be truly useful, that the purchased links bring tangible benefits, so that the funds invested in the project pay off. This is exactly what this article is devoted to – the methodology for selecting donor sites for purchasing links to them.
During the time that I have been working on the Internet, I have accumulated good experience in selecting sites to buy links to.
So, what does the concept of “competent purchasing of links” include? First of all, this economical and efficient spending of the budget . Thanks to a high-quality selection of sites, you will get the most out of your links without wasting your money. In addition, you will learn how to select suitable donor sites on which you can place links.
Before we begin, let's agree that under donor site we will understand web resource where the link is purchased. Those. This is the site with a posted link through which “weight” is transferred to the promoted project, which is taken into account by search engines. How to properly select suitable donors will be discussed below.
Let's figure out why a site needs links at all? Is it really impossible to do without them?
Of course, you can get by; some sites are successfully promoted without them. However, quite a lot of time is spent on this, and the likelihood of success of such promotion is variable. But buying links contributes to the following:
- increasing the site's position in search engines;
- increase in TCI and PR indicators;
- improvement
Increasing rankings for search queries– This is the most popular reason for buying links. Using competent anchor and non-anchor promotion schemes, webmasters can easily increase traffic to their Internet projects. This is possible thanks to the growth of the site’s positions for low-frequency, mid-frequency and high-frequency queries included in the .
Growth of “bellies” of TIC and PR– the second most popular reason. If you select thematic donor sites, then you can purchase a certain number of links and PR of some pages.
Improving Site Trust. Links convey not only weight that improves the site’s position, but also influence trust. Links from bad resources can lower it (bad link environment), and from good ones it can increase it. Therefore, buying links from quality donors will increase your trust.
In addition, it should be taken into account that each new link is a dilution of the overall link mass of the site. The more diverse it is, the more weight each link will transmit individually.
2. Selection of donor sites
When buying links, it is very important to be able to choose suitable sites, the placement of links on which will be not only profitable, but also an effective investment of money. Obviously, here we will be interested in the best price/quality ratio. The smaller this parameter, the more profitable it is to place a link. However, it is important not to forget that, for variety, it is sometimes desirable to buy “unprofitable” links, although with the correct selection of donors this may not be necessary at all.
2.1 Requirements for the donor site
The first thing you need to pay attention to is the general performance of the site. Here I include a number of important factors:
- similarity of topics;
- lack of a platform in temporary link exchanges;
- quality of indexing by search engines;
- spamming with sales links/articles;
- age of the site/time of addition to the exchange;
- resource updateability;
- TCI and PR indicators;
- visitor activity;
- presence of the site in popular directories.
The indicators in bold are the most important. You should pay attention to them first. If one of these points does not satisfy my conditions, then I immediately weed out such a site without even thinking.
2.1.1 Similarity of resource topics
It is very important to select sites for buying links whose topics coincide with the focus of your resource. This is especially true if one of the tasks of purchasing links is increasing the TCI indicator. The closer and similar the donor site is, the more weight will be transferred along the links to increase the aforementioned size.
If links are bought for other reasons (for example, to increase positions in the TOP of search engines), then again it is better to choose donors that are similar in topic. Even if the topic does not play any role here, you will not lose anything by filtering out non-topic resources. But it is quite possible that links placed on sites with a similar focus convey more weight, although this has not yet been confirmed experimentally.
If you are promoting a website about fishing, then you should be linked to those resources whose topics are somehow related to fishing.
This is why I immediately weed out non-thematic sites, without even considering them when purchasing permanent or temporary links.
2.1.2 Selling temporary links
If a site sells (rents) temporary links, then it should not be considered as a donor at all. Obviously, search engines will treat such a resource with caution, reducing the transmitted weight of all its outgoing links. You should also be wary of the fact that the site may be banned by Yandex or Google, in which case the links posted will be of no use at all.
If you see that the site contains external links with strange anchors, it’s worth considering whether the donor is selling links using Sapa and other exchanges?
In general, the presence of temporary links on the site is an indicator of the quality of the donor. If they exist, then this site is made for “rough” monetization - such people often have problems with search engine promotion. Why do we need to buy links from low-quality sites?
2.1.3 Quality of donor indexing
Another important factor that allows you to assess the reliability of a resource is the speed and quality of its indexing by search engines. If new donor materials slowly get into the index, and some of them are not there at all, then the site “does not get along well” with search engines. Why buy eternal links on such a resource? You never know, or maybe this page with the link posted on it is not included in the index at all? Then the money will simply be thrown away.
You can judge the quality of resource indexing by contacting the exchange ““ for help. There, when searching for donor sites where eternal links will be purchased, a figure characterizing indexing is specifically indicated.
What do these numbers tell us? This is the percentage of pages indexed by Yandex on which links were previously placed within the GoGetLinks exchange (you don’t need to worry about indexing by Google, because, as a rule, even if Yandex has indexed the page, Google will do the same). The number 100% means that all the links that people bought on this site through GoGetLinks were indexed.
In general, these percentages can be considered as the degree of probability with which the link will be indexed by Yandex if you buy it through the exchange.
I recommend the filter “indexability no worse than 98%” . If this number is lower, then you do not need to buy a link on such a site. You need to look for another donor that is better indexed by search engines.
2.1.4 The site is spammed with links
A very important indicator of the quality of a site as a donor is the degree to which it is spammed. We are talking about the ratio of the number of pages with “sales” links placed to the total number of site pages that are in the search engine index. The lower this figure, the better.
It is quite difficult to determine the exact degree of spam infestation of the site, because... It is impossible to determine which links on a resource are for sale and which are natural. You can only partially assess spam if the donor is on any link exchange. For example, Miralinks shows the number of posted articles with links and the total number of pages in the Yandex index - based on this, spam is calculated (on the exchange it is called “article content”).
2.1.5 Age of the site/time of addition to the exchange
The age of the site plays a huge role in the amount of weight transferred via links. We are not talking about how long ago the domain was registered, but rather about the age of the site, which begins from the moment when its first page was included in the search engine index.
The fact is that the older the site, the higher its trust - the level of trust on the part of search engines. And a lot depends on the trust, in particular the weight transferred by reference. In addition, it is very important to receive links posted on trusted sites, because... Search engines also evaluate the site itself based on its link environment. If low-quality donors link to you, your site's trust will also decrease.
In addition to the age of the site itself, you should also pay attention to the time when the site was added to the link selling system (if, of course, you buy links through them, and not directly from the webmaster).
Young sites that have just been added to the exchange are unreliable. They can cheat the advertiser by removing links and not returning the money. The exchange can rarely do anything in such cases. Therefore, it is better to choose proven donors rather than brand new sites that do not have a reputation.
As you can see in the screenshot above, those sites that have recently started working in the GogetLinks system do not have indexability defined - there is too little data. This is how it is determined how long the site is in the system.
2.1.6 Resource updateability
A good donor site should be constantly updated, then new resource pages will be included in the search engine index. Periodically updated websites are ranked better by Yandex and Google, which means they are higher quality donors.
“Dead” resources that are not updated for 3-4 months should not even be considered as donors.
The screenshot below shows a site that is updated every six months! What kind of quality can we talk about? Such a resource should not even be considered as a donor.
2.1.7 TCI and PR indicators of the site
***The following are not the most important criteria, but still important when choosing a donor site. If you have extra time, consider them too. If not, limit yourself to the six factors described above.***
TCI and PR indicators can be important. They are especially relevant if the purchase of links is carried out to increase the TCI. In this case, of course, you need to pay attention to the donor’s pelvis. However, when purchasing permanent links to improve the site’s position in search engines, this parameter can be discarded, because What is important here is the weight transmitted by the link, and not the value of the TCI and PR of the donor.
2.1.8 Visitor activity
Buying links on a “live” site is always better than buying links on a dead one. If the donor has an active audience, if visitors leave comments, if the site has good behavioral factors, then it is profitable to buy eternal links on it. The fact is that in this case, thanks to the posted link, you will also receive several clicks from visitors. By the way, it’s better to choose a highly visited web resource, then more people will see your link. There is a version that the transmitted weight of a link increases if it is often followed. Unfortunately, there is no experimental confirmation of this hypothesis yet.
2.1.9 Donor presence in popular catalogs
It’s not bad if the donor is in the most popular catalogs, such as Yandex.Catalog, DMOZ, Catalog.Mail.ru, Rambler TOP100, etc. This indicates the quality of the web resource, and we need to choose the highest quality sites. Presence in such significant catalogs is a huge plus for the donor.
When purchasing links through the GoGetLinks exchange, you can immediately see whether the site is listed in any famous directories. If this is the case, then next to the donor’s address there will be a corresponding icon (Yandex.Catalog, Catalog.Mail.ru or DMOZ).
2.2 Requirements for the page on which the link is purchased
Unfortunately, it is quite difficult to impose any requirements on the page on which purchased links will be placed. The fact is that, as a rule, links are placed on new pages that have not yet been indexed by search engines. It turns out to be a kind of “pig in a poke” purchase.
- absence of a page in the Yandex and Google index;
- number of external links on the page;
- subject of text/content;
- volume and quality of content;
- location of the link on the page.
2.2.1 Indexed/unindexed page
Although many webmasters believe that it is better to place a link on an already indexed page, I cannot agree with them on this. It turns out that the page was without a link, and then suddenly, for some unknown reason, it appeared. Suspicious enough for search engines. In most cases, such a link will be classified by Yandex as a purchased link, which will not allow it to receive the maximum possible weight. Therefore I believe that correctly place links in new articles or on pages that have not yet been indexed by Yandex and Google .
2.2.2 Number of external links per page
The second thing I pay attention to is the number of external links on the page. Many people know that the weight transferred through links depends on how many external links there are on this page. If there are several links, then the weight will be divided (not always equally) between them: some links will receive more weight, and some will receive less. Therefore, it is better when your link is the only one on the page.
Of course, each case is unique, but try to stick to the rule “there should be no more than 3-4 external links on the donor page” . Links with or noindex are no exception if they are in the body of the main text (links from comments can be ignored).
2.2.3 Page subject and surrounding text
You also need to pay attention to what text will be placed on the page. The ideal option is when the anchor links and the topic of the article are close. It’s better to discuss this issue with the webmaster in advance so that there are no misunderstandings later. The screenshot below shows an example of a very successful anchor placement (the article title and anchor contain common words).
The second thing to pay attention to is the surrounding link text. It must include keys and similar to the subject of the link. It is very useful to use non-anchor promotion, wisely using the capabilities of near-link text, which is described in detail in.
2.2.4 Volume and quality of text
The weight of the page, which it can transfer to other sites via links, directly depends on how much text is present on the page. In addition, the quality of the text is also important - if it is some article or article with a lot of errors, then you should not expect a significant effect from the posted link.
Obviously, a link placed in a large text will convey more weight than one located in a short article. Therefore, when purchasing permanent links, pay attention to how voluminous the articles on the site are, or discuss this issue with the webmaster in advance.
2.2.5 Link location in text
And finally, the location of the link in the text plays a huge role. Therefore, you need to be able to correctly enter a link into the text.
There are several factors to consider here:
- the link must be placed in the main content of the page (in the text part, unique for each page of the site);
- the higher the link is in the text, the better;
- it’s good when the link is in the middle of the sentence, and not at the beginning or end;
- the link must be placed so that site visitors can see it - the more attention it attracts, the better (therefore, it is important to choose the right gamma, texture, color of the link itself and the color when hovering the cursor over it);
- next to the link there should not be the words “guard”, “sponsor of the day”, “sales link”, etc.
3. Selection of a donor page using the XTool.ru service
One of the possible ways to select suitable sites is to use the capabilities of the service. The only drawback is that only 5 checks per day are free. But you can buy another 100 additional ones for just 15 rubles, I think that’s not that much. As a last resort, you can perform 5 checks every day, stretching out the search for quality donors for some time.
The entire selection is carried out in 3 stages.
Stage 1. General filter
At the very beginning, it is necessary to select a suitable donor base, the selection criteria for which have already been indicated above:
- similarity of resource topics;
- sale of temporary links;
- quality of indexing by search engines;
- spamming with sales links/articles;
- age of the site/time of addition to the exchange;
- resource updateability.
You can add here a number of your own factors that are most important for achieving your goals. Once the database of donor sites has been compiled, you can move on to the next stage.
Stage 2. Filter home pages
Now you need to check the “XTD” trust indicator of the main pages of the site. This is done using the XTool.ru service. You need to add the address of the site's home page to the form, and then check the trust value. The service itself recommends the following division of sites by quality (by XTD value):
- From 10 to 8 – powerful trust sites
- From 7 to 4 – trust sites
- 3 – borderline value, sites of lower quality
- less than 3 – low quality sites (HS)
The screenshot above shows an example of analyzing the main page of the site. The value “7” is a trust site, this should be considered as a donor.
Stage 3. Filter internal pages
Now you can analyze the internal pages of the site. Although I recommend not placing links on already indexed pages, if you do, then take advantage of XTool's trust analysis.
If you do not buy links on already indexed pages, then still analyze several of its internal pages for the quality of the donor site. It happens that the main one has a high trust, and all internal ones have practically zero trust.
The verification method is the same as in the previous stage - you just need to add the address of the site’s internal page to the form.
Here it is necessary to use another filter, because The formula for calculating XT (site internal page trust) differs from calculating XTD. The service itself recommends the “XT?2” filter here, i.e. you need to filter out all resources whose internal pages have a trust value of less than two. The screenshot above shows an example of one of the internal pages of the site. The trust is quite high, so it makes sense to buy links on such a site (as well as on this particular page).
Now you know how to choose the right sites to buy links. This will help you or increase his TIC by investing wisely. But don't overdo it either! It is not necessary to use all the described criteria - omit unnecessary ones and use only those that are suitable, because this will allow you to save your time. And sometimes it is more expensive than money.
