One of the metrics I look at (though not always) before buying a link is how many outbound links the site has in total. Because you can come across a site with a DR of 50, 30k traffic, a nice history and, blimey, it looks like a top-notch donor site. But then you dig a bit deeper and see that over the last two years, 4,000 articles have been published there, 3,000 of which are guest PR pieces with outbound links and dofollow.
One day they’re writing about crypto, the next about casinos, then ‘the best moving company in Texas’, dental treatment, loans, solicitors and dog food. And every single article has 2–3 commercial links sticking out of it. It turns out it’s not a website at all, but a bloody link supermarket ))
So how many outbound links is ‘a bloody load’? I’ll say straight away: there’s no magic number; in short, it’s not measured in numbers. You can’t just say, for example: 600 outbound links is top-notch, but 601 means the site’s rubbish. I look at it a bit differently – let me explain. Let’s say there are two websites.
Website 1
🟡 10,000 pages in the index
🟡 120,000 organic visits
🟡 The website has been around for 8 years
🟡 Constantly publishes new content
🟡 Receives natural backlinks
🟡 Has 3,000 outbound domains
What do you think of this donor? Nonsense? Does 3,000 outbound links scare you?)
Not me. For a large, active media outlet, having thousands of outbound links is absolutely normal. It links to research, companies, sources, YouTube, social media, other media outlets, etc. I’ve covered the entire Ukrainian media backlink market for Motozilla; I’ve seen it all. Now for the second example.
Website 2
🟡 DR 47
🟡 Traffic – 800
🟡 600 pages indexed
🟡 450 articles published over the last year
🟡 There are already 1,500+ outgoing domains from the site
This is where I start to wonder: why on earth would I want a link from here? Because practically every page on this site is designed to sell links. I usually look not just at the number of outgoing domains, but at the ratio and the pattern.
As a rough guide:
🟢 5,000 pages / 500 outgoing domains – not a problem at all.
🟢 20,000 pages / 3,000 outgoing domains – that could also be perfectly fine.
🟡 1,000 pages / 1,000 outgoing domains – at this point, I’ll start checking things manually.
🔴 500 pages / 2,000 outgoing domains – most likely, we’re looking at a typical link farm.
But even here, the figures alone don’t tell the whole story. The really interesting bit starts when you look at exactly where the site is linking to. If I see:
👉 online casinos
👉 essay writing services
👉 database services
👉 cryptocurrency
👉 microloans
👉 dating sites
👉 logistics
I couldn’t care less what the DR is. The pattern is clear. The site makes money by selling links to anyone who pays. There’s one more thing that, for some reason, many people completely overlook: the rate at which outbound links are growing. Let’s say the site has been around for 7 years. It was steadily producing content. It had 300–400 outbound domains.
Then it was added to several link exchanges. And over 12 months: 400 + 700 + 1,200 + 1,900 + 2,700. To me, that’s far more worrying than simply seeing the figure 2,700. They’ve started milking the site. And in a year’s time, there’ll most likely be 10,000 outbound domains and articles like: ‘Top 10 Canadian casinos’
I don’t follow the rule: ‘lots of outbound links equals a bad donor’. I look (or try to look) at:
– the size of the website itself
– the number of pages
– organic traffic
– traffic trends
– how many referring domains the website receives
– how many domains it links to externally
– how quickly this number is growing
– exactly where it links to
– what percentage of the content appears to be commercial
– and, most importantly, whether the website resembles a genuine project or a showcase for selling links
Because, say, a site like Forbes might have a massive number of outbound links – and that wouldn’t bother me. But a 300-page site with a DR of 55 and 2,000 commercial outbound domains, I might not take even for 30 grand. The number of outbound links isn’t a death sentence in itself. It’s simply an indicator. But the combination of such indicators does reveal whether you’re buying a link from a legitimate site or simply becoming the 2,001st customer of yet another link dump. Essentially, you need to determine whether the site is a link farm or not )
Hugs to all 🫂
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Need backlinks? Send me a private message on Telegram: https://t.me/andrey_soroka
CIS and international markets (gambling, casinos, dating, crypto, and white-hat projects)
My channel about SEO, link building, and iGaming: https://t.me/info_site
