By Beau van ‘t Oever · Link building specialist at Seeders · Updated October 2026
A high-quality backlink comes from a relevant site with real readers, sits inside the content, and would make sense even if nobody paid for it.
Seven signs
- Relevant topic: the site covers your field.
- Real organic traffic, trending stable or up.
- Editorial placement in the body text, not a footer.
- Followed: no nofollow or UGC. See dofollow vs nofollow.
- Indexed page that Google can find.
- Few outbound links on the page.
- Natural anchor text. See anchor text.
Red flags
- High DR, almost no traffic.
- Every article is sponsored.
- Unrelated “casino, CBD, loans” categories on a lifestyle blog.
The Linkbuilding.com Score in our catalogue combines most of these signals into one number.
Written by Beau van ‘t Oever
Link building specialist at Seeders. Beau works on link building campaigns at Seeders every day: finding sites, judging whether they’re worth a link, and getting the links placed.