I thought I would write a post about how to evaluate links when link building. In other words, what due diligence can you perform when researching links?

1. Check the domain with McAfee SiteAdivsor. McAfee SiteAdvisor rates sites based on testing for spyware and other malicious items. They also have a strong community of site reviewers.
2. Check the page rank of the domain. SEOmoz has a powerful historical page rank checker tool that will allow you to see if the site has had any drastic changes in page rank recently. The historical data is not always there, but it is in a lot of cases. (I think you can get access to the tool from a free membership)
3. Search Google for a unique text string or full sentence appearing on the website, and see if the website pulls up. Hopefully they will show up.
4. What is the title tag on the homepage? Do they rank for any phrases from their homepage title tag?
5. Perform a whois search on the domain. I typically use godaddy, enter the domain, and then click "get info." If it's a site about "Utah web design" and the whois information points to a country far far away, you probably want to look elsewhere.
6. Lastly search yahoo for links pointing to the site in question. Go to yahoo.com and enter "link:www.thewebsiteinquestionyaddayadda.com." This will often uncover secondary sites the site owner *may* own. If you find a lot of spammy sites pointing to the website in question this could possibly raise some flags. Check the whois information on the spammy sites (see #5). Do any of them have the same whois information as the site offering the link?

These are some of the things I check when evaluating links. If you have any tips or suggestions, please comment below.

Tips courtesy of the Utah SEO team via @ Red Olive Design