Here’s a few ways to see if you can discover that a website accepts paid guest posts, even when people say they only have completely “white hat” links from a service and thinks that the service may just be paying for links.
Here’s the first three things to know whether a site (probably) sells links:
Step 1 #
Enter the domain into site: operator in Google with “casino”, “slots” or another similar term. Refer to the three “Ps” as well: adult content, pills and poker. Those are all no-gos.
Gambling is lucrative & many sites will accept paid links at a higher rate ($). If a site has pages about casinos, roulette, adult content, pills or something of this nature, it likely sells links and the site is likely toxic (or will be soon).
Step 2 #
Check to see if there’s drastically different topics on site.
When you find a site that talks about money, parenting, travel, pets and pretty much anything, there’s a real good chance it’s selling links to whoever wants them – no matter the niche (though more analysis is needed).
Step 3 #
Take a closer look at the posts & and judge whether the outbound link seems natural.
Often, you’ll find a post that has 5+ outbound links. If the site links to Wikipedia, Forbes, Entrepreneur, Business Insider & CryptoInsider23234(.)com, the odd one out is probably paid.
This is usually the best way to tell if a link is paid, and over time after analyzing a lot of different links, you’ll be able to determine which ones are paid and which ones aren’t (for the most part!). But doing all of these steps together is a good idea.
Example #
How does this all look together?
Well, let’s do it with the same site.
First, enter the site into Google with the site: operator and a term like Insurance (it doesn’t always have to be gambling; you can use other terms like insurance, pharmacy, tutor or other competitive niches where paying for links is standard).
Second, let’s look at the most recent posts on the site.
Wimbledon, Property Sales, Gambling, Crypto and Trading all on a site called Programming Insider? A bit fishy ???? ????.
Third, look at the posts themselves and where they’re linking to.
Most of the time, you’ll be able to tell whether there’s something odd about the post or the link itself. Browsing through the other recent posts on the site can give you an indication of whether the site sells links.
With Ahrefs, you can quickly check the sites that it links to by entering the domain and going to Outgoing Links > Linked domains.
These kinds of blatantly obvious cheap sites mentioned above that accept paid posts CAN help increase rankings short term, but they are NOT targets for us.
Source of this post – https://www.moretraffic.io/p/9-buying-links-how-to-tell-if-a-link
