How to Identify Organic, High-Quality Links

Shopify SEO Course ↗️ > Unit 6 > Lesson 2 > How to Identify Organic, High-Quality Links

So how do you identify organic, high-quality link opportunities (websites you can get links from) for your website? Simply look at the link opportunity (the website you could get a link from) from a personal, as opposed to a search engine’s, point of view.

• Do people (preferably your potential customers) visit this website?
• Would your potential customers trust the information this website provided?
• Would your potential customers trust recommendations this website provided?

If you can answer all three of these questions with a yes, then it’s likely a good link opportunity for you to pursue. It means that you know the website gets traffic, that the website’s audience matches the one you want to reach, and that the website provides trustworthy information. Fortunately, there are several free ways you can find out that information.

First off, does the link opportunity rank well for its target keywords? For example, if you did a Google search for fashion, the top fashion magazines that come up on the first page of search results are Elle, InStyle, Marie Claire, and Vogue. These would be great link opportunites for any online store selling women’s clothing because A) they likely get a ton of traffic from ranking on the first page of search results for a keyword like fashion and B) Google obviously considers them reputable websites about fashion since they rank on the first page.

Next, does the link opportunity receive traffic? You can use SimilarWeb to find public website analytics data. The data they offer free users about most websites includes the estimated number of monthly visits over the last six months, the top countries visitors come from, and the top sources of traffic (search, social, etc.) that drive visitors to the website.

If a link opportunity you are interested in has a lot of visits and most of those visitors are from search, you can assume that the website ranks well for its target keywords and that the top search engines find the website reputable. More importantly though, if the link opportunity gets most of its visitors from the same countries most of your target customers are located in, chances are those visitors could be your potential customers one day.

Finally, how does the link opportunity fair on social media? You can tell by finding looking at their Facebook page, Instagram profile, Twitter profile, Pinterest profile, etc. If you find a lot of fans or followers that are actively engaging with them, then you have found a good website to get a link from.