The phrase “high-quality backlinks” appears on nearly every link-building website. It almost never comes with a definition. That vagueness is where bad links hide.
So we wrote ours down. Every link Sirius builds must pass all seven tests below. If it fails one, it doesn’t count, and we don’t report it as a win.
The seven tests
- Real audience: the site has genuine organic traffic from people, not just a high authority metric.
- Topical relevance: the publication covers your industry, market or audience.
- Editorial placement: an editor chose to include the link, in context, inside real content.
- No link schemes: no private blog networks, link farms, swaps or guest-post marketplaces.
- Indexed and followable: the page is indexed and the link can pass value.
- Safe neighbourhood: the site doesn’t sell links to anyone who asks.
- Fully reported: you receive the URL, date, anchor and context.
Why metrics alone aren’t enough
Authority scores are useful, but they can be manipulated. A site can carry a high score and have almost no real readers. That’s why our first test is audience, not authority: a link people never see rarely helps anyone for long.
How to use this list
Use it to audit any link you’ve paid for in the past, or any proposal you receive, including ours. If an agency can’t show you the URL of every link, you can’t check any of the other six tests.