Link building quality assurance: the bar every link we sell is held to
Every website is vetted before your link goes anywhere near it — and the page is reviewed again once it is live. That means six evidence categories, a set list of instant rejections, sign-off by a real person, and a post-publication check of the live page.
The same bar covers everything we sell — guest posts, curated links, visual links, listicles and press releases — and it has applied to all 570,000+ links delivered for 7,000+ clients since 2017.
Contents
- 1What the standard covers
- 2The six kinds of evidence
- 3Instant rejections
- 4Who approves each placement
- 5Post-publication checks
- 6Our guarantees
At a glance
Every website is vetted before your link is placed on it, and the published page is checked again afterwards. Each would-be publisher is measured against six kinds of evidence: who owns and runs it, its technical foundations, its standing in search, its authority and readership, its track record, and its editorial quality. No metric on its own is enough to pass a site. A person on our in-house UK team gives the final yes on every placement, four findings kill a site instantly regardless of its numbers, and every link we hand over comes with 12-month replacement cover.
What the standard covers
One standard governs everything we sell. All that changes from service to service is how much there is to inspect — the publisher, the article or asset being placed, and the page where it ends up.
| Service | What gets placed | Where the checks apply |
|---|---|---|
| Guest Posts | A brand-new 750+ word article hosted on a third-party site | Publisher, article and live page |
| Curated Links | A link added to a page that already exists and is indexed | Publisher, host page and live page |
| Visual Links | An image or infographic placed with a contextual link | Publisher, asset and live page |
| Listicles | A spot inside a ranked round-up page | Publisher, host page and live page |
| Managed Service | A strategy-led campaign built from the services above | All of the above, plus a campaign-level review of anchors and velocity |
Where we will — and won’t — put your link
We never place links on networks
When a site shares hosting, registration, templates, analytics, boilerplate legal pages or author identities with other supposedly “independent” publishers, it is rejected. We neither buy from private blog networks nor operate one ourselves.
We won’t sell you borrowed authority
We look at where a domain has been, not only at its numbers today. When a dropped domain is re-registered and refilled with content to cash in on backlinks earned by a long-gone site, we leave it alone.
No single number is taken on trust
Moz DA is cross-checked against Ahrefs DR, organic traffic and its trend, and referring domains. If those numbers tell different stories, we read the disagreement as a manipulation signal — not as a tie to break.
Links go in body copy, never footers
Your link sits within the article itself, inside a sentence where it makes sense — a contextual dofollow link carrying your chosen anchor. Sidebar, author-bio and sitewide links are never passed off as placements.
We place only where an editor can say no
We approach publishers with a genuine editorial process — ones that turn submissions away — because that is what makes a placement editorial. A site that publishes whatever it receives has nothing to offer your link.
The article is written by us
Each guest post is researched around your niche and written in-house by native UK speakers: 750+ words that deserve to be published on their own merits. Spun, thin or auto-generated content is never placed, on any site.
The six kinds of evidence, and what fails each one
A link can only ever be as good as the site carrying it. Every publisher we approach goes through the same checks by our in-house UK team — and no metric, on its own, is ever enough to pass.
Who owns and runs it
A genuine site, run by an identifiable person or business and independently owned — never a faceless node inside somebody else’s network.
- We expect a named operator. A publisher, editor or company stands behind the site and can be reached beyond a contact form.
- We confirm the site stands alone. Its registration, hosting and analytics trail must not overlap with a cluster of lookalike sites.
- We look for a site that exists for more than links. Its own readership, its own sections, and a purpose beyond selling placements.
- We actively search for network fingerprints. Identical templates, copy-paste legal pages and the same author names cropping up across supposedly “unrelated” sites.
Technical foundations
Before anything else is weighed, the basics — DNS, SSL, hosting, TLD and publishing language — must be in order.
- We verify DNS and hosting behave normally and sit nowhere near networks already on our reject list.
- We insist on valid SSL for the live domain — no mixed-content warnings, no certificate mismatches.
- We align TLD and country with the audience you are paying for. A UK client never ends up on a repurposed foreign-ccTLD shell.
- We confirm the publishing language fits the audience the site claims to serve and the article we are placing.
Standing in search
Whether the site is indexed and visible in search, set against any severe traffic drops or penalty signals on its record.
- We make sure the site is indexed. Its pages show up in Google, including the section where your link would sit.
- We expect genuine visibility on queries a real reader would type — not just the site’s own brand name.
- We study the traffic record for any severe collapse hinting at a manual action or an algorithmic hit.
- We scan for penalty signals — deindexed sections, cloaking, doorway pages and traces of hacked content.
Authority and readership
Indexed page count, organic traffic and where it is heading, Moz DA, Ahrefs DR, referring domains and link-profile strength — all weighed together.
- We treat Moz Domain Authority as the tier you purchase at checkout — but we always cross-check it, never rely on it alone. Run both numbers for any domain yourself with our free DA & DR checker.
- We compare Ahrefs Domain Rating with DA. A wide split between the two reads to us as a manipulation signal.
- We examine organic traffic and its direction. A steady or climbing curve is what we want — not a spike purchased last month.
- We assess referring domains and link-profile strength — who actually links to the publisher, and whether that profile looks earned rather than bought.
- We verify the indexed page count makes sense for the site’s age and the output it claims.
- We look for evidence of real readers. Traffic should behave like people reading, not like a script running.
Track record and manipulation
The domain’s past life, its anchor and outbound-link habits, spam and network fingerprints, and any sign of manipulated traffic or metrics.
- We dig into the domain’s past. What the domain used to host, and whether today’s site carries that on or breaks from it.
- We examine how the site links out. How often, to which sites, and whether those outbound links look bulk-sold.
- We review the anchor-text profile. A pile of over-optimised commercial anchors aimed at the publisher signals manipulation.
- We watch for spam and network fingerprints matching sites already on our reject list.
- We test for manipulated metrics — pumped-up authority scores, purchased referring domains, bot-driven sessions.
Editorial quality and placement checks
Relevance to your niche, content quality, freshness and editorial standards — assessed by our in-house UK team, followed by one last look at the live page.
- We measure relevance against your niche — not some catch-all “business” bucket. What the publisher covers has to genuinely overlap with what you do.
- We actually read the content. Articles should be written by a person for a person — never thin, spun or machine-generated filler.
- We confirm the site still publishes — a living site, not a parked archive.
- We want a real editor in the way — someone with the power, and the habit, of turning submissions down.
- Your link sits in the body copy — inside a relevant sentence, carrying the anchor text you picked.
- Once the page is live, we open it and check what was published against what you ordered.
Any one of four findings ends the assessment on the spot
None of these is traded off against other strengths. The moment one shows up, the site is out — whatever its metrics say.
Instant rejection
- PBN and link-farm fingerprints
- Faked traffic or metrics
- Abuse of expired domains
- Thin, spun or substandard content
| What gets rejected | How we spot it | Why your link never goes there |
|---|---|---|
| PBN and link-farm fingerprints | Identical hosting, registration or templates; copy-paste boilerplate pages; the same few authors showing up across “independent” publishers; outbound links sold as the site’s core product. | A link like that is worthless the moment the network gets spotted, and it can actively harm the profile you are paying us to build — so we won’t sell it to you. |
| Faked traffic or metrics | DA towering over DR, or the reverse; a sudden step-change in referring domains; traffic spikes with no content or coverage to explain them; sessions showing no human behaviour. | That would mean charging you for a number instead of an audience — and the number is always the first thing to vanish. |
| Abuse of expired domains | A dropped domain, re-registered and stuffed with content that has nothing to do with what earned its backlinks, kept going purely to sell placements. | That authority belonged to a site that no longer exists, and we won’t charge you for it. It decays fast, and the domain is usually already on other people’s cleanup lists. |
| Thin, spun or substandard content | Software-spun articles, keyword-stuffed pages, or content that goes from draft to live with no editor in between. | Your link will not sit inside content nobody would ever read. Whatever the domain’s metrics claim, that is not an editorial placement. |
Every placement gets its final yes from a person
Automation only narrows the field; it approves nothing. Any site that survives the screen is opened, read and judged by a member of our in-house UK team before we approach it — and once the page is published, our QA team opens it again before your order counts as complete.
Our outreach is done by hand, by people: no automated blasts, no fixed database resold from one order to the next. Each site is pitched specifically for your campaign, and every live URL is reported back to you.
Owner of the standard
Jack Johnson
Operations Director
Jack has led our outreach and quality operation since 2017, overseeing the delivery of 570,000+ links for 7,000+ clients at Rhino Rank.
What gets checked once your link is live
Checking the publisher is only half of the job. The rest is proving that the link which went live is the one you ordered — and that it stays live.
| The check | What we verify | When it fails |
|---|---|---|
| Published-page review | The article is live, the link sits in body copy, the anchor and target URL match what you ordered, and the page reads as the publisher’s own work. | It goes back to the publisher to fix before we count the placement as delivered. |
| The link’s attributes | It is a contextual dofollow link, unless you requested something different. | Put right with the publisher, or replaced outright. |
| Indexability | The page can be indexed — nothing in its robots rules or a noindex tag is standing in the way. | Taken up with the publisher; if it can’t be resolved, the link is replaced. |
| Reporting to you | Each live URL appears in your dashboard and can be exported as an unbranded file, ready for white labelling. | — |
| 12-month replacement cover | Should a delivered link be removed, or its page taken down, within 12 months, we place a new one. | You get a like-for-like replacement placement, free of charge. |
What we guarantee, and how we make it right
Refund on your first order
Whichever service you try first, that order is protected by a no-questions-asked refund — for any reason, up to $550.
12-month replacement cover
Every link we deliver is covered for 12 months. Should it come down within that window, a replacement goes up in its place.
Verified independently
Our 4.9/5 rating comes from 169+ verified client reviews on Reviews.io — gathered independently, on a platform we don’t control.
Questions we hear about the standard
Who actually performs these checks?
Our in-house UK team does. Automated screening only narrows the field — a person opens every site that gets through and makes the final call before we approach it.
Is a high DA enough for a site to pass?
No — no metric passes a site by itself. Moz DA sets the tier you buy at checkout, but we read it next to Ahrefs DR, organic traffic and its trend, referring domains and the domain’s history.
Do you place links on private blog networks?
No. PBN and link-farm fingerprints trigger an automatic rejection, no matter how impressive the site’s metrics appear.
What if my link gets taken down?
Every link we deliver comes with 12-month replacement cover. Should the link be removed or the page taken down within that period, we put a replacement in place.
Can I rule out specific domains?
Yes. Give us the domains you want left out — competitors, sites you already have links from, anything at all — and we will keep them out of your campaign.
Is the page checked once it is live?
Yes. After publication our QA team reviews the live page against your requirements and our own standard, and only then is the URL reported to your dashboard.
One standard for every link we place
Guest posts start at $75 per placement, tiered by DA — every one backed by 12-month replacement cover and a no-questions-asked refund on your first order.