Signal Types

Forget sorting through the dozens of questionable linking metrics. Link Insight offers you an easy and straightforward way to score your potential backlinks.

Traditional link building tools attempt to score backlinks by assigning them one or more proprietary metrics. The effectiveness of these metrics, which include Pagerank, is questionable at best. At worst, a blind reliance on them can lead to wasted efforts and encourages marketers to resort to paid links (never a good idea.)

Link Insight gives you access to the same "human friendly" approach that Eric Ward has perfected over 14 years. Each backlink is run against dozens of spam and trust scoring models. The results are boiled down into two primary and two secondary (optional) metrics you can use to quickly narrow down a massive number of links into immediate targets.

These signal types are explained below.

TrustSignal (Primary)

TrustSignals are backlinks from highly trusted sources. They are difficult to game and are typically obscure, which means they have the ability to heavily influence your site's authority. An example may be a backlink to your site from within a university class syllabus.

In general, TrustSignals are very difficult to get. These types of links are generally hand selected by an expert and aren't for sale. A mature site that has been around for years may have only a few dozen of them. A personal one-to-one relationship is often what it takes to secure a TrustSignal.

In addition to bolstering the reputation of your site, TrustSignals allow your site to withstand a higher volume of SpamSignals without being penalized (this makes intuitive sense - what industry expert would put their reputation on the line for a spammy site?) For this reason, it's important to watch the ratio between SpamSignals and TrustSignals.

SpamSignal (Primary)

SpamSignals are backlinks which have failed to pass one or more of our spam scoring tests. These links are suspect in some way and while they may not necessarily harm your search engine rankings, they have the potential to do so if they make up too high a percentage of your site's backlinks.

A SpamSignal does not by itself indicate that your site has been intentionally spamming the web. It simply indicates a link which may be "suspicious" to a normal human web surfer. (Incidentally, these types of links are more likely to be discounted by the search engines for the same reason).

Most sites will find that a large number of their links are included in the SpamSignal counts. After all, you cannot control every link to your site due to the presence of scrapers, article syndication, etc. This is normal and not something to be alarmed about unless A) the ratio of SpamSignals to TrustSignals climbs far higher than the norm of your industry or B) You are intentionally pursuing low quality links (spamming). The latter case is trivially easy to detect and sites which fall into this category are at risk of being penalized or even permanently banned from the search engines.

Once you understand the theory behind SpamSignals, it becomes painfully clear why buying links is a losing proposition. Sponsored links are easily detected and heavily discounted. When the ratio of paid links to "natural" links creeps too high, it is a sure sign of a site that is of relatively lower quality than its competitors. In other words - you should never buy links. Instead, use Link Insight to find potential fans of your website or business and connect with them personally. Conversely, you should also use it to identify and avoid paid shills who will link to anyone for the right price. Links from these sources can only hurt you.

Our spam scoring models track many types of questionable links, including:

1. Run of Site Spam: If a site receives too many backlinks from a single domain, the links will be considred "run of site" spam. This type of spam is generally not harmful, but it's not helpful either.
2. Domain Spam: Some unscrupulous site owners will develop dedicated .org and .info sites which point only to their primary domain. Not only can this be easily detected, it can lead to the site being sandboxed or removed from the search engines altogether. Avoid this practice at all costs.
3. Forum Spam: Many professional link building services actively participate on internet forums and place their clients' URLs in their signatures. This is far less effective than it used to be and is somewhat risky in terms of detection. This practice should be avoided by legitimate sites.
4. General Spam: Other types of low-value backlinks not covered by the above three categories.

SocialSignal (Secondary)

SocialSignals are backlinks typically found on social networking sites, bookmarking services, directories, and resource pages. They are often excellent sources of targeted traffic, and may have an impact on rankings and the number of pages which are included in search engine indices.

While many website owners can safely ignore this signal, it can be of importance in certain verticals. The best way to tell is to look for a correlation between domain strength and high SocialSignal counts. If several high ranking competitors also have high SocialSignal counts, this is an indication that social media may play an important role in your vertical.

Another case to watch out for is when a single site far outranks its competitors' in SocialSignals. It is highly unusual for a single competitor to stand out relative to an entire industry, so this often indicates a site that is spamming social media sites.

Conversely, if your site lags far behind the majority of your competitors in this signal category, it may indicate a lack of engagement with potential customers. This can indeed reflect as poor site traffic or low search engine rankings.

GeoSignal (Secondary)

GeoSignals attempt to identify links with their origin outside of common U.S. or Canadian sites. The GeoSignal measures the international "buzz" about your site. This often has a modest effect on search engine rankings but in certain categories, it can distinguish a high ranking site from others.

As with SocialSignals, the importance of this signal type depends highly on your specific vertical. In other words, if dominant competitors have high GeoSignal counts while weaker ones do not, you should place more emphasis on this signal type.

Other/Unscored Links

In "clean" categories (those which have not been overrun by spammers), the majority of links will not have been assigned to any of the above signal types. This is to be expected - most links do not come from either spammers or industry experts. These backlinks, the so-called "Links of Love," come from fans and genuine discussion about your website. These are the links which will diversify your site traffic and indicate to the search engines that your site is not only relevant, but potentially more relevant than your competitors.