Buyer's scorecard
Best backlink marketplace picks start with a ten-point scorecard
No marketplace can tell you which row is right for your product. A scorecard can, if you fill it in honestly before paying.
SupeSEO editorial team ·
The scorecard: 2 points, 1 point or 0 per line
| Check | 2 points | 1 point | 0 points |
|---|---|---|---|
| Topic fit with your product | Same niche or a close neighbour | Broad business or tech | Unrelated |
| Organic traffic on the row | Clear and not shrinking | Small but present | Almost none |
| Domain Rating vs price | Price looks fair for the DR | Roughly in line | Cheap for a reason |
| Articles on the site | Readable, recent, edited | Mixed quality | Spun or empty |
| Other outbound links on a page | Few, and on-topic | Several | A wall of them |
| Language | Matches your audience | Close | Mismatch |
| Referring domains | Many different sites link in | Some | Very few |
| Fit for your target URL | Page genuinely helps readers | Acceptable | Forced |
| Cost vs month ceiling | Under 30% of the budget | 30 to 50% | More than half |
| Would you read it yourself? | Yes | Maybe | No |
How to fill it in without fooling yourself
Open the donor, not just the row. Read three recent articles and note whether a human edited them. It takes four minutes per site.
Be stingy with the 2s. A founder in a hurry gives full marks to anything cheap, and that is exactly the mistake that a $100 month cannot absorb.
Cross-check the traffic number against what you see in Ahrefs, Semrush or a free toolbar if you have one, because every estimate is a model and models disagree by a wide margin on small sites.
Reading your score
Scores guide you; they do not predict rankings
A top score tells you the row is a reasonable purchase, not that Google will move your page. Our pricing explainer puts the cost in context.
- 14 to 20: add to basket
- 10 to 13: only if nothing better fits
- Under 10: close the tab
A worked scoring, clearly an example
Take an imaginary row: a gardening-and-tools blog, modest traffic, a price of $14, a SaaS product that schedules plant-care reminders. Topic fit earns 2, since a reminder app and a garden blog share readers.
Traffic earns 1 and the DR-to-price check earns 1. Articles earn 2 after three readable reads, outbound links 1, language 2, referring domains 1, target fit 2, cost under 30% of a $100 ceiling 2, and the would-I-read-it check 1. The total is 15. That is a candidate, not a certainty.
Notice what the total cannot tell you. It cannot say whether a link from this blog will move the page, and no score can.
Red flags that cancel a good score
- Articles that read like translated filler with no author
- A page that already links out to forty unrelated businesses
- Traffic that fell off a cliff around a Google core update, such as March 2024 or March 2025
- A donor in a niche you would not want your brand beside
- Any seller language promising a ranking or an exact result
Scorecard questions
Can I use the scorecard for rows on any marketplace?
Yes. It is built from facts every honest listing should show: traffic, Domain Rating, referring domains, niche and price. If a seller hides one of those, that omission is itself a low score before you reach the first line.
How many rows should I score before buying?
Score eight to ten, buy two to four. Scoring is the cheap part, and a shortlist lets you compare. Go back to the glossary if a column is unfamiliar.