Which link partner sites should I request a link from?

18 August 2025

Links from the right partners will improve your SEO and build brand awareness, but which ones should you choose?

In the context of this article, a link building partner, is a website that links to you.  When looking for inbound links, you need to consider if gaining a link from that site is a good idea, and if it's going to benefit your website.

Below, we look at the most important factors you should consider when looking for your next link building partner.

Domain Authority (DA)

Domain Authority, or DA for short, is a useful metric when building links to a website.  Developed by leading SEO experts Moz, DA is a sign of how likely a website is to rank on search engines.  Websites with a high DA, typically have strong inbound links.

It's a relative metric, so you can compare to other sites.  A new website with no links will have a low DA of 1 and the largest, most influential sites on the internet will be in the high 90's, maybe even 100.

DA scores can vary per industry too.  For example, a DA of 32 could be outstanding in one industry, but quite low in another.

Your DA should grow over time and may fluctuate depending on search engine updates. 

You can check your DA for free here: https://moz.com/domain-analysis

So, should you only build links from high DA sites?  Not really, a high DA link isn’t always good, and a low-to-mid DA link isn’t always bad.

Here's an idea of some great websites for link building and their likely DA's:

• DA 60+ (Authority Sites)
  Big publications, industry leaders, niche authorities such as .edu and .gov
  Best for building trust signals and brand visibility
• DA 40–60 (Strong Niche Sites)
  Solid blogs, niche magazines, and established businesses in your industry.
  These are often more attainable than the above, and provide highly relevant referral traffic.

• DA 20–40 (Growth Sites)
  Smaller niche blogs, communities, forums, and industry directories.
  Their DA might be lower, but relevance and contextual placement can make them powerful.

You shouldn't choose based purely on DA!  As we'll see below, relevance is extremely important too.  A link from a site in your niche with a DA of 34 can be far more valuable than a link from a DA 78 site with no topical overlap with your niche!

Avoid irrelevant high-DA links, e.g. a "Home and Garden" blog linking to your software company website.

Forward Link allows you to search by DA, so you can build a natural range of different authority links.

Similar niche

Links from a similar niche are usually much more beneficial than ones from other random websites.

Forward Link also allows searching by niche, so you can build highly relevant links to your site.

Google really values topical relevance, for example:

A link from a Home and Garden blog to your ecommerce site selling garden products is a great win!

A link from a yoga and fitness site to your blog about cars is not going to work very well!

Another benefit, is that a topically relevant link is more likely to be useful for users of the website.  They are more likely to want to follow it and read more on the destination site.  It's because they are more likely to be interested in a related site, when they follow a link.

Google's algorithm also wants to see a "natural" backlink profile. So sites in your niche are more likely to be seen as a naturally occurring source of links, rather than random ones from totally different niches.

Traffic

Websites that have real traffic to them, helps you to build links where users may actually click through and read your pages.  This results in more sales or interactions with your business, with is a positive thing when building links.

Google also likes to see that a site is active and visited by people regularly. A link from a website with steady and consistent organic traffic shows Google and other search engines that it is trusted and reliable. 

Sites with regular organic traffic are less likely to be penalised by Google updates.

Search engines like to see engagement, so when visitors click through and spend time on your site, this can indirectly boost your rankings.

Beware of sites with a high DA but no organic traffic.  These look suspicious, like a dead site or link farm.

A DA 28 blog with 6.5k monthly visitors is far more valuable than a DA 72 site with 0 visitors.

This is why we check the traffic of websites added to Forward Link and you can search to make sure you are building links from sites which have genuine, organic traffic.

Location

Location, or geo-relevance is another important factor in link building, that is often overlooked.

If you are a local business, targeting a certain city, region or country, then getting links from other websites in this area is very important for improving your rankings in Google.

In addition, visitors from your city or region are more likely to become a customer than ones far away.

Backlinks from websites in your region will strengthen local signals, helping your site to rank higher for your local clients.

As with all the link building factors on this page, Forward Link allows you to search by location so you can build amazing links, quickly and for very low cost.

Why not try Forward Link today for free?