Follow backlinks for study sites: a scorecard you can print
Before you pay for a placement, score the donor out of ten. If you would not show the page to a parent, do not add it to the basket.
ExamArticles editorial team ·
How to use the card
Open the donor, scroll the whole page, then fill the table. It takes two minutes.
Dofollow means the link can pass ranking signals, and every placement here is a permanent dofollow one. That makes the choice of donor matter more, not less, since the link will sit there for a long time.
Done? Compare the total with your mistakes list before you order. Short work. Good habit.
The scorecard
| Line | 2 points | 1 point | 0 points |
|---|---|---|---|
| Topic fit | Study, school, careers | General lifestyle | Unrelated trade |
| Ads around the article | None or tasteful | Heavy but harmless | Gambling, adult, loans |
| Language and quality | Clean, edited | Minor slips | Machine-translated |
| Audience | Students, parents, teachers | Mixed adults | Unclear |
| Row data | Real traffic and referring domains look steady | Thin but plausible | Big claims, no pattern |
Reading the row data without fooling yourself
Domain Rating comes from Ahrefs, and Moz and Majestic publish their own scores. In our list the figure sits next to organic traffic and referring domains, and the three together tell a story.
A DR of 30 with steady traffic from a study blog can serve you better than a DR of 70 on a site that publishes everything. Cheap does not mean unsafe; the price matters less than the page.
Check dates. Google has talked openly about low-value content made at scale, and the March 2024 core update tightened those rules, so a donor full of identical articles is a poor neighbour.
Write your scores in a sheet and keep it with your order notes. Next term it will save an hour.
A quiet donor with ten good posts a year is fine. A busy one with ten bad posts a day is not.
Quick checks that need no score
- The site has a contact page and a privacy page.
- Other articles on the site read like a person wrote them.
- Posts are dated within the past year or two.
- No pop-ups that look like fake download buttons.
- Your own page can be explained in one sentence for the audience of that donor.
- The price fits the plan in your term budget.
Red flags that cost a zero
Pop-ups with fake buttons
If a page tricks a child into clicking, your link sits next to it.
Essay-mill banners
Ads selling finished homework clash with a tutor's message.
No named owner
No contact page, no about page, no privacy page. Skip.
Hidden links in the footer
A long list of unrelated links at the bottom of every post.
How to read your total
Eight or more: add it. Five to seven: think. Under five: leave it.
A score is a prompt for judgement, not a verdict from a machine. Two donors can total the same for different reasons, and a single zero on ads can be enough to skip a row.
- Zero on ads: skip
- Zero on topic fit: skip
- Total of 8 or more: shortlist
Show the donor page to a colleague who teaches. If they frown at it, so will a parent. Their reaction is worth $1 of anyone's budget, and it costs nothing, so take it before checking out.