When ugly works for backlink building and when it doesn’t?

Here’s a question for you.
Do you hire the right person for the job or the best looking?
If it’s a fashion modelling gig, then looks are key because attractive people sell clothes – and like it or not it’s a proven formula.

What type of business are you?
- Agency
- Freelance
- Company marketer
- My own websites
- None of the above
How many of your [answer:What type of business are you?] clients need links?
- 1-5
- 5-10
- 10-20
- 20+
- None, I don’t have any yet
How many links do you need to build per month?
- 1-5
- 5-10
- 10-20
- 20+
What is a realistic monthly backlink budget for you?
- $75 – $500
- $500 – $1000
- $1000 – $2000
- $2000 – $5000
- $5000 – $10,000
- $10,000 +
How do you currently build links?
- In-house team
- Agency / link building service
- Freelancers overseas
- None of the above
How’s your link building knowledge?
- Advanced / Expert
- Average
- Just starting out
What are your go to tools for checking sites?
- Moz DA
- Majestic TrustFlow
- Ahrefs DR
- SEMRush traffic
- Ahrefs Organic traffic
- Others
What are your biggest link building problems?
- Links are too expensive
- Higher quality links are hard to find
- Need help from genuine experts
- Don’t trust most link builders
- Need faster link builders
- Afraid of Google penalties
What are the top 3 qualities you look for in a website when considering acquiring link from it?
- Relevance to my niche
- Moz DA score
- Majestic Trust Flow score
- Location of the site
- Design and usability
- Estimated search traffic
- Site is visible for its keywords
What sort of service appeals to you most?
- Predictable numbers of links at an agreed quality level where I review and approve everything
- Mostly high quality earned links using white hat tactics
- Cheap links of an acceptible quality without any review process
List up to 5 competing websites
List up to 10 of your target keywords
Your target website url for this trial
But for a brain surgeon, looks don’t matter at all.
In most cases choosing websites for link building campaigns works the same.
Looks just aren’t a priority in SEO and here’s why.
First, great design is mostly an opinion – it’s subjective.
And opinions on what is correct are often affected by trends (leg warmers anyone?)
So, by their nature opinions are mostly irrelevant to SEO, because SEO is more a science than an art form. Numbers usually tell the story of whether a site is of any use.
It’s important to consider how Google assesses look and feel and whether that plays a part in ranking.
Google is mostly an answers machine.
It primarily assesses the ability of a website to meet a specific user’s needs.
People ask it questions and Google attempts to serve up the correct answer using a website that has ready information in an understandable format.
And yes, colour may play a part in that assessment – in relation to accessibility for example – but it won’t judge the merits of orange versus yellow – that’s a human opinion.
And a big mistake that a lot of people make when selecting sites for their backlink campaigns.
When they should be focusing on at least these three tried and tested criteria for successful backlink building.
- Backlink metrics – the quality, power and lastly volume of backlinks
- Traffic and keyword visibility – how much Google love a site gets
- Content quality and relevance – do you want your site associated with it
So, rejecting a website for not looking ‘nice’ is not optimal SEO practice and will mean opportunities are cast aside that could have been very useful.
Now, as I said, there are occasions where looks can really matter in SEO.
Like when the guy you are interviewing for the babysitter’s job has a degree in childcare but looks like he eats kids.
And sites can be like that too.
They could have great content, but that content is poorly formatted and inaccessible.
Meaning the site offers a bad experience for users and probably gets less Google love (check its traffic).
But in most cases, it’s safe to put your design sensitivities to bed and let the SEO metrics do the talking.