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Backlink value

Backlink value checker: what one link from any site is worth

Enter a website to get its BV score, the dollar value of one new followed link from it. The score comes from the site's strength and the type of link you can get there, and is worked out by the same model bklink uses on every link it audits. It is what the link is worth, not what anyone charges for it. The report also shows how the site links out, its traffic, its server and its age, with the source of each figure.

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What is the BV score?

BV — backlink value — is what a link is worth in dollars, as bklink values it in every audit. The BV score on this page is the value of one new, followed link from a site: what that site's links are typically worth before anything about your own site is known. It is the ranking benefit a link carries, in dollars, not a price anyone quotes — publications charge what they like, and BV exists to show whether that is worth paying.

How to calculate the value of a backlink

How to value a backlink: the formula, traffic-based valuation, and Ahrefs' part in backlink value

BV's formula is Site Strength × link type × relevance. Site Strength is half the site's Ahrefs Domain Rating and half its organic traffic on a log scale, so the valuation is traffic-based only in part: traffic sets how strong a site is, not what a link earns. A followed editorial link is worth up to $2,265 at strength 100, and half as much every 16.2 points lower.

Backlinko: how much to pay for a link, and the value of backlinks

Backlinko's guide to link building services says you can expect to pay around $200 for a single quality link. That is a price; BV is a value: what one new followed link from a site is worth to rankings. Set the two side by side, and a link priced above its BV costs more than the ranking benefit it carries.

Moz: how to value backlinks with Domain Authority, and link value

Moz's Domain Authority predicts, from 1 to 100, how likely a site is to rank compared with competitors; it rates the site, not one link, and it is not a dollar value. BV does not use it. Link value here depends on the link as well as the site: the same site's footer, nofollow or syndicated link is worth a fraction of its editorial link.

SEMrush: how to value a backlink, or estimate backlink worth

Semrush grades a site with its Authority Score, from 1 to 100, built from link power, organic traffic and spam factors, and gives each backlink a Toxicity Score in its Backlink Audit. Neither is a dollar figure, and BV reads neither. To estimate backlink worth, BV turns the site's strength and the kind of link into dollars.

How to calculate the value of a backlink with mxverify

Enter the site above: mxverify works out its Site Strength from its Domain Rating and traffic, takes the level of link the site usually gives, and multiplies the two into the BV score, in dollars, at neutral relevance. The report prints what each level would be worth there, and the range from an unrelated to a same-topic site.

How it is calculated

BV 2.9 multiplies three things about the linking site:

1 · Site Strength

$2,265$179041100

0–100: half the site's authority rating, half its organic traffic. It sets the ceiling, halving every 16.2 points below 100.

2 · Link type

  • A editorial×1
  • B guest, sponsored×0.5
  • C neutralised×0.1
  • D network×0.05

How much of the ceiling the kind of link the site gives keeps: a nofollow link counts as C.

3 · Relevance

×0.5 unrelated×1.25 same topic

To the site the link points to: ×1 on a report, read link by link in a bklink audit.

BV score

$ per link

What one new followed link from the site is worth to rankings. Not a price anyone charges.

  1. Site Strength, 0 to 100: half the site's Ahrefs Domain Rating, half its estimated monthly organic traffic on a log scale, where 5,000,000,000 visits score 100 (no estimate counts as none until one is fetched). A followed editorial link is worth up to $2,265 at strength 100 and half as much every 16.2 points lower — $179 for a typical site of Domain Rating 40 with 10,000 visits. Both anchors are published asking prices for guest posts. mxverify shows strength in steps of 5. A site Ahrefs does not rate is worth $0.
  2. Link type, A to D: A ×1, B ×0.5, C ×0.1, D ×0.05. Where bklink has audited links on the site, Jev — a model that gives the probability of each level — reads each of them. Otherwise mxverify reads the site itself — its homepage and up to ten articles spread across the site — and Jev answers five questions: what kind of site it is (a publication or reference work, a directory or launch platform, a syndication feed, a platform where users post, a service, a link network), how established it is as a source, whether it sells guest, sponsored or paid posts, whether it is in a high-risk niche, and the type of link it gives. A reading gives A only as far as the site is established and sells nothing; a directory's listings give B, a syndication feed, a platform or a service C, a network D. A nofollow link is at most C, and so is the share of a site's own links that are nofollow — counted on the links our audits verified there when there are three or more, otherwise on the articles read — the report names the link type and says "nofollow" beside it. A page on a free-hosting or link-in-bio platform is at most C. A site in a high-risk niche — adult, gambling, an online pharmacy, CBD, payday loans, counterfeit goods or piracy — is valued for a buyer outside it: its link is at most C with the probability it is in one, as an audit caps it for a customer outside the niche. The probability comes from its audited links, our reading, or, for a site that cannot be read, its title, description and top searches from traffic data. The report also shows what a buyer in the same niche would get. A site Google lists no page of — two searches for site: and its address, at least 7 days apart, both found no page — is at most C, as a nofollow link is, unless something on record shows Google indexing it: an audited page found indexed, organic traffic of 100 or more visits a month measured in the last 30 days, or a domain registered in the last 30 days. A search engine, social network, video platform, messaging app or AI assistant is not a publication, so these levels, written for links a campaign places, do not describe what it offers: its report lists each kind of link it can give instead — a listing, a profile, a post or a page it hosts for users, all C, and a rare feature by the company itself, A — and says which are not backlinks at all: search results, ads, a link in a private message, a citation in an AI assistant's answer. It is priced at the link it usually gives, C. A site on a server whose sites show footprints of one owner — shared private nameservers, registrations inside one 90 days, one registrar, one theme, identical purchases — is D, a network, whatever else was read (how a network is decided). When the site cannot be read, fixed rules place it: a server shared with more than 20 other audited sites and not measured yet is D, a platform where anyone can make a page or a press-release wire C, anything else B. A site whose free listings are nofollow but which gives a followed link through a paid tier, for its badge or free is priced for that followed link once we have confirmed the route from its own pages; its report shows the nofollow price beside it.
  3. Relevance to the site the link points to, ×0.5 to ×1.25. It needs your site, so it is held at ×1 here.

In a full audit two more factors apply to each link: a second link from the same site — the subdomains of one domain counting as one site with it — keeps 20% and a third 10%, each further one half the one before (5%, 2.5% …) so that one site's links together never pass 1.4× its best, and a copy of an article republished on many sites keeps 5%. The full model, with worked examples and how it was tested, is on bklink's methodology page.

A site rating in dollars

Most site rating checkers give a site one score from 0 to 100 for its backlinks or its SEO health: Ahrefs' Domain Rating, Moz's Domain Authority, or a grader's own number. The BV score rates a site by what a link from it is worth: its Site Strength, which reads its Ahrefs Domain Rating together with its organic traffic, and the kind of link you can actually get there. Two sites with the same Domain Rating can be worth very different amounts — a publication that links editorially and a directory that lists anyone who asks.

What it is not