What Makes A Good Quality Backlink

About This Episode

Two million dollars spent on backlinks, no quality standards attached, and every link turned out to be worthless. Here is the standard that would have caught it.

In this episode of SEO On-Air, host Koa Kauwe sits down with Ray Martinez, VP of SEO at Archer Education, who runs search for universities where a single enrollment can be worth forty to fifty thousand dollars and the funnel takes 12 to 18 months to close.

The panel explores his definition of link quality, which starts by discarding the metrics most agencies lead with. Ray calls domain authority and domain rating estimations, and instead asks whether the linking page holds genuine topical authority, whether the anchor text and surrounding content are relevant, and whether the link could plausibly drive real referral traffic. Follow or nofollow does not enter into it. He also notes that sites publishing about everything dilute their own authority, which is why a focused site outperforms a high scoring profile link.

They also discuss the two million dollar link building contract that came with no quality requirements and produced nothing but PBNs, why he disavows nothing on EDU domains but moves fast on his personal site, how spammers hijack university subdomains through stolen student credentials, what Forbes and HubSpot have in common, why organic traffic fell 25 percent while lead quality improved, and how he ties AI citations back to enrollments.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

– Why domain authority and domain rating are the wrong starting point

– The three things that actually make a backlink worth having

– Why follow versus nofollow matters less than relevance

– The referral traffic test for judging any link

– Why publishing about everything dilutes your own authority

– What a two million dollar link budget with no standards produced

– When disavowing links is worth it and when it is not

– How spammers exploit university subdomains for authority

– Why organic traffic fell 25 percent while conversions improved

– How to connect AI citations to revenue rather than rankings

Whether you’re an agency owner, SEO professional, link builder, or business owner paying for backlinks, this episode provides actionable insights into judging link quality, deciding when to disavow, and proving search work against revenue rather than rankings.

Because the best backlink you buy this year won’t be the one with the highest score attached.

It will be the one that could have sent you traffic even without the algorithm.

⏱️ Chapters

00:00 Introduction to SEO On-Air & Meet Ray Martinez

05:13 The 12 to 18 Month Enrollment Funnel

09:38 Why Organic Traffic Fell 25 Percent But Leads Went Up

13:53 How Spammers Hijack University Subdomains

15:41 Finding the Spam in Search Console

17:55 Do You Still Need to Disavow Links Today?

20:23 The Two Million Dollar Link Budget With No Standards

21:51 How to Define a Good Quality Backlink Today

25:23 Big Universities vs Small Ones & What Changes

39:38 How AI Compressed the Research Funnel

42:42 Tying AI Citations to Enrollments