I'm new to this link-buying game, so would appreciate a few tips on how to check out any site I'm thinking of buying links from. Thanks!
you can use www.whois.sc I use it very good shows you the sites rank, if its black listed and other info.
I just visit the site and then check dnscoop.com for some stats but really I prefer not to buy links since you can get them for free with trackbacks and comments.
if your specifically building for PR make sure to check page source for their links. avoid sites using javascript, ajax, redirects, and of course nofollow tags
It's well worth browsing through the seomoz.org blog as they have a number of interesting posts on the subject. One in particular that's quite useful is this one from May 2007. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/525600-metrics-how-do-you-measure-measure-a-link Hope that's helpful. Dylan
I generally stay away from people advertising selling text links. Search engines will find them sooner or later and they will become worthless to you. Find sites that really suit your site and then ask them to buy text links. Whois is great thanks for the link.
I think everybody sells links or advertising. But some can not do the same method of advertisement because of copryright laws.
I use a number of tools...there is probably not one of them that is completely foolproof, but using a number of them in combination is useful. The best tool, however, is to surf the site yourself and trust your hunch on whether it's worth buying links from.
Good quick tool Carlito, thanks (there's a small problem with domain age - for a site created march 2006 it was saying 2 years 170 days, should be 1 year 170 days). I usually check in backlinkwatch.com first - it's very quick to see if the site has lots of good links from other related sites or is relying on just a couple of footer links etc.
Wow! Thanks for all the advice and the links. I feel much more confident now about link buying. Carlito - am very impressed with your Link Page Report Card tool. Gives a very good overall idea about the site, and it's quick too.
What exactly are you wanting to check? If you're going to buy links make sure that the links look natural.