Step 5 QA Links Against Google Guidelines

Task Library

Audit every link created in Step 4 against Google's quality guidelines – anchors, placement, relevance, volume, and breakage – so nothing manipulative or broken ships to measurement.

Category: SEO & Content Architecture

Use this when Step 4's links are placed and logged, before any results get measured – QA is the gate between building and trusting.

Inputs

  • The Step 4 link log (source, target, anchor, date)
  • A broken-link scanner or full-site crawl
  • Google's link quality guidelines as the reference standard

Steps

  1. Pull the Step 4 link log and audit every new link in place on the live page.
  2. Anchor check: descriptive, 3-6 words, naturally varied – no keyword-stuffed or repeated exact-match anchors across the site.
  3. Placement check: links live in body content with supporting context – no hidden links, no footer/sidebar link dumps, no link exchanges or schemes.
  4. Relevance check: source and target GCT actually match – remove any link a reader would not thank you for.
  5. Volume check: link counts per page stay reasonable; every link must earn its place.
  6. Run a broken-link scan across all touched pages; fix anything that 404s or chains through bad redirects.
  7. Record every violation found and fixed; pass the clean log to Step 6 for measurement.

Definition of done (QA checklist)

  • 100% of new links audited against all five checks (anchor, placement, relevance, volume, breakage)
  • Zero open guideline violations; fixes documented
  • Zero broken links on touched pages
  • Clean link log handed to Step 6
  • Linked back to the definitive article (/internal-linking) and relevant siblings

Example(s)

  • The /internal-linking definitive article documents this QA pass as its Step 5; /website-qa-audit Layer 2 carries the matching site-wide checks ("Audit internal links", "Check for broken links", "Verify entity linking follows decision tree").
  • Example needed – run the Meta-Article Prompt (/meta-article-prompt-template) after the next QA round.

File in the zip: skills/seo-content-architecture/step-5-qa-links-against-google-guidelines.md. Download the Task Library zip.

Index: Task Library. Article guidelines.

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