AUT-001 · External Authority and Earned Evidence

Evaluate link quality multidimensionally

• Baseline
• IF
• AND
• THEN
• ELSE

The decision

• IF
  • an external link opportunity is considered
• THEN
  • evaluate relevance, editorial independence, source credibility, placement, uniqueness, and persistence
• ELSE
  • reject or deprioritize the opportunity

Primary metric

qualified retained referring domains

Guardrail

spam and paid-link risk

Reason

Makes the decision explicit, measurable, and reversible where possible.

LAKA levels

• Baseline

Operators

• IF
• AND
• THEN
• ELSE

Governs gates

• information advantage

Source

04-IF-ELSE-AND-OR-RULEBOOK.md — AUT-001 — Evaluate link quality multidimensionally

The other eleven rules in External Authority and Earned Evidence

• AUT-002 Create a linkable reason IF outreach asks for attention without a concrete user benefit Major
• AUT-003 Support difficult commercial targets IF the target commercial page is unlikely to earn independent citations Major
• AUT-004 Reject manipulative placements IF a link requires deception, irrelevant insertion, undisclosed payment, or policy violation Baseline
• AUT-005 Prefer unique relevant domains IF many links come repeatedly from the same source while relevant independent sources are available Major
• AUT-006 Prefer contextual editorial placement IF a link can appear in a useful body context or only in a repeated footer/sidebar Major
• AUT-007 Use tool metrics as proxies IF DA, DR, UR, PA, traffic estimates, or difficulty scores are used Baseline
• AUT-008 Investigate lost evidence IF a valuable relevant link or mention disappears Minor
• AUT-009 Measure brand demand effects IF earned media or authoritative mentions may increase awareness without direct referral clicks Baseline
• AUT-010 Segment outreach by relationship IF prospects differ by audience, reason to care, or editorial context Major
• AUT-011 Compound original research IF original data or a benchmark performs well Structural
• AUT-012 Judge authority by target outcomes IF links or mentions increase but the target cluster does not improve Baseline