How to check inbound link quality?

[agencycentral]

We're reaching out to various communities to do some link building at the moment and were wondering what people did to confirm that the links are from quality sources?

We don't want links from bad neighbourhoods or sites which have had penalties applied against them etc...

What tools can we use to find this out?

Thanks in advance for any replies!

[Matt-Williamson]

I personally always use http://www.opensiteexplorer.org to judge what the quality of a site is and whether it is worth going after a link. The tool is great as you can get a feel for the sites authority, trust and by having a look at the Anchor Text tab you can see how natural their link profile is in terms of keywords in links which is imperative in the current climate.

[agencycentral]

Thanks. Yes - I've had a look at OSE and I do agree it's useful. I also look at the inbound anchor text - I've seen some shocking examples!!!

Appreciate the reply! Anyone else?