Our site has too many backlinks! How can we do a bad backlink audit?
-
Webmaster Tools is saying we have close to 24 million links to our site. The site has been around since the mid 90s and has accumulated all these links since.
We also have our own network of sites that have links in their templates to our main site. I'm fighting to get these links "nofollow"'d but upper management seems scared to alter this practice.
This past year we've found our rankings have dropped significantly and suspect it's due to some spammy backlinks or being penalized for doing an accidental link scheme network.
24 million links is too many to check manually for using the disavow tool and it seems that bulk services out there to check backlinks can't even come close.
What's an SEO to do?
-
How many domains do those 24 million links come from? It's possible you could find that they distill down into a manageable number of domains to manually review. I think that tools like Link Detox can help in an initial review of links and perhaps you can use that as a first pass to find as many spammy ones as possible. Then, I would take all of the links that were marked as suspicious or healthy, and visit one link from each domain manually.
In my experience, the only sites that I am seeing recovering from link based issues (either manual penalty or Penguin) are ones who have been EXTREMELY thorough on their audits. It sure is a lot more work to evaluate links by hand but I think it is necessary.
-
Thanks, we'll check it out. Have you had any experience using this tool?
-
I was afraid of an answer like this
Thanks for the tips. Are you aware of any database or list of spam sites I could easily run our backlinks through to cut down the list?
-
Agreed. It's been a company practice to do these types of links for years but with penguin/panda, I'm afraid it's only hurting us.
It's a tough case to change these links. They do bring traffic to the site so I'm hoping a nofollow is good enough.
Thanks for your input.
-
Try using Link Detox
-
Going along with Rob L.'s question, what about spammy keyword links on one of your SUBDOMAINS? Ie, news.domain.com? Will this hinder your rankings as well?
Back in the pre-penguin days we created poor content loaded with keyword links in blog.domain.com and news.domain.com. I don't use them anymore and thinking I just blow up those subdomains.
Thoughts?
-
We also have our own network of sites that have links in their templates to our main site. I'm fighting to get these links "nofollow"'d but upper management seems scared to alter this practice.
This past year we've found our rankings have dropped significantly and suspect it's due to some spammy backlinks or being penalized for doing an accidental link scheme network.
Those spammy backlinks might be the ones from your own network of sites? I hope that they don't have money terms as anchor text and are in a big block in the footer? If they do then upper management might want to reconsider in an effort to get your traffic back.
-
Use spreadsheets and other tools like OSE and Majestic and dig in. Roll up your sleeves and get after it. I wouldn't start with Webmaster tools, it's not the best, but whatever you do export your reports to excel and start narrowing 'em down.
Remove domains you know are good or search for domains you know are bad, etc.
Filter search in OSE to remove nofollows and internal links.. There are things you can do to narrow this down but it will be a daunting task, no question.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Leveraging A Second Site
Hi, A client of mine has an opportunity to buy/control another site in the same niche. The client's site is the top-ranked site for the niche. The second site is also often top half of page one. The second site has a 15 year old design that is a really bad, almost non-functional, user experience and thin content. The client's site (site 1) has the best link profile and dominates organic search, but the second site's link profile is as good as our nearest competitor's link profile. Both sites have been around forever. Both sites operate in the affiliate marketing space. The client's site is a multi million dollar enterprise. If the object were to wring the most ROI out of the second site, would you: A) Make the second site not much more than a link slave to the first, going through the trouble to keep everything separate, including owner, hosting, G/A, log-on IPs, so as not to devalue the links to 1st site, etc? Or... B) Develop the second site and not worry about hiding that both are the same owner. Or... C) Develop the second site and still worry about it keeping it all hidden from Google. Or... D) Buy the second site and forward the whole thing to site 1. I know the white hat answer is "B," but would like to hear considerations for these options and any others. Thanks! P.S., My pet peeve is folks who slam a fast/insufficient answer into an unanswered question, just to be the first. So, please don't.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | 945010 -
Do the links from top websites' forums boost in-terms of backlinks?
If we get any backlinks from discussions/forums of top websites like wordpress and joomla forums; do they count as valid and authority improving backlinks? I mean about the dofollow links.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vtmoz1 -
Multiple sites in the same niche (Should we redirect these to our Main Site)
I will keep this short and sweet. We have some websites in the same niche area but want to focus only on our newest site (basically all the information that was being posted on the other sites will now be part of our new site) This will save us a lot of time and increase our focus on 1 entity. Should we redirect these website with a 301 redirect to the specific categories that they focus on in the new site? or should we redirect to the main domain.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CMcMullen0 -
Forcing Entire site to HTTPS
We have a Wordpress site and hope to force everything to HTTPS. We change the site name (in wordpress settings) to https://mydomain.com In the htaccess code = http://moz.com/blog/htaccess-file-snippets-for-seos Ensure we are using HTTPS version of the site. RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !on RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301] but some blogs http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19168489/https-force-redirect-not-working-in-wordpress say RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off RewriteRule ^ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301] Which one is right? 🙂 and are we missing anything?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | joony0 -
Is there a danger linking to and from one website too many times?
Basically my webdeveloper has suggested that instead of using a subfolder to create an English and Korean version of the site I should create two different websites and then link them both together to provide the page in English, or in Korean, which ever the case may be. My immediate reaction is that search engines may perceive this kind of linking to be manipulative, as you can imagine there will be a lot of links (One for every page). Do you think it is OK to create two webpages and link them together page by page? Or do you think that the site will get penalized by search engines for link farming or link exchanging. Regards, Tom
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CoGri0 -
If our site hasn't been hit with the Phantom Update, are we clear?
Our SEO provider created a bunch of "unique url" websites that have direct match domain names. The content is pretty much the same for over 130 websites (city name is different) that link directly to our main site. For me this was a huge red flag, but when I questioned them and they said it was fine. We haven't seen a drop in traffic, but concerned that Google just hasn't gotten to us. DA for each of these sites are 1 after several months. Should we be worried? I think yes, but I am an SEO newbie.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Buddys0 -
Can i send a disavow if a detect a spam link
I have detected than one web domain is generating 2400 links to my site should a use a disavow tools, as it is imposible to have contact from webmaster and no response to your emails My web as not been warned or penalized, but i dont like this link, and i want to inform google of that,. If google acepts the disavow file, should i still see on my webmaster tools that web links, or will they desapear thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | maestrosonrisas0 -
Fix Bad Links in Google
I have a client who had some grey hat SEO done in the past. Some of their back links aren't from the best neighborhoods. Google didn't seem to mind until 9/28, when they literally disappeared for all searches except for their domain name. Google still has their site indexed, but it's just not showing up. There are no messages in Webmaster Tools. I know Bing has the tool where you can disavow bad links and ask them to discount them. Google doesn't have such a tool, but what is the strategy when you don't have control over the link sources, such as in blog comments? Could this update have been a delayed Penguin ranking change from the latest Penguin Update on the 18th? http://www.seomoz.org/google-algorithm-change Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Tom
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TomBristol0