Identifying bad backlinks
-
We were recently approached by a SEO agency saying that we had a bunch of very toxic links. They wanted to do the work for us but we've decided to keep costs down and keep it in-house.
I've downloaded a list of the links to our site from Google Webmaster Tools and am now manually going through each link to find the links we want removed/disavowed.
What is the best way to judge the links? Please note: I have limited resources.
I'm using a combination of my gut and SEO Moz's Domain Authority.
If the site or directory is irrelevant and has a low Domain Authority I put the link in the remove pile.
If I come across a directory that doesn't seem too bad and it has a reasonable Domain Authority I leave the link.
Am I doing enough?
-
This is one of those constantly recurring questions and you will find lots of posts which cover the subject on loads of sites as well as here on Moz (eg, http://moz.com/community/q/how-to-detect-a-bad-link-and-remove or http://moz.com/community/q/how-can-i-find-this-bad-link).
There are several tools out there that can help, such as LinkResearchTools Detox mentioned by Prestashop, but while they are useful in crunching large amounts of links down to manageable levels they can also often give you false positives, and in the end you don't want to be disavowing too many non-harmful links either.
You can enter a sites domain name into Google to see if it appears and then if it doesn't it means it is likely to have been penalised, check to see if the site is part of a network, and you at the sites PR, Domain Authority or similar metrics but these often catch new domains which can be genuine but have simply not had a chance to establish themselves.
In the end it really boils down to having to look at the links manually and answer a couple of simple subjective questions: "Does the link look natural and genuine?" and "Does the link provide any benefit to real people?". If a link fails these questions, then there is no real reason for it to exist and it may be seen as suspect.
-
Thanks Irving, Prestashop and Benjaminmarcininc.
So basically, I'm on the right track by manual vetting but should be careful about culling too many questionable links.
To manage the link removal process I'm considering using Rmoov. Anyone had any experience with that product?
-
I use linkresearchtools.com but keep in mind that all links need to be manually vetted, and that by disavowing too many links you can actually harm your sites rankings because you are cutting off page juice. Do your best to balance between disavowing really bad links with low or no PR and keeping ones that might be helping you, especially if your site is not actively building new good links. Also, never let a person or company upload a disavow file without giving it a second look.
-
There are two main places that I know that people go to to find bad backlinks, http://www.linkdetox.com/ and http://www.removeem.com/
Remove'em has a Moz perk where you can get 25% off the self serve plan too.
-
Im doing the same thing right now for my company and I'm having the same trouble, i go to the site that my link is on and if the site looks spammy or has a lot of advertisements on it, i ask for removal or disavow. I hope this helps.
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
-
Backlink Indexing Problem? Suggest any paid or free tool..!
My Forum backlinks and social share backlinks are not indexing plz suggest any free r paid tool that index such backlinks. Otherwise my ranking will drop. Plz help
Moz Pro | | AsifSeotools7770 -
Struggling with the principle of backlinks, all i can see for the competition is directories?
Hey everyone, I have been using the open site explorer to check the linking domains/inbound links of competition for window suppliers. I've read that directories generate pretty much no link juice, yet all i can find for pretty much all of the well ranking competition (other than few very major companies) is directory listings. This leaves me wondering whether just submiitting to 5-10 good relevant directories would help tip me above some of the competition... I've read quite a lot about generating quality backlinks but i still haven't got my head around how to actually do anything myself that would be potentially useful. All i've done so far is post to relevant high authority directories and a couple relevant forums. I have pretty much £0 budget but a decent amount of time and strong graphic design and animation skills so feel like i can put that to use but again would have no idea what to do even if i created something share worthy. I can't imagine succesfully contacting anyone and getting them to link back to me or share my content.. Thanks for any advice...
Moz Pro | | binkez320 -
DA AND PA estimation based on Backlink or search engine traffic??
I'm want to know that estimation of blogs DA and PA based on search engine traffic(google,yahoo,bing) or it totally depend on link connected to that perticular domain.
Moz Pro | | imDelu0 -
Number of backlinks throughout time
From what I understand one important aspect in link building is how those backlinks have been acquired throughout time. So if a website gets a large number of backlinks in a short amount of time, the value of those links are reduced in the eyes of search engines. Is there a tool in SEOMoz (that i can't find) that would show the change of backlinks for my campaigns in the last one year?
Moz Pro | | Heydarian0 -
New Backlinks by Week?
One of my competitors has recently got a surge of links and I need to work out where they've been focusing their efforts to make sure I don't get left behind. The only method I've really got at the moment is looking at saved reports from OSE and trying to find new links between them. This is obviously time consuming and has some odd results (Old content showing up only on newer reports for example and have to ensure that each weeks report is generated exactly the same). What I really need is a weekly output of where 2 or 3 websites have been gaining links. Can anyone recommend any tools that can help me with this? Thanks
Moz Pro | | Stinkyink0 -
OSE doesn't report backlinks from groupon.ca or tuango.ca. Is that possible?
Hi there, Open Site Explorer doesn't report backlinks from groupon.ca or tuango.ca. Is that possible? Thanks, Adrien
Moz Pro | | AdrienOLeary0 -
Recent backlinks in Open Site Explorer as not showing
I saw the note today that the link index did it's monthly update, yet our site www.oznappies.com still only shows 1 linking root domain and I know there are many more links now. What do I need to do to get open Site Explorer to use the latest data? I enter our site, create the report and only see old information from 6 may 2011's link index. I have the same issue with competive link finder, links I know we have on the sites listed for our competitors are not showing for our site.
Moz Pro | | oznappies0 -
How long does it take Open Site Explorer to register my backlinks?
I have been using Open Site Explorer for the following website http://www.doorhandlesltd.co.uk/ I have been link building for serveral months now and added over 100 links including directories such as business.com yet when I run the Open Site Explorer report it says I only have 10 root domain links.......the ones that were there before I started my link building. Any ideas on why this might be? Or does Open Site Explorer take a certain amount of time to collect this data? If so does anybody know how long this takes? Thanks
Moz Pro | | BelfastSEO0