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How Do I Work Out Which Links Are Bad & Which Are Good?

by shayman
4 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hi
It's old news now that Google has launched the new Disavow Tool. I wasn't given a manual penality but I was certainly affected by Penguin in April so I'm assuming Google doesn't like some of my linking (probably anchor text).

Now I'm pretty much happy to remove every darn link to my main website because currently it's out of the SERP's anyway, however I may as well try and hang on to some good link juice if I can.

So any ideas how to work out which are the damaging links just from the link download available in WM tools.

According to WM links I have 7850 external links.

I have around 6000 links from a forum signature but this is a highly relevant forum to my niche and I actually do provide good quality to posts on there. But are they maybe bad links? Should I also consider removing my signature. It's not spammy anchor text. Just a simple 'click here'.

I have 243 from a .edu site....could it be those links?

I have 111 from somewhere called wists dot com? Beats me coz I never put them there?

The list goes on but there arn't exactly thousands to go through.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks
Shayman
#bad #good #links #work
  • Profile picture of the author retsek
    If the forum is relevant, I'd not remove it. But because it creates such a volume of links, I would ensure that it only uses brand terms as anchor text, i.e. domain.com, www.domain.com or just "domain".

    Look at WF's link anchor profile: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/anch...rriorforum.com. You'll see that it shares certain common traits with sites that never have to worry about any Google updates.

    Run that same report on your site and compare it to other sites in your industry that continue to rank and dominate.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
    DO you have any contextual links within posts (not article directories)? ANy sites that have linked to you naturally? those are the places to start and make sure you keep
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    • Profile picture of the author shayman
      Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

      DO you have any contextual links within posts (not article directories)? ANy sites that have linked to you naturally? those are the places to start and make sure you keep
      OK thanks, there certainly are contextual links yes, possibly a few sites that have linked naturally. I'm just working through the list now and will try and contact webmasters first and ask them to remove any links that I feel are bad.

      The are domains that are foreign, .de (I assume is German). Not sure if this is good or bad?
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      • Profile picture of the author yukon
        Banned
        Originally Posted by shayman View Post

        OK thanks, there certainly are contextual links yes, possibly a few sites that have linked naturally. I'm just working through the list now and will try and contact webmasters first and ask them to remove any links that I feel are bad.

        The are domains that are foreign, .de (I assume is German). Not sure if this is good or bad?
        Just because it's a foreign TLD isn't bad, as long as it's in the same niche.
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