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Link Removal Tool Flagging Good Links?

by jimcroisdale
6 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hi all,

We're in the fortunate position of being a company that actually sells a physical product via an e-commerce site.

For the past few months we've had a popup box at the basket stage asking our customers if they have a website or blog where they would be happy to write a short blog about us (with a link) in return for a £30 refund on their purchase.

We have a good look at the sites and see if they are quality and check the PR etc. We also see if there is a suitable 'News' or 'Blog' section where the article could go. We avoid any 'Sponsors' or 'Suppliers' sections that just look like lists of links. We've added a good couple of dozen of these links.

However, we're also outsourcing some link removal to undo a lot of bad SEO that the company has had done in the past, long before we started to do any work ourselves. I'm assuming most people are using the Link Detox software to work out what are 'bad' links? The problem is that some of the customer links are being flagged as bad links...

Why is this? These are exactly the type of links we would get naturally, and they pretty much are, apart from the £30 which Google doesn't know about. We don't use commercial anchor text and stick to branded anchors (http/www/company name) and write a new blog each time. Sometimes the customer writes more as well. If these aren't natural, quality links, I don't know what is.

What to do? Keep building them?

We really thought this was a great idea...

Cheers,

Jim
#flagging #good #link #links #removal #tool
  • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
    The problem is that software has no way of distinguishing a good link from a bad link. The only way to identify your bad links is by viewing them manually.
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    • Profile picture of the author jimcroisdale
      We've asked our link removal team about this as well.

      They say it's because our customer's websites often have nothing to do with our business, so are seen as not relevant.

      This isn't something that was ever likely though. We sell an everyday consumable that's not particularly sexy, exciting or in the news - and we sell it to all manner of businesses and organisations, and it's these websites where the links would end up.

      The odds of us getting links from other companies who sell the same things as us are slim to none.

      How can we build links to customers that are seen as good links? Or it it likely that these links ARE actually good - it's just the Link Detox software that's throwing them up.
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      • Profile picture of the author jimcroisdale
        For instance, we have the chance of getting links on these sites:

        hxxp://www.chunkymonkeychocolate.com

        hxxp://www.woodgreen.oxon.sch.uk

        hxxp://spiritfires.co.uk

        hxxp://www.thesmldiet.co.uk

        These are all companies that have found us online and purchased from us. How can we create links that are valuable, despite none of these businesses or organisations being directly connected to the product that we sell?
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      • Profile picture of the author WebMeUp
        Originally Posted by jimcroisdale View Post

        The odds of us getting links from other companies who sell the same things as us are slim to none.
        First,

        it's not necessary to get links only from your direct competitors. Good links can come from any high-quality sites that are somehow relevant to your site topic. E.g. if a site is about cats, a link from a site about pets food will be absolutely ok.

        Second,

        we strongly advise you to change your current approach to link building. If you see that a website is totally irrelevant to your category (e.g. cats and IT), you may ask for a nofollow link there. Such a link will be good for traffic and improving your brand awareness, but search engines won't see it and take into account.

        Also, it would be great if you diversified types of your backlinks. Links from forums, blog comments, social links, etc. also make your backlink profile look more natural and diverse in Google's eyes.

        Summing up:

        1) if a website is totally irrelevant to your category, ask for a nofollow link there; 2) links from any high-quality niche-relevant sites are fine; 3) if you want to avoid any risks, you should make your site backlunk profile maximally diverse.

        Hope you find these tips useful.
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  • Profile picture of the author netanel23
    First and foremost Link Detox is among the worst of any of the link analysis tools on the market. The only good thing they can do is hound you with constant remarketing efforts everywhere you go on the internet. How they can get away with charging as much as they do for hardly any link analysis is beyond me. I wouldn't trust those reports at all. They don't utilize all of the backlink checkers so they often miss a good majority of your overall link profile to begin with.

    Second Link Detox isn't even a link removal service! Again, they only analyze your links and charge you a fortune. If your gonna remove links alteast use a link removal vendor.

    Not to rain on your parade more but the types of links you are acquiring are outside of Google's T.O.S. If you received a manual penalty, which I'm assuming you did based on the fact you are removing links, those links will likely not pass review and will likely require them to be removed.

    Obviously try and see if you can get the penalty removed without removing those links but chances are it won't be possible.
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  • Profile picture of the author DizenSounds
    I'd second the guy above. Linkdetox.com's reports are really low quality especially given the price. I bought a report for a few different clients websites and my own so that I could actually use my credits and was disappointed to see that 40% of the links weren't even accounted for. Not something I'd expect for a pricy link analysis service.
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