Penguin 2.1 Recovery - 16 Rules to Spot Poor Backlinks
- SEO |
Hello All,
I see lot of questions and sentiments when we go and spot poor backlinks. Do you think we have right tools to spot them ? Well, I am giving you my own 16 rules to fight against spammy backlinks which can help you.
You need to first collect all the possible back links at one place and you should have free or paid version of SEO SPY Glass.
Now, you have got all the possible backlinks. This is the right time to put them in one excel sheet and start analyzing the links which are not good for the site in question. Let's do it step by step :
Step 1:Place all the backlinks on one sheet in a single row in Microsoft Excel, then click on DATA and click on Remove Duplicate. You will find around 40-60% of data is deleted as it was fetched from different tools and contains the same backlinks sometimes more than once. Let's give a name to this Sheet - TotalBacklinksfound.xslx
Step 2:Open SEO SpyGlass again. Click on New Project: Expert Options à Enter backlinks Manuallyà A pop up will open. In the first box, enter the URL under question and then in the second box, paste all the links collected in Step1. Check the Box "Show Expert Options on next Screen" and click on Next.
Step 3:You will see a screen. Choose Backlink Factors, uncheck everything and then select "Page Info" only and Click on Next button. This process will check if all entered backlinks are pointing to your website or not.
Step 4:Once the processing at step 3 is over, you will see all the backlinks along with a column named "Link Back" and another column named "Domain". Sort out the column "Link Back" and if you find anything other than 'YES' or 'Not Yet Checked' , delete it. Keep 'Not Yet Checked' and 'Yes' into the SSG. The links we have deleted are either no follow or no link or link missing or page not found types which are of no interest to us. If the status of some of the links is: NOT YET CHCKED, Run the step 3 again only for those backlinks and re-work on step 4.
My agenda is to get the backlinks with YES value in column "Link Back". It means all of those links are DoFollow links.
Step 5:Now, you have finally found the live links which may or may not be causing you any trouble in SERP. Let's find out some important factors using SEO SpyGlass here. Click on update where you have all the live links and update its Alexa, Age, IP and PR. Once, you are done, save the file as TotalLiveBacklinks.xslx( You can use CTR+C and CTR+V J )
Openthis sheetwhich I created to make you understand the better process. Update all of your data here. Now, you are going to hit your head to get a better overview of bad backlinks.
You can see it does not contain Trust Flow, Domain Authority, Link Location, Link Type, Malware, Domain Index in Google and Social Found. We did not fill these information fields as we are going to do it step by stepJ.
Step 6:Go to Majestic SEO and find the trust flow for each of the domains and mention it for every domain.
Step 7:Go to SEOMOZ and collect the Domain Authority Value of each domain and update the excel sheet. You can also use afree toolto update DA.
Step 8:Now, you have to open each and every URL to check if it has Malware (Warning), Link Location, Link Type, Social Found, and Relevancy and if Domain is index in Google.
Following link locations are possible:
· Sidebar (BlogRoll)
· Footer
· Contextual
· Author Bio
· Signature
· Header (Mostly not found)
Types of Link
· From and within the body of content
· Article Directory
· Web Directory
· Social Bookmarks
· Infographic
· Images
· Blog Comment
· Forum Discussion
· Forum Profile
· Guest Book ( Not Guest post )
· Web 2.0
· Classified
· Press Release
· ........
· ........
· ........
Many More.....
Social Found:If a site does not have a social profile or has a low quality social profile, chances are they do not want to be updated with social media changes or they do not want to be public. It is also possible that they may be using some bad SEO techniques to promote their sites or do not have time to maintain the website.
Domain Index in Google:If you enter the complete domain URL without http and www into Google and do not find the site in search results, then it means that Google has already de-indexed the site due to one or other penalties. The links that lead to these penalties are really harmful for your site.
Malware:If you open a website and you get a warning message, this means that the site is either hacked or is hit by some malicious program or virus. Any backlink from such a website will be considered a bad backlink.
Relevancy: If a site is not relevant to your niche, kindly mark it as 'Non Relevant' and if it is, mark it as 'Relevant'.
Rules To clean up
This is the time we were waiting forJ. Let's mark the link RED or whatever the color you want and mention "To Be Deleted (TBD)" in action column.
Rule1: Mark TBD for all the links where domain is not indexed in Google.
Rule2:Mark TBD for all the links where domain is found with a warning message.
Rule3: Mark TBD for all the domains where Alexa is 0 because it implies that the traffic is 0. There is no one who can initiate successful link building or can cater to its audience. Sooner or later, the site may go into deep penalty.
Rule 4: Mark TBD for all the links coming from Article Directory, Web Directory, Classifieds, Poor Web 2.0, Wikis, Blog Comments ( If made for link building), and Forum Profile links.
Rule 5: If domain age is less than 1 year and Page Rank is more than 4, then possibly it is a sign of Black Hat work and the site will either go into penalty or lose its rank. With my personal experience, I would say that it's better to mark TBD for this as well but I leave it to you to decide.
Rule 6: If Domain Authority is less than 10 and site age is more than 1 year, it means that this site cannot do well in future in terms of traffic and SEO. Mark TBD against this too.
Rule7: If Majestic trust flow is less than 10, mark TBD in front of that too.
Important Note:Majestic Trust Flow and Domain Authority value depends on your competitors' backlinks. You can check top 3 competitors of yours and find their backlinks and can perform complete analysis on their DA and Trust flow. Later, find the average value of each and use it for your reference.
Rule 8: If link is found in Footer or Sidebar, mark it as TBD.
Rule 9: If you do not get any social signals like Twitter, FB, G plus etc., mark it in TBD list.
Rule 10:If you find that the site is not relevant to you, mark it as TBD.
Rule 11: Once you are through with all the above 10 rules, sort the file based on IP addresses and if you find that two or more sites are hosted on Same IP address, mark it as TBD because it can be a possible Blog Network.
The links which are left now without "TBD" are healthy links which need further purification. This involves quite an advanced level of study which is beyond the scope of 90% of the readers. So, I am keeping the scope of this tutorial limited as of now.
Save Healthy Links of your site in another excel sheet. Name the sheet as Healthylinks.xslx.
Now, we have all the possible bad backlinks which need to be removed but here, we need patience as the tedious process will start now. We need to place the email addresses of the website owners and if we do not find it directly, we will have to search the Webpages of the site and their contact forms.
Advanced Rules
I would recommend this should be used by experienced link builders and if any self-learner is going to start with advanced rules to find the backlinks, he/she must be seriously cautious.
I am not writing those 5 Advance rules here because those are quite sensitive.
I hope you love enjoying reading it.
Thanks,
Adrian
I see lot of questions and sentiments when we go and spot poor backlinks. Do you think we have right tools to spot them ? Well, I am giving you my own 16 rules to fight against spammy backlinks which can help you.
You need to first collect all the possible back links at one place and you should have free or paid version of SEO SPY Glass.
Now, you have got all the possible backlinks. This is the right time to put them in one excel sheet and start analyzing the links which are not good for the site in question. Let's do it step by step :
Step 1:Place all the backlinks on one sheet in a single row in Microsoft Excel, then click on DATA and click on Remove Duplicate. You will find around 40-60% of data is deleted as it was fetched from different tools and contains the same backlinks sometimes more than once. Let's give a name to this Sheet - TotalBacklinksfound.xslx
Step 2:Open SEO SpyGlass again. Click on New Project: Expert Options à Enter backlinks Manuallyà A pop up will open. In the first box, enter the URL under question and then in the second box, paste all the links collected in Step1. Check the Box "Show Expert Options on next Screen" and click on Next.
Step 3:You will see a screen. Choose Backlink Factors, uncheck everything and then select "Page Info" only and Click on Next button. This process will check if all entered backlinks are pointing to your website or not.
Step 4:Once the processing at step 3 is over, you will see all the backlinks along with a column named "Link Back" and another column named "Domain". Sort out the column "Link Back" and if you find anything other than 'YES' or 'Not Yet Checked' , delete it. Keep 'Not Yet Checked' and 'Yes' into the SSG. The links we have deleted are either no follow or no link or link missing or page not found types which are of no interest to us. If the status of some of the links is: NOT YET CHCKED, Run the step 3 again only for those backlinks and re-work on step 4.
My agenda is to get the backlinks with YES value in column "Link Back". It means all of those links are DoFollow links.
Step 5:Now, you have finally found the live links which may or may not be causing you any trouble in SERP. Let's find out some important factors using SEO SpyGlass here. Click on update where you have all the live links and update its Alexa, Age, IP and PR. Once, you are done, save the file as TotalLiveBacklinks.xslx( You can use CTR+C and CTR+V J )
Openthis sheetwhich I created to make you understand the better process. Update all of your data here. Now, you are going to hit your head to get a better overview of bad backlinks.
You can see it does not contain Trust Flow, Domain Authority, Link Location, Link Type, Malware, Domain Index in Google and Social Found. We did not fill these information fields as we are going to do it step by stepJ.
Step 6:Go to Majestic SEO and find the trust flow for each of the domains and mention it for every domain.
Step 7:Go to SEOMOZ and collect the Domain Authority Value of each domain and update the excel sheet. You can also use afree toolto update DA.
Step 8:Now, you have to open each and every URL to check if it has Malware (Warning), Link Location, Link Type, Social Found, and Relevancy and if Domain is index in Google.
Following link locations are possible:
· Sidebar (BlogRoll)
· Footer
· Contextual
· Author Bio
· Signature
· Header (Mostly not found)
Types of Link
· From and within the body of content
· Article Directory
· Web Directory
· Social Bookmarks
· Infographic
· Images
· Blog Comment
· Forum Discussion
· Forum Profile
· Guest Book ( Not Guest post )
· Web 2.0
· Classified
· Press Release
· ........
· ........
· ........
Many More.....
Social Found:If a site does not have a social profile or has a low quality social profile, chances are they do not want to be updated with social media changes or they do not want to be public. It is also possible that they may be using some bad SEO techniques to promote their sites or do not have time to maintain the website.
Domain Index in Google:If you enter the complete domain URL without http and www into Google and do not find the site in search results, then it means that Google has already de-indexed the site due to one or other penalties. The links that lead to these penalties are really harmful for your site.
Malware:If you open a website and you get a warning message, this means that the site is either hacked or is hit by some malicious program or virus. Any backlink from such a website will be considered a bad backlink.
Relevancy: If a site is not relevant to your niche, kindly mark it as 'Non Relevant' and if it is, mark it as 'Relevant'.
Rules To clean up
This is the time we were waiting forJ. Let's mark the link RED or whatever the color you want and mention "To Be Deleted (TBD)" in action column.
Rule1: Mark TBD for all the links where domain is not indexed in Google.
Rule2:Mark TBD for all the links where domain is found with a warning message.
Rule3: Mark TBD for all the domains where Alexa is 0 because it implies that the traffic is 0. There is no one who can initiate successful link building or can cater to its audience. Sooner or later, the site may go into deep penalty.
Rule 4: Mark TBD for all the links coming from Article Directory, Web Directory, Classifieds, Poor Web 2.0, Wikis, Blog Comments ( If made for link building), and Forum Profile links.
Rule 5: If domain age is less than 1 year and Page Rank is more than 4, then possibly it is a sign of Black Hat work and the site will either go into penalty or lose its rank. With my personal experience, I would say that it's better to mark TBD for this as well but I leave it to you to decide.
Rule 6: If Domain Authority is less than 10 and site age is more than 1 year, it means that this site cannot do well in future in terms of traffic and SEO. Mark TBD against this too.
Rule7: If Majestic trust flow is less than 10, mark TBD in front of that too.
Important Note:Majestic Trust Flow and Domain Authority value depends on your competitors' backlinks. You can check top 3 competitors of yours and find their backlinks and can perform complete analysis on their DA and Trust flow. Later, find the average value of each and use it for your reference.
Rule 8: If link is found in Footer or Sidebar, mark it as TBD.
Rule 9: If you do not get any social signals like Twitter, FB, G plus etc., mark it in TBD list.
Rule 10:If you find that the site is not relevant to you, mark it as TBD.
Rule 11: Once you are through with all the above 10 rules, sort the file based on IP addresses and if you find that two or more sites are hosted on Same IP address, mark it as TBD because it can be a possible Blog Network.
The links which are left now without "TBD" are healthy links which need further purification. This involves quite an advanced level of study which is beyond the scope of 90% of the readers. So, I am keeping the scope of this tutorial limited as of now.
Save Healthy Links of your site in another excel sheet. Name the sheet as Healthylinks.xslx.
Now, we have all the possible bad backlinks which need to be removed but here, we need patience as the tedious process will start now. We need to place the email addresses of the website owners and if we do not find it directly, we will have to search the Webpages of the site and their contact forms.
Advanced Rules
I would recommend this should be used by experienced link builders and if any self-learner is going to start with advanced rules to find the backlinks, he/she must be seriously cautious.
I am not writing those 5 Advance rules here because those are quite sensitive.
I hope you love enjoying reading it.
Thanks,
Adrian