Google Manual Penalty - Unnatural Links
-
Hi,
We are in the process of trying to remove a partial manual penalty for unnatural links. I would like to do a complete link audit of our site, where can I get complete data on sites linking to my website? Webmaster tools only appears to show the top 1000 domains.
Thanks
-
You'll get way more than 1000 links from WMT. It says you get links from the top 1000 domains but it's usually quite a bit more. I have had some spreadsheets from WMT that contain over 30,000 links.
John Mueller (Google employee) once said that WMT was all you needed in order to remove a penalty. So, for over a year that's all I used. However, in the last couple of months since Google has started to give examples of unnatural links when a site fails, many of those examples are not in WMT! I think what John meant was that you could see the patterns in WMT such as articles, directories, etc. and then use those patterns to find additional links. But, if you don't have a list of all of the links that you have made then that is not going to work for most people.
So, now, what I do is combine the links from WMT, ahrefs.com, majestic SEO and Open Site Explorer. It's a pain. I've written a script that combines them for me but it still takes me quite a while to put them together.
With that being said, I have removed penalties from some sites by just using the WMT links. And then I've had other ones that Google has been really nitpicky on and has not removed the penalty until we addressed every single self made link.
-
I would recommend using Majestic SEO in this instance. So long as you are working on a website which you can verify as your own, you will be eligible to free link data from Majestic SEO. They can explain better than me:
http://blog.majesticseo.com/development/site-explorer-goes-free/
I hope you find this information useful.
-
It isn't free but Link Detox is quite handy for showing links/ showing which links need to be gotten rid of.
-
Hello, you should be able to find more links than a 1000 from Google Webmaster tools. It's also worth trying Bing and majestic as mentioned above. This is a great resource to get you on your way...
http://moz.com/ugc/how-to-create-an-excel-spreadsheet-to-remove-link-spam-post-penguin
Cheers,
Bill
-
moz or majestic should all let you do that
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
-
Google Indexing
Hi We have roughly 8500 pages in our website. Google had indexed almost 6000 of them, but now suddenly I see that the pages indexed has gone to 45. Any possible explanations why this might be happening and what can be done for it. Thanks, Priyam
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kh-priyam0 -
Can one back-link fluctuates ranking of website with thousands of back-links?
It happend to our website. We have seen major ranking fluctuations for our website because of one back-link. What kind of links those can be? Why Google is not stopping them even though they claim that such back-links will be taken care of?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Why do Local "5 pack" results vary between showing Google+, Google+ and website address
I had a client ask me a good question. When they pull up a search result they show up at the top but only with a link to their G+ page. Other competitors show their web address and G+ page. Why are these results different in the same search group? Is there a way to ensure the web address shows up?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ron_McCabe0 -
Disavow Links Notification
No manual actions on our sites, just Penguin related. I put in a disavow for one site in October and Webmaster Tools kept a message up for some time saying the disavow links file for that site had been updated. I put in a disavow for another site of ours last week and I've had no such message. I checked and the file is there. Was this an intentional change on Google's part? Just want to make sure something's not messed up here.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingof50 -
Will a Google manual action affect all new links, too?
I have had a Google manual action (Unnatural links to your site; affects: all) that was spurred on by a PRWeb press release where publishers took it upon themselves to remove the embedded "nofollow" tags on links. I have been spending the past few weeks cleaning things up and have submitted a second pass at a reconsideration request. In the meantime, I have been creating new content, boosting social activity, guest blogging and working with other publishers to generate more natural inbound links. My question is this: knowing that this manual action affects "all," are the new links that I am building being negatively tainted as well? When the penalty is lifted, will they regain their strength? Is there any hope of my rankings improving while the penalty is in effect?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | barberm1 -
Linking across categories
On a website when I link across in the same category should all the categories all pear on each page. Let's say I have 6 categories and 6 pages should I have the 6 links on all the pages ( such as A, B, C, D, E, on page 1 ( let's imagine this page is page F ), then on page A have link B, C D, E, F and so on for the 6 pages ( meaning all the links appear on all the pages across the category ) or should i just have let's say 3 links on page 1 ( link A, B, C ) , then link ( D, E, F ) on page 2, then A, E, F on page 3, link B, C F on page 4 and so on... ( which means that i vary the links that appear and that it is naturally ( at least I think ) going to boost the link that appears the most of the 6 pages ? I hope this is not too confusing, Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Best Link Solicitation Email Structure - Link Building
Hello, What is the best thing to say when soliciting a link for link building. Say you're contacting a site with a resource section where your competitors are listed. What would you say to be the most persuasive. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
Outgoing affiliate links and link juice
I have some affiliate websites which have loads of outgoing affiliate links. I've discussed this with a SEO friend and talked about the effect of the link juice going out to the affiliate sites. To minimize this I've put "no follows" on the affiliate links but my friend says that even if you have no follow Google still then diminishes the amount of juice that goes to internal pages, for example if the page has 10 links, 9 are affiliate with no follow - Google will only give 10% of the juice to the 1 internal page. Does anyone know if this is the case? and whether there are any good techniques to keep as much link juice on the site as possible without transferring to affiliate links? Appreciate any thoughts on this! Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ventura0