Assessing Link Profiles
-
Hi Guys,
When doing a link cleanup, it can be sometimes hard to tell, how a link got there (i.e is it natural or not). Apart from spammy directories, blog comments and forum profiles, some link exchanges could have been done naturally with just very good outreach.
If you were looking at this one:-
http://5startemplates.com/communications_links(4).html
Would you say remove if I know they have definitely taken part in link exchanges (their link profile seems to suggest they have) or just change it to a brand/url. This sites rankings have been tanking due to duplicate content and possibly (although not definitely) a penguin update too.
Any advice would be great!
Kind Regards
Neil
-
Hi Neil,
Through no fault of their own, some sites end up being blacklisted, so it is worth always checking this. A useful service is www.urlvoid.com. This will tell you if it is has any worrying markers attached to it.
Marty has also given you some good pointers there. On top of this, check to see if the page is actually indexed by Google. Doing a "site:...." can often show interesting results. If a page isn't indexed by Google, there is normally a good reason why.
-Andy
-
The link you have mentioned looks very spammy so I will definitely try to remove it from that page. In general I think what you should look at is quality of the site you're getting the link and the relevance of the link. If the link is relevant then no need to remove them.
-
I would suggest removing it as that page sends several signals that could be interpreted as negative by Google, et al-
- http://5startemplates.com/link-exchange.html - having a page that endorses link exchanges on a site is most likely a strong signal that you don't want
- The links on the URL you show are not closely related to each other semantically and have nothing to do with the business of the website which is another signal that you probably don't want
- A quick check of the source domain's link neighborhood doesn't reveal too much juice flowing in from trusted sources
- And finally the content around the links and the business of this website likely don't relate much to your client's content which again is another signal that could be interpreted negatively.
All of the above independently are not probably a deciding factor, but if you combine them all it paints a picture that isn't positive for your client.
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
-
How big of a problem is this? - link cannonicalization I think?
Hello! I'm new here. My moz Pro account is flagging my website for having 282 duplicate pages, which it is saying are critical issues. I looked at this and it seems like the problem is that many of my pages are being indexed like: www.joeborders.com and joeborders.com and oeborders.com/index. I think this is an issue with link cannonicalization...right? I contacted my website builder/host a while ago and they said they don't have a way to to link cannonicalization....is this a huge problem?...Is there some way to do it that I'm missing? Should i get a new website builder/host? 😛 for reference, this is what my builder/host said when I asked them about it: "Good question, at the moment we don't offer it, I will add it to our feature request list, as I think it would be a good idea. In a traditional hosting environment this would be using a htaccess file, since we are in ruby on rails environment we would need come up with a custom solution."
Technical SEO | | joebordersmft0 -
Paid Links - How does Google classify them?
Greetings All, I have a question regarding "Paid Links." My company creates custom websites for other small businesses across the country. We always have backlinks to our primary website from our "Dealer Sites." Would Google and other search engines consider links from our "dealer sites" to be "paid links?" Example:
Technical SEO | | CFSSEO
http://www.atlanticautoinc.com/ is the "dealer site." Would Google consider the links from Atlantic Auto to be a "paid link," and therefor have less of an impact for page rankings, due to it not being organic? Any insight on this matter would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!!!0 -
Search Operator Link: How accurate is the data?
How often do you guys use the search operator "link:"? How accurate is the data? Why the numbers of links when we use the parameter is way lower than the number on Google webmaster Tool or open site explorer? It only show the most powerful links?
Technical SEO | | Felip30 -
Unnatural Links on Forum Posts
Google responds to my reconsideration request. They give me like 2 links of the many unnatural links which are actually people mentioning our website in their conversation. How can that be unnatural, legitimate people discussing about our website services? Even if it's unnatural, how can I possibly remove a backlink from a forum post?
Technical SEO | | Droidman860 -
Reciprocal links and nofollow tag
What happens if I link to a site using the nofollow tag and they are linking back to me with a dofollow link? Will it give me as much power and link juice as if it was a one way link (to me) or will Google discount the link because it's reciprocal?
Technical SEO | | Livet0 -
Link Building - Quality,Quantity, or both?
Hello SEOMozzers, As I embark on yet another client's link campaign I ask myself where best to spend resources(time and money) on link building. Typically I provide a mix of blogroll links, article syndication contextual links, social media posting and high PR one way links. I would like to know if anyone here finds one form of link to carry weight over the rest. I have my suspicion and my own theory on it but I would like to know what the moz concensus is.
Technical SEO | | TheGrid0 -
Track outbound links
I would like to track outbound links at http://bit.ly/yYHmbf 1. Shall i add the following code before at the above page What does 100 means in above code ? 2. Then use this for each outgoing link ``` [onClick="recordOutboundLink(this, 'Outbound Links', 'example.com');return false;">](http://www.example.com) ``` [](http://www.example.com) ```[``` http://www.example.com is the outbound link Am i right on both counts ? where should i look for report in GA ? ```](http://www.example.com)
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050 -
Link to overall brand pages
On our website we have two ways to get in a brand environment. We have general brand pages and brand pages divided by category. At this moment the category brand pages get the most SEO value, because we have a link on our homepage to these pages (via the mega dropdown). The problem is that we would like to assign the SEO value to the general brand pages (with all the articles) instead of the category brand pages (with only articles within a category). We prefer to optimize the general brand page without a link to this page on the homepage for now. for example; Those two pages have the most SEO value
Technical SEO | | eCommerceSEO
www.debijenkorf.nl/herenmode/diesel
www.debijenkorf.nl/damesmode/diesel but we would like to assign value to;
www.debijenkorf.nl/diesel Do you have a solution for this problem? Thank you in advance! Kind regards,0