Where do I start with cleaning up our link profile?

[Towelsrus]

We have just taken the steps to start building links to www.towelsrus.co.uk, I am concerned about the state of external links to the site created by previous companies, i.e are they OK, or doing us harm, could I get more out f whats already in place or should we focus purely on getting new links?

We also have about 25 pages that have 302 errors and contain external links to the site. What should i do with these. try and get them re-directed to our site with appropriate anchor text or simply put a 301 re-direct in place?

In essence where I start, We want to build and increase traffic in particular for towels, bathrobes, dressing gowns and bolster our position as our positions are fluctuating a little but steadier than they have been.

Any help appreciated.

[Towelsrus]

Hi Marcus,

OK I can tell you what I know as I only got involved on this the summer, some 12 months after the SEO contract finished with the old web provider, nothing actually happened thereafter.

I don't think we are working off a penalty, however we did have a lot of problems when the new site was launched last november with duplicate data 1000's of 301 redirects, 2500 pages 404'ing etc. This has only resolved it's self int he last 4 to 6 weeks after a lot of heart ache and dropped revenue. 404's are at 840ish and dropping daily now, duplicate content is down to 28 urls and dropping too. All because of bad advice hence why  we are now looking after things in house.

Competition are your Amazons, Marks & Spencer, towels.co.uk, Christie Towels, Linens limited. I think we can better some of these for sure.

In terms of link build previously I have no idea how this was done. There was no blog, no social media (still none but looking at this) so I guess normal linking building routes.

There link profiles are massive in comparison to ours and i wonder how many we have lost because of all these bad 404 pages etc. So i would like to capture and re-direct anything that got value before the fall away for good.

I have tried signing up to link detective but they are not send a authorisation email so can;t gain access frustratingly.

Any more info i can provide let me know.

Thanks Craig

[Towelsrus]

Thanks Irving you comment are much appreciated.

[Marcus_Miller]

Hey Craig

The problem with any kind of question like this is that there are just so many moving parts so to provide any kind of valuable guidance we would at least want to know the following.

1. What is the history here? Are you working off a penalty?

2. What does the competition look like? Who are they?

3. What were the previous people doing with the link building?

There is some good data out there now about how your link profile should look and I have reviewed a lot of the best information at the link below:

http://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/blog/seo/anchor-text-ratios-and-link-building/

This does not take your competition into consideration though so you need to get an idea of what you need to do to move the dial. How many more links do your competitors have? What type of links? Can you do better? What types of links do you have?

If you have a pro account here then grab your link profile and run it through Link Detective and do the same with your competitors. Get a better idea of how they are ranking and build yourself a strategy around that.

Also, if you have penalty problems, make sure they are resolved and you have normalised things before just wading into link building. Again, there are a few good guides on how to diagnose and recover (or attempt to) from Penguin and Panda now so your time may be better spent there at the moment.

If you can answer the other questions maybe we can provide some more targeted advice.

Hope this helps!
Marcus

[irvingw]

Always look at your backlinks and try to remove bad ones. You sites link profile doesn't look too bad though at a quick glance.

301 the pages that are 302'ing to their most relevant pages.

I would go for longer tail keywords targeted on specific types of towels and robes IE "terry cloth towels"