How do I find "bad" backlinks

[trophycentraltrophiesandawards]

Hi,  I have used open site explorer to review our back links, but I don't know how to determine which ones are bad?  For example, I think I am getting penalized for links from strictlygifts.com, but not sure.  StrictlyGifts is a second site of ours that has a web hosting plan (our main site does not have hosting - long story).  We use this site to store things that link to our main site, trophycentral.com.  As an example, we have several online catalogs with hundreds of pages that link to products on trophy central.  I have a gut feeling that this is hurting us, but I don't know how to confirm it.  I can easily remove the links but don't want to if they are helping us.

Can anyone help?  Thanks!!!

[trophycentraltrophiesandawards]

Irving, thanks very much.  This gives me something to work on.  I have been reducing the bad links and increasing good ones, so that will help. I'll work on the title tag, etc.  Thanks again...

[irvingw]

No you need less instances of keywords, also need to look at the anchor texts on your site and anchor texts and types of links pointing to your site. The combination of these three things being overdone usually results in specific keyword phrases that you were pushing too hard for to get suppressed in the rankings.

you can PM me here at SEOmoz!

remove your links on sites like these, luckily i don't see a ton of incoming links so you may be able to fix this issue a little bit easier.

http://www.buildyourownhouse.ca/links.htm

http://www.qsl.net/vu2sdu/reci.html

[trophycentraltrophiesandawards]

Yes, I lost all rankings for trophies and for awards!  Sorry, I am not that technical, so I am not sure what you are suggesting.  I thought it is spamming if I included the words too much?  Are you suggesting I should add more?  Would love to talk to you if possible since I have been trying to figure this out for months and keep getting different answers.  My private id is trophycentral2@yahoo.com - i can call you if you can send me you phone number?  Or if you have a private email I can send you my phone number if you prefer.  Thanks!

[irvingw]

Why do you have a bunch of links in your menu as nofollow, you are throwing away PR they should be all dofollowed. If you are trying to page rank sculpt then you should look into javascripting those links instead.

http://www.trophycentral.com/

Let me guess you lost all rankings for "trophy/trophies" and or "award/awards" related searches? You are keyword spamming, only one instance of "trophy and one instance of "trophies" in your title tag and meta description, lose the keywords meta completely it's useless.

script type="<a class="attribute-value">text/javascript</a>" src="[http://c15009118.r18.cf2.rackcdn.com/mobile-redirection.js](view-source:http://c15009118.r18.cf2.rackcdn.com/mobile-redirection.js)">script><title>Trophies & Award Plaques from Trophy Central.  Trophies, Unique Trophies and Awards.title><META NAME="<a class="attribute-value">keywords</a>" content="<a class="attribute-value">trophies, trophies and awards, trophy cases, trophy, award ribbons, plaques, awards, engraved plaques, award medals, crystal trophies, display cases, award pins, sports trophies, corporate awards, trophies and medals, championship trophy, trophies and plaques, sports trophies, engraved trophies, crystal awards,free engraving</a>">  <META NAME="<a class="attribute-value">description</a>" content="<a class="attribute-value">Shop for Trophies, Awards, Trophy Cases, Plaques and Medals. Free Engraving on Trophies. Quick Shipping on Trophies and Awards.</a>">

[trophycentraltrophiesandawards]

Thanks much. No messages.  The issue is on trophycentral, though - we had a huge drop on our home page rankings (but not other pages).  strictlygifts seems to be the only links in that are significant in mumber, so my hunch is that there is a problem.  My guess is that because all of our blog and catalogs point to the home page (in addition to the product pages), that might me the issue.  I can try to nofollow on anything linking to the home page.

[trophycentraltrophiesandawards]

Thanks, I am a bit nervous about removing them since some might be helping and it takes months for the spidering process, but I guess that is one way to tell for sure!  Thanks!

[irvingw]

they are necessary links pointing to product pages though. nofollowing them is sufficient.

[XNUMERIK]

The easy answer is: try removing the links and see what happens, if nothing changes, put them back up!

The more pro approach would be to try and understand what makes a spammy link in google's algo eyes. Take a look at this very nice article:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/17-types-of-link-spam-to-avoid

Hope that helps

[irvingw]

Did Google WMT send strictlygifts.com a email message saying that they detected unnatural links pointing to the site? What makes you think you are penalized, drop in traffic or rankings?

You don't need to remove the links pointing to your main site you just need to nofollow them BTW