Link Audit: How do I decide what is a good or bad link?
-
I am conducting a link audit for one of my formerly high-ranking pages. But despite reading quite a bit on the issue, I am still quite confused as to how to decide whether to keep or remove a link.
Some links come from directories and social bookmarking sites. I know that generally speaking, you do not want to be on these types of sites, but what if their domain authorities, pageranks, and mozTrusts scores are good?
For example, here is one of my links for "envelopes": http://www.folkd.com/detail/www.jampaper.com%2FEnvelopes
The page itself has no MozRank, MozTrust, or links but the domain has an authority of 88, a MozRank of 6.41, a mozTrust of 6.31. Should I be looking on a page level or domain level basis? It also has over 5 million links, with over two million of those being external followed links. Is the high quantity of links a warning sign?
I also used a free online tool (thesitevalue.com) to determine how much traffic the domain gets. Apparently it receives over 350,000 unique visits daily, so it must be useful to people. This, combined with the fact that we've received 5 visits from the link over the last year (not a lot, but something), makes me believe that the link's intent wasn't purely to "trick" Google. Despite this, I still have a feeling the link could be considered low-quality based on the domain's appearance.
Similarly, some of our links are coming from domains named linkdirect.info, backlinks8.com, tolinkup.com, findyourlink.info, searchengineurl.com, websubmissionfree.com. Is it safe to assume these are harmful links strictly because of their names?
Thank you!
-
Hey Andrew,
I tried using www.thesitevalue.com and every url errors out at the last step, resulting in a site value of $8.95. I've noticed this on various sites, including sites I know have way more value than their domain alone
Have you experienced this? Do you use any other tools?
-
Thanks for your feedback!
-
awesome flow chart. Thanks a lot!
-
I think the main question with link removal is the following:
Are you trying to get out of a Manual or Algo penalty.
1. If the link is no follow - do not worry about it (many of these junk sites are no follow)
2. If the site is using a BRANDED anchor text or a URL anchor text on it I would not worry to a degree.
3. The main links you need to look at are GENERIC anchor text based links, the thing with these dodgy submission sites is if they have generic follow links to your site then yeah I would try to delete them and disavow.
It is really a case by case scenario, another think you can do is use the Majestic Bulk backlink checker on the URL level for any link removal you can check 150 urls at a time so it is good on the fly.
-
Hi Andrew,
Let me start off with folkd.com. Its a very reputed social bookmarking website and there is no harm in having a link from there pointing to your website. Coming to how to evaluate a link, here you go:
http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/2012/06/link-removal-flowchart/
Its very useful and extremely helpful to perform link evaluation.
In general, the intent behind the link matters and it can be determined by looking at the factors like, number of outbound links on the page (pointing to different not so useful or credible websites), the relevancy of the page to you, Moz stats of the domain etc..
Links from websites like linkdirect.info, backlinks8.com, tolinkup.com, findyourlink.info, searchengineurl.com, websubmissionfree.com should be avoided like plague as their intent and sole purpose is to manipulate search results by providing a back link which would be absolutely of no use and can do more harm than good.
Hope those help.
Best,
Devanur Rafi
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
-
Pinging Links
Interested to know if anybody still uses the strategy of pinging links to make sure they get indexed, there are a number of sites out there which offer it. Is it considered dangerous/spamy?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | seoman100 -
Noindexed Pages with External Links Pointing to it: Does the juice still pass through?
I have a site with many many pages that have very thin content, yet they are useful for users/visitors. Those pages also have many external links pointing to them from reputable and authoritative websites. If i were to noindex/follow these pages, will the juice/value from the external links still pass through just as if the page didn't have the noindex tag? Please let me know!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | juicyresults0 -
Companies creating spammy links to charge money to delete them?
Hi all, Yesterday I was checking out ahrefs.com and realizing that one of our main competitors was getting new spammy links to its website from junk directories, rusian forums, porn sites etc. I found it to be weird but I thought that maybe they hired a black hat company without knowing it. Today I began finding the same type of spammy links pointing to our site. I'm completely sure we did not create them.I was checking out some of the new directory links and their listings consist of new pages including only our company's website and absolutely no descriptions. I did a little more research and find out that many of those new directories/listings belong to the same company ( seems to be located in Argentina, but I'm not sure). I also remembered paying that company long time ago to delete two links to our website that were included in their directories. I have to tell you, I'm completely out of my mind and I really don't know what to do. The two possibilities I can think about are: 1- A competitor has hired somebody to point spam to our site, to our other competitor, and may be some other competitors in the industry.(because as I tell you before our main competitor in the area is getting new spammy links too) 2- These black hat companies that own directories and other junk websites are pointing spam to us to get paid to remove links. Whether is #1 or #2 is getting out of control and I really don't know how to manage it (except from disvowing links as soon as I find them). I would appreciate suggestions/advise. Thanks. Ana
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | anagentile0 -
Unwanted link ?
Hello Working on my 404 pages, I've just found the following http://awesomescreenshot.com/08d22txtc9 This website http://basilurteaindia.com has a link mine as checked into Google. Link is presented with some of my content here http://basilurteaindia.com/images/19022012list.asp?type=2&file=C%3A%5CProgram+Files+(x86)%5ChMailServer%5CData%5Cace-egy.com%5Cm.kilany%5C9A%5C%7B9A532C2F-FB00-4C72-9403-7F26B7DC8E54%7D.eml Does someone know what the hell is that and how to remove it ?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AymanH0 -
Still Battling On With Link Profile Audit
I'm getting there, I can see the light! 🙂 I have covered one complete audit of the link profile and I am now going back over it looking at the links I had 'question marked' - I should have this completed by the end of this week and I will then focus on using DISAVOW for the links that I am really struggling with, the foreign sites that are in Chinese or Russian, the sites that have absolutely no 'contact us' information and have been privately registered (in WhoIs) I have come across this domain which links to our site about 8 times and although I cannot find any contact info I can't quite make my mind up, to be honest I would rather get rid of it BUT I'm trying to avoid taking the easy option of disavowing where I can; http://www.askives.com/ Fo anyone who has gone through what I am currently going through, please help me just this once and tell me 'should it stay or should it go'?! 🙂 Many thanks! Andy
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TomKing0 -
Can image links help improve my backlinking profile?
I recently spent some time looking at the backlink profile of a leading UK food & clothing retailer and noticed that a high number of their backlinks for very competitive search phrase's consisted entirely of image backlinks. 50% of the links contained no alt text and other 50% contained a mix of just the targeted keyword or a phase containig one mention of the targeted keyword. Has anyone had any experiance of this type of marketing producing any positive effect on SEO or search engine rankings?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BigJonOne0 -
Does SEOMOZ provide any help regarding to Link Buildiing and directory submission?
Hi Everybody, I am trying to work out how off-site SEO works and I am facing some troubles when it comes to link building. Does SEOMOZ provide any solution to this? Regards, Guido.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SilbertAd0 -
Why are these sites so high with poor relevant links...
Hello, Keyword: TV Stands. I have been researching competitors for a client and we seem to be unable to understand why certains pages are ranking on page 1 of Google UK for keyword TV Stands. eg: http://www.furnitureinfashion.net/plasma-TV-stand.html (Google UK 8 - TV Stands) http://direct.tesco.com/q/N.1999542/Nr.99.aspx (Google UK 9 - TV Stands) The furniture in fashion has links from sites like: http://www.ummah.com/forum/ and http://www.muslimco.com/ which is totaly irrelevant to the site. Any ideas on other things as the tesco.com site does not have direct links to it. Cheers
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | JohnW-UK0