Assessing Link Profiles

[nezona]

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

[Andy.Drinkwater]

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

[Nishadha]

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.

[mosquitohawk]

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.