Good or Bad Backlinks
-
Hi All
We are trying to go through all of our backlinks to see which links are good and which are bad. We are
using two paid for tools to find our backlinks and sort them out, either good or bad. I have found that
both tools have returned links as being good even though
the links are not indexed by Google and have no page rank. Also we have found that both tools returns
some links as good even though the links are pointing to a 404 page.
Any advice on how to proceed would be appreciated.
-
Thank you for your reply, I will follow your advice and go over all of my links again.
John
-
I am not a fan at all at using automated link auditing software. I review a lot of disavow files for sites that have not been able to pass reconsideration requests and in many cases they have relied on an automated tool. This always results in good links getting flagged as bad and many bad links being missed.
In one case some fantastic links from the BBC and the Guardian were flagged for disavow.
Last summer I spent several months trying to write an algorithm to help me automate some of my link auditing process. In some cases I got up to 95% accuracy, but this means that in a site with links from 1000 domains, I'd be wrong on 50 of them which just won't cut it when it comes to escaping either Penguin or a manual penalty. I ended up scrapping several months' worth of work. I still use my tool in house to help me organize my links and compare them against my disavow blacklist/whitelist but I don't rely on it for making decisions.
I think that some of the tools can be good when it comes to helping you organize your links into a manageable format so that you can manually review them. But, nothing takes the place of manually reviewing links.
-
I haven't used monitorbacklinks but I have used cognitiveseo and I could say it's not very bad and not very good. If you can take a sample of 1000 links and then randomly check 10-20 of them manually, using your common sense, you'll see that CS is right about some and wrong about some.
For me, the only tool I can rely on is linkresearchtools (link detox) - which is right about links in about 80-90% of the cases. It's a bit expensive tho but I think they offer some sort of free trial.
-
Hi John
A portion of this question has been asked before in the forum. You can access that question and those answers here.
Here are a couple great resources from Search Engine Journal on bad backlinks:
How To Spot Bad Links & Deciding Whether To Take Action
A How to Guide on Identifying Bad Links and Pruning Them Using Google’s Disavow ToolTo quote an answer from a previous question in the same vein here on Moz: "In the end it really boils down to having to look at the links manually and answer a couple of simple subjective questions: "Does the link look natural and genuine?" and "Does the link provide any benefit to real people?". If a link fails these questions, then there is no real reason for it to exist and it may be seen as suspect."
Can't do much better than that - like Rick says - use your common sense! Good luck!
-
Do not rely only on tools, use your common sense as well. For example, moz's new spam rating - a blog comment link coming from a page with gibberish content, tons of ads and 2500 spammy unmoderated comments would seem like spam to me, but moz's spam rating is only 2.
By the way, which tools are you using?
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
-
One or multiple backlinks from business profiles?
Hi, When building diverse backlinks to a website it's often possible to place one, or several, links in the business profile on a directory or social platform such as https://www.broadjam.com/Scambler, https://coub.com/scamblermusic, https://issuu.com/scamblermusic or https://soundcloud.com/scambler. Typically I would only add one backlink to these profiles (and that would be to the home page) but I often wonder if I should take the opportunity to add several links to internal pages and blog posts. Am I missing an opportunity to add more backlinks and spread out the link juice, or could multiple backlinks within short profiles be considered spammy? Any advice would be helpful. Thanks.
Link Building | | JCN-SBWD1 -
Need Help Related To Backlinks ?
I have a question from SEO expert that I have shared a Sheet name ( Backlinks Sheet below ) in which there are some types of links. I have to ask that these links are Okay to use? and if they are well to use then how I can use them. If they are not fine to use then what are the disadvantages of using them. Kindly explain it to me, Thanks. edit
Link Building | | leonardlyman0 -
Bad links or poor content?
Hi all I have a meeting with our seo company tomorrow.... Our sites have dropped considerably for our main keywords. My opinion is that the links that have been built for us have focused on too few anchor text and many "money making" keywords. Also to deep pages rather than the home page. They are saying it's poor content (I guess they would). We copyscape check all content before putting live. Has anyone any evidence I could present to them to back up my argument?
Link Building | | jj34340 -
Backlink Lists
I am trying to create a valid list of backlink domain to disavow after a 50% traffic cut by Penguin......problem is I have now pulled lists from 4 tool and the lists are all different. I find a toxic domain from the tool run on LinkResearchTools and look on Google and Site Explorer and the toxic link does not even show. I look at the page and sure enough the link from year ago on a link farm is there. Is there really a rue definitive tool that will give me a list of all links? Better yet is there a tool that will help me evaluate which domain to disavow ? I want to follow Dr. Pete's advice and go slow but I am also anxious to cut ties with SEO work done by someone else in the hay day of link farm SEO and frankly looking at resent links some Bad SEO by competitors.
Link Building | | freestone0 -
Bulk BackLink Chcecker
Does anyone know of a good bulk backlink checker? I want to input a list of URL's (1,000's) at a time and check to see if their are any external backlinks.
Link Building | | WEB-IRS0 -
Why aren't my backlinks showing up?
I've recently switched hosting my site on www.vamospaella.com to www.vamospaella.co.uk (using a 301 redirect) and I've been building backlinks. According to Majesticseo, vamospaella.co.uk has 38 backlinks with 8 referrring domains and vamospaella.com has 15 external backlinks from 11 referring domains. Some of these backlinks date back a month, while others have shown up in the last week. However, I have seen no improvement in my Google rankings for my keywords. Why is this?
Link Building | | RMelly0 -
Can bad backlinks harm your website?
Hi, This has been discussed to death over the web on many forums, some discussions are even very heated arguing both sides. So... from what I have read on seomoz the answer to this question is... YES. And if one was so inclined to build bad backlinks to a competitor it would have a negative effect. Agree?
Link Building | | activitysuper0 -
Too many external links vs linking root domains - good or bad?
Hi guys, After the latest Linkscape update, we noticed that our website have 424,671 external links with 4,395 linking root domains, so roughly 100 links/domain. Does Google consider this to be a negative thing or we do not need to worry about it. Many thanks. David
Link Building | | sssrpm0