Suggestions on Link Auditing a 70,000 URL list?
-
I have a website with nearly 70,000 incoming links, since its a somewhat large site that has been online for 19 years.
The rate I was quoted for a link audit from a reputable SEO professional was $2 per, and clearly I don't have $140,000 to spend on a link audit !!
I was thinking of asking you guys for a tutorial that is the Gold Standard for link auditing checklists - and do it myself. But then I thought maybe its easier to shorten the list by knocking out all the "obviously good" links first. My only concern is that I be 100% certain they are good links.
Is there an "easiest approach" to take for shortening this list, so I can give it to a professional to handle the rest?
-
Hi! - I wrote this guide a few years ago on penalty recovery which may help you as it contains a lot of methods around auditing the links - https://moz.com/blog/ultimate-guide-to-google-penalty-removal
If we were to approach a product with 70k URLs. We'd do the following steps:
- Pull all the URLs into a Spreadsheet
- Split the URLs into domains
- Filter the URLs are search for common spammy words. e.g 'Link', 'Best', 'Free', 'Cheap', 'Dir', 'SEO' etc (mark as spam accordingly)
- Run contact finding across all URLs using a tool such as URL Profiler with Whois Lookups
- Filter by contact name and find duplicates (mark as spam accordingly)
- Filter by website type and mark as spam accordingly
- Manually check remaining links
By working through by domain, you'll rule out thousands of spammy links very quickly. Though 70k will ultimately take a few solid days of work.
Hope this helps,
Lewis
-
Have you looked at www.monitorbacklinks.com, good tool.
-
Hello,
Although it's important to do a link audit if you feel you have been penalized, for some sites a link audit isn't necessary. With that being said, and you feel you need a link audit there are a few options. Ideally, you would go through each link and review it to see how it may be impacting your site, but often site owners don't have the time to do this.
- Review obvious links - Grab 50-100 links at a time and do a quick glance at each one to determine if it should be on a list of potentially bad links. This way you can quickly overlook links you know are not hurting your rankings. Over time you can slowly tackle your list and hammer out which links are bad.
- Focus on spam analysis links - Run your site through Moz open site explorer and review the spam analysis. Now you're not going to get every single link here, but you can get an idea on what links are lower quality.
- Look into other companies - $2 per link is quite high, and there are other companies out there that will do a link audit, removal, and disavow for much less. If you would like a quote please contact us. Look into multiple options, don't get sold on just what one place tells you.
Hope this is helpful, if you have any additional questions please feel free to ask.
Chris
-
$2 per link is very expensive when you are looking at so many, especially as there is a big part of this that can be automated (hint: This should cost you no more than about $5-$10k if outsourced).
Linda has given you some good tips there, but I do agree that you need to tread carefully because you can often go too far and end up jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire.
It really does help to first gather all of the links from as many sources as you can and as already mentioned, create your de-dupe list. Depending on who you speak to at this point, there are different ways to go through the data and start to segment the links into those you know that are dangerous, those that are perhaps a bit of a grey area, and those that are safe.
Cheers,
Andy
-
I concentrate on the "most normal or typical sites will not need to use this tool" part, myself. (Though it sounds like you may not fall into that category.)
So then it's back to downloading as comprehensive a list of links as you can by using various sources and looking them over. (Also, in the past I have used LinkResearchTools to get an overview--it isn't cheap but it is a lot less than $140,000.)
-
Yes. We have confirmed with Sucuri that there was a concerted, intentional spam campaign against our site in 2013 that has since destroyed our rankings. Though Google hasn't given us any warnings, Sucuri had us on a blacklist because of it, and was kind enough to remove us without any cost or obligation on our part to sign up. They also provided us with a list of some of the most offending links so I could disavow them.
With up to 70,000 total, I am confident there are more, and to be honest, I see no reason to "leave some". Or leave any. I believe Google's warning should focus on this part: "...if used incorrectly". That means ... simply use it correctly. And disavow bad links, period. That's my take at least.
-
First, are you sure you need a link audit? Google is pretty good at ignoring regular spammy links that get picked up over time by large sites, as they say in their "Disavow backlinks" help page.
If you think there is a cause for concern, Moz's own Open Site Explorer can give you a list of incoming links that includes a spam score for those links, which can be used as a first pass.
The general drill for a manual link audit is to find all of the links you can (search console, moz, ahrefs, majestic, etc.) and create a de-duped list. From there, the "definitely good links" are usually easy to spot--you will recognize them from your industry or from other authoritative sources. And you will probably recognize the spammy "Get Rich/Viagra" backlinks as well. (If you sort your list by domain, it is easier to pick them out as a group.)
The rest are the ones to look at more closely.
But as I said to start, unless you think you are being penalized, tread lightly when it comes to disavowals.
To quote from Google [about disavowal]:
"This is an advanced feature and should only be used with caution. If used incorrectly, this feature can potentially harm your site’s performance in Google’s search results. We recommend that you disavow backlinks only if you believe you have a considerable number of spammy, artificial, or low-quality links pointing to your site, and if you are confident that the links are causing issues for you. In most cases, Google can assess which links to trust without additional guidance, so most normal or typical sites will not need to use this tool."
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
-
URL Parameters
Hi Moz Community, I'm working on a website that has URL parameters. After crawling the site, I've implemented canonical tags to all these URLs to prevent them from getting indexed by Google. However, today I've found out that Google has indexed plenty of URL parameters.. 1-Some of these URLs has canonical tags yet they are still indexed and live. 2- Some can't be discovered through site crawling and they are result in 5xx server error. Is there anything else that I can do (other than adding canonical tags) + how can I discover URL parameters indexed but not visible through site crawling? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bbop330 -
Should you shorten very long URLs?
Hi Moz Community! If the nav architecture URL is long, like this: https://www.savewildlife.org/wildlife-conservtion/endangered-species-act-protections/endangered-species-list/birds/mexican-spotted-owl can I and should I shorten that new destination URL to make it easy for Google to see that the page topic is really the owl, like this: https://savewildlife.org/endangered-species-list/mexican-spotted-owl Thank you! Jane
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CalamityJane771 -
Breadcrumbs and internal links
Hello, I use to move up my site structure with links in content. I have now installed breadcrumbs, is it is useful to still keep the links in content or isn't there a need to duplicate those links ? and are the breadcrumbs links enough. Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics1 -
Are We Doing Link Building Right? Do Certain Links Actually Matter?
I've been thinking about this as I go through my daily link building activities for clients. Do we really know as much as we hope/think we do about how Google values inbound links, which links actually matter, and how much these link signals play into rankings? For example, does Google REALLY value the fact that a business is paying to sponsor a local sports team, or to join a local chamber? For local businesses, link building is rather difficult because they don't necessarily have the resources or ability to implement ongoing Content Marketing initiatives to earn links naturally. How can we be sure that the things we recommend actually make a difference? I had my family real estate business featured in almost a dozen articles as expert sources, with links from authoritative sites like Realtor.com and others. Does Google distinguish between a profile link on a site like Realtor.com vs. being featured as an expert source on home page news? Just second guessing a lot of this today. Anyone can to share thoughts and insights?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RickyShockley0 -
Link Audit - Sponsor/Partners Images Links
Hi everyone, 1. I'm conducting a link audit and read that if you are a sponsor or partner of a company, links should be nofollowed. I always no follow them if they are money keywords, but branded I leave alone. is that a good strategy? Or do i nofollow my brand name as well? 2. What if I'm a sponsor and have my company logo on their website that links to my website? How would i know if that link should be nofollowed? a. Does it depend on the "alt" of the image? b. Does it depend on the landing page of the link of the image? c. Do i just no follow image links from sponsor pages and partner pages as a whole? Please keep in mind that I'm sponsoring websites that are relevant to my niche. PLEASE HELP!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Shawn1240 -
Can you recover from "Unnatural links to your site—impacts links" if you remove them or have they already been discounted?
If Google has already discounted the value of the links and my rankings dropped because in the past these links passed value and now they don't. Is there any reason to remove them? If I do remove them, is there a chance of "recovery" or should I just move forward with my 8 month old blogging/content marketing campaign.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Beastrip0 -
How do I list the subdomains of a domain?
Hi Mozers, I am trying to find what subdomains are currently active on a particular domain. Is there a way to get a list of this information? The only way I could think of doing it is to run a google search on; site:example.com -site:www.example.com The only issues with this approach is that a majority of the indexed pages exist on the non-www domain and I still have thousands of pages in the results (mainly from the non-www). Is there another way to do it in Google? OR is there a server admin online tool that will tell me this information? Cheers, Dan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | djlaidler0 -
Counting over-optimised links - do internal links count too?
To whit: In working out whether I've too many over-optimised links pointing to my homepage, do I look at just external links -- or also the links from my internal pages to my homepage? In other words, can a natural link profile from internal pages help dilute overoptimisation from external links?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jeepster0