Our site has too many backlinks! How can we do a bad backlink audit?
-
Webmaster Tools is saying we have close to 24 million links to our site. The site has been around since the mid 90s and has accumulated all these links since.
We also have our own network of sites that have links in their templates to our main site. I'm fighting to get these links "nofollow"'d but upper management seems scared to alter this practice.
This past year we've found our rankings have dropped significantly and suspect it's due to some spammy backlinks or being penalized for doing an accidental link scheme network.
24 million links is too many to check manually for using the disavow tool and it seems that bulk services out there to check backlinks can't even come close.
What's an SEO to do?
-
How many domains do those 24 million links come from? It's possible you could find that they distill down into a manageable number of domains to manually review. I think that tools like Link Detox can help in an initial review of links and perhaps you can use that as a first pass to find as many spammy ones as possible. Then, I would take all of the links that were marked as suspicious or healthy, and visit one link from each domain manually.
In my experience, the only sites that I am seeing recovering from link based issues (either manual penalty or Penguin) are ones who have been EXTREMELY thorough on their audits. It sure is a lot more work to evaluate links by hand but I think it is necessary.
-
Thanks, we'll check it out. Have you had any experience using this tool?
-
I was afraid of an answer like this
Thanks for the tips. Are you aware of any database or list of spam sites I could easily run our backlinks through to cut down the list?
-
Agreed. It's been a company practice to do these types of links for years but with penguin/panda, I'm afraid it's only hurting us.
It's a tough case to change these links. They do bring traffic to the site so I'm hoping a nofollow is good enough.
Thanks for your input.
-
Try using Link Detox
-
Going along with Rob L.'s question, what about spammy keyword links on one of your SUBDOMAINS? Ie, news.domain.com? Will this hinder your rankings as well?
Back in the pre-penguin days we created poor content loaded with keyword links in blog.domain.com and news.domain.com. I don't use them anymore and thinking I just blow up those subdomains.
Thoughts?
-
We also have our own network of sites that have links in their templates to our main site. I'm fighting to get these links "nofollow"'d but upper management seems scared to alter this practice.
This past year we've found our rankings have dropped significantly and suspect it's due to some spammy backlinks or being penalized for doing an accidental link scheme network.
Those spammy backlinks might be the ones from your own network of sites? I hope that they don't have money terms as anchor text and are in a big block in the footer? If they do then upper management might want to reconsider in an effort to get your traffic back.
-
Use spreadsheets and other tools like OSE and Majestic and dig in. Roll up your sleeves and get after it. I wouldn't start with Webmaster tools, it's not the best, but whatever you do export your reports to excel and start narrowing 'em down.
Remove domains you know are good or search for domains you know are bad, etc.
Filter search in OSE to remove nofollows and internal links.. There are things you can do to narrow this down but it will be a daunting task, no question.
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
-
Moving content form Non-performing site to performing site - wihtout 301 Redirection
I have 2 different websites: one have good amount of traffic and another have No Traffic at all. I have a website that has lots of valuable content But no traffic. And I want to move the content of non-performing site to performing site. (Don't want to redirect) My only concern is duplicate content. I was thinking of setting the pages to "noindex" on the original website and wait until they don't appear in Google's index. Then I'd move them over to the performing domain to be indexed again. So, I was wondering If it will create any copied content issue or not? What should i have to take care of when I am going to move content from one site to another?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | HuptechWebseo0 -
1st Ecommerce site got penalized, can we start a 2nd one?
Hello, A client's first site got penalized by Goolge Penguin. It has recovered through cleaning up backlinks, but not to where it was before. It is 2nd and 3rd for several money keywords, but is far less successful than before penalization. We are starting a second site. Here's the important steps to mention The new site shows up first for it's domain name, and it has 30 pages indexed. It shows up NOWHERE for our leading search term. Out other site has a blog post that is 3rd for that search term. We are using new categories and new organization. We are using a different cart solution We are adding all unique content The home pages and some of the product pages are very thorough. We are adding comprehensive products like nothing else in the industry (10X) We plan on adding a very comprehensive blog, but haven't started yet. We've added the top 100 products so far. Our other store has 500. There's a lot of spam in the industry, so sites are slow to rank. Our category descriptions are 500 words Again, all unique content. No major errors in Moz Campaign tools Just a few categories so far, we're going to add many more. Same Google Analytics account as our other site It looks like we should eventually be on page 3 for our major search term. Again, we're nowhere for anything right now. ... Have you seen that Google will not rank a second site because it's from the same company and Google Analytics account, or does Google let you rank 2 sites in the same industry? We are hoping it's just slow to rank. If you can rank 2 sites, what are your best recommendations to help show up? Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Malicious links on our site indexed by Google but only visible to bots
We've been suffering from some very nasty black hat seo. In Google's index, our pages show external links to various pharmaceutical websites, but our actual live pages don't show them. It seems as though only certain user-agents see the malicious links. Setting up Screaming Frog SEO crawler using the Googlebot user agent also sees the malicious links. Any idea what could have caused this or how this can be stopped? We scanned all files on our webserver and couldn't find any of malicious links. We've changed our FTP and CMS passwords, is there anything else we can do? Thanks in advance!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SEO-Bas0 -
Why did this fabric site disappear for "fabric" and why can't we get it back?
Beverlys.com used to rank on the first page for "fabric." I'm trying to get the date of their demise, but don't have it yet so I can't pinpoint what Google update might have killed them but I can guess. In doing a backlink analysis, there were hundreds of poor quality, toxic sites pointing to them. We have carefully gone through them all and submitted a disavow request. They are now on page 9 from nowhere to be found a week ago. But, of course, that's not good enough. They are on page 2 for "fabric online" and "quilt fabric." So Google doesn't completely hate them. But doesn't love them enough even for those terms. Any suggestions? They are rebuilding the site to use a different ecommerce platform with new content and new structure. They will also be incorporating the blog within the site and I've advised them on many other ways to attract traffic and backlinks. That's coming. But for now, any suggestions and help will be much appreciated. Something has got to be holding them back for that one gem of a keyword. Also, I would like to know what experiences others have had with the disavow request form. Does Google absolutely hold you to making every attempt you can at getting those links removed? ANd how does it know? No one responds so it seems to be such a waste of time. And many now actually charge to remove your links. Thoughts? Thanks everyone!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | katandmouse0 -
Untrusted site - malware!
I recently had my link profile done as I was badly effected by something in 2012 (Penguin, Panda.. who knows? never got a message from google in webmaster about anything). Loads of INBOUND links were identified as being 'dodgy'' and the person highlighted them in different colors. However, another seo éxpert' told me to leave them (perhaps remove just 3 of them) and don't bother with the rest. Now I am not sure what to do? Any opinions? RED
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Llanero
3 were highlighted as being from untrusted malware. I think I should disavow them but really, would 3 make that much difference for a fall in my site? ORANGE
240 were said to be spam articles and I was advised:
The following pages highlighted in orange are on sites created for the purpose of publishing articles for link building. Since the same articles appear on multiple sites, Google views this as duplicate content. Links to Monteverde Tours in these articles should be removed or tagged "nofollow." Where this is not possible, the domains should be disavowed. YELLOW
85 were said to be from Low-quality directories
The following pages highlighted in yellow are on low-quality directories and link farms. Links to Monteverde Tours on these pages should be removed or the domains disavowed. GREEN
340 were said to be from sites were the page was not found , Account suspended, Problem loading page, Link removed, domain expired
The following pages highlighted in green include pages whose links to Monteverde Tours have been removed and pages that were inaccessible for various reasons, as shown in the Comments column. These pages or their domains should be disavowed to remove them from the Google index. I have read (and asked on this forum) about disavow but the more I read the more I am getting confused about the next action. I tried for one year to get rid of any bad outbound links, did blogging, social media, improved content, landing pages etc but all to no avail. Any opinions appreciated. I am not looking for a magic bullet, I know there isn't one. I know I need to keep improving content etc but after a year of NO improvements should I consider the link removal route? <colgroup><col width="215"></colgroup>
| Untrusted site - malware! |0 -
How Does This Site Get Away With It?
The following site is huge in the movie trailer industry: http://bit.ly/18B6tF It ranks #3 in Google for "Movie Trailers" and has high rankings for multiple other major keywords in the industry. Here's the thing; virtually all of their movie trailer pages contain copy/pasted content from other sites. The movie trailer descriptions are the ones given by the movie companies and therefor the same content is on thousands of websites/blogs. We all know Google hates duplicate content at the moment... so how does this site get a away with it? Does it's root-domain authority keep it up there?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | superlordme0 -
Infographic submission sites potentially offering paid links....
Good Morning/Afternoon fellow Mozzers, I recently created an infographic and am now looking to get it distributed via as many publications as possible. I discovered some great sites with collections of infographics.However I have discovered a multitude of sites offering to review and feature the infographic, or "express" submissions so the graphic features faster for a price..... links below. http://www.amazinginfographics.com/submit-infographics/ http://infographicjournal.com/submit-infographics/ 2 questions 1. Is this considered as buying links? My instincts say Yes. 2. Some sites offer mix of free and "express" paid submissions. If the answer to Q.1 is yes, should I avoid them all together even if my graphic gets picked up free? Thanks in advance for the feedback.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RobertChapman0