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
-
I want to know about the Impact of Do-follow backlinks and No-follow backlinks for increasing DA.
Have Do-follow backlinks and No-Follow backlinks same value to increase Domain Authority in Moz? Recently, I have created 290 profile backlinks which was do-follow. But from yesterday I have seen all backlinks are no-follow now according to the decision of sites' owners. My site's DA has already increased up to 35. Will this DA fall gradually from now? Apart from it, if I have created same backlinks for my another site; will my DA be 35? Please try to clarify it. My site is: Homeworkpaper.net Thanks. Waiting for your valuable answer.
Link Building | | darrellpc1 -
Natural or Unnatural backlinks
Somebody embedded a link to one of my websites on the sidebar of her blog. It ends up hundreds of links from this blog. Will this type of links be considered unnatural links by Google? Here is the url of the blog. http://chordsandmore.blogspot.com/ To find the link to my site, please search "yoke wong". Thanks.
Link Building | | pianomother0 -
Which Backlinks to Disavow?
I am a site owner just getting to learn more about managing things myself after outsourcing SEO to a firm a year back (they stopped all activities about 8 months back). The question I have is about disavowing the low quality links. After collecting all the data from many sites on the basis of this helpful posting - (http://moz.com/blog/ultimate-guide-to-google-penalty-removal), I am now left with around 2,800 back-links. I discovered most of the bad ones using ahrefs and majestic (and Google webmaster did not show many of the bad links). In fact, in the very first place, I realized that there was a spam problem when I saw the anchor cloud on ahrefs which showed many unrelated anchors for my site. I have three questions: **First, **Many URL's are actually from websites which have nothing to do with my line of business and I can sure spot them. What I get confused with is this - I can not say that these sites are downright spam. Some of them look to be good sites for example - a coffee machine vendor (with full business details and a fairly decent looking business), a Nike sports shoes mart etc. But they have nothing to do with my business. So my first question is - What is spam really? Would a back link from a high ranking website in the travel industry be considered spam from the point of view of someone who runs a website for medical equipment, specially if the back-link is from an unrelated anchor text like - "3 nights travel package" (which has nothing to do with medical business). I think I should disavow all the low quality back links with an erroneous anchor but Id like some views on this. Second, I see that in the disavow file, one could either upload a whole domain or a specific URL (could somebody please confirm this). I have some sites which have 8-12 (more in some cases) back links to my site. In most cases these sites are either really bad quality or have nothing to do with my business. I am tempted to disavow the entire domain for such sites instead of going by the URL's. Any views? Third, this is what I'd really like some help with. In case I delete the very pages (on my site) to which these back links point, should I still disavow the pointing domain? Finally: I have not created most of these backlinks. In fact, over the last 2-3 months we have started creating links from good sites in my industry. Most of the anchor cloud is good for me on ahrefs but there are these bad ones to which my question relates. I have not got any manual penalty from Google, though my traffic I think took a hit in the first week of October 2013.
Link Building | | sanar0 -
Is building a Link Network from scratch a good idea?
My SEO agency are suggesting that they will build a Link network from scratch by buying domains and building blog sites on them. All sites that link to my site would in theory be 'clean' and as we build up their authority we increase the value of the links to my site. One of the upsides is taht we would have complete control of all the links. This does sound a bit spammy but in theory could it work?
Link Building | | Johnnyh
Any input is much appreciated. Regards John0 -
Penalized by SEO Link Wheelers Backlinks
Just over a year ago, I've bought 4 link building packages from SEO Link Wheelers. From what I see now, most of their website network has been penalized / banned and now it's hurting my websites. I've tried to contact them but they won't reply. I'd be willing to pay to have them remove the links but they simply won't answer. And I haven't been rude or impolite at all in my communications with them. I've tried calling them to but to no avail. I know where most of the bad links are, thanks to linkresearchtools.com Now I gotta get rid of that crap. Any suggestions?
Link Building | | sbrault740 -
How long before backlinks take effect?
In general how long would it take for Google to update the SERP after it found the external link activity? Does it depend on the website the link is on as? So for example, after it found a link on the BBC would the SERP update a lot quicker then after a link on a small blog? Maybe Google updates on a certain day?
Link Building | | activitysuper0 -
Backlink Building Places
Where can I go to get follow backlinks to my site to improve my DA and PA, etc?
Link Building | | sansonj0 -
How to increase the backlink count?
Hi i am new to blogging and new to SEOMOZ so any one can help me how to increase my backlink count
Link Building | | Trendymobiles0