How do you perform your link audits?
-
What methods and tools do you guys use to perform link audits? Do you also use a traffic light system for links?
-
No problem - if you have any more questions then just drop me an email (my email is on my profile page). Good luck!
-
Excellent, thanks again mate. That's a really big help.
-
No problem, Gareth.
Regarding the distribution of PageRank. I gather a list of all the referring domains to the website in questions, then I lookup the PageRank for these domains (sometimes I use Domain Authority or Citation Flow - depends on your preference). Once I have a list of all the domains and their PR, I create a graph (bar chart) that shows the number of links coming from PR0 domains, PR1 domains, PR2 domains...
This is a nice visual display that you can see the kind of links coming to the site and usually gives a good signal of the quality of links coming through to the domain. Here's an awesome post by Pete Myers that goes through all of this - http://moz.com/blog/link-profiling-with-open-site-explorer
Now, in terms of what indicators I look for with regard to toxicity... I look for the following factors:
- Is the referring domain indexed by Google? If not, then it could be a signal that they have been de-indexed and I would remove this link.
- Is it a sitewide link that is part of a blogroll/footer/sidebar?
- Does the link come from a very low authority domain? (note: this isn't necessarily bad, but you will be able to see if the page has spammy looking content yourself)
- Does the link contain exact match keywords that aren't relevant to the page content at all?
These are the key factors that I look for but once you start analysing your link profile, you will be able to detect a pattern in the links.
Hope this helps
-
Thanks Matthew.
Can you go in to a little detail as to what you mean by distribution of PageRank please? Also, what indicators do you look for in terms of quality and toxicity? Thanks again.
-
For the link audits that I do for my clients, I use a variety of different tools. With link analysis, the more tools the better really. The tools I use are as follows:
- Majestic SEO
- Open Site Explorer
- Ahrefs
- Google Webmaster Tools
- Yandex Webmaster Tools
- Link Detox Tool
I compile all the link information from the first 5 tools mentioned and then import them into Link Detox tool. I can then start manually analysing the links and highlighting any potentially toxic links. Next step is using BuzzStream to find the contact information for the toxic links and then I compile a separate spreadsheet for this. I also put together a graph that shows the distribution of PageRank from external links within Excel - this is a good visual cue for the client.
Hope this helps.
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
-
What is link Schemes?
Hello Friends, Today I am reading about link schemes on http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66356 there are a several ways how to avoid Google penalties and also talk about the low quality links. But I can't understand about "Low-quality directory or bookmark site links" Is there he talked about low page rank, Alexa or something else?
Technical SEO | | KLLC0 -
How to defend against link cloaking
Hi, I own a website where recently a lot of backlinks have been going to my old domain that 301's to my new domain. During the past 2 months I have noticed a massive amount of links pointing to my old domain. When I go to look at the links and go to the page all I see is a search bar which to me this seems like link cloaking. I am not sure what I should do. Obviously I am not doing the link building and someone is targeting anchor specific keywords from multiple domains that all look the same. My question is should I report it myself in google webmaster tools before I get hit with a filter or penalty, or would this force them to penalize me. And if I do get caught up in a penalty I would not know how to fix this since I doubt the webmaster is linking to me out of the kindness of his heart. Any advice? Thanks
Technical SEO | | dreamfire0 -
Absolute and relative paths for internal links
I have been looking into absolute and relative paths for internal links, what is better for SEO? Thanks
Technical SEO | | adaptiveconsultancy0 -
Do links count if they have no href parameter?
A SEOmoz report indicates that we have a large number of links on our pages, mainly due to an embedded mega-drop down and lots of product display options that are user activated, but otherwise hidden. Most of the links have the paramter href="#", because the links are used in combination with jQuery to trigger actions. It is still possible to trigger the actions without the href parameter, so the question is: Do links without href parameters count towards the total amount of links on the page, since a link without a href parameter is actually an internal page link? Our site (this version of the site has not had empty tags removed): http://emilea.be/
Technical SEO | | Webxtrakt0 -
Are multiple links devalued on the same domain?
I'm in negotiations to get links placed on a popular blog with good stats. I'm allowed to pick older posts on the site, and I get to pick the anchor text. Is it best practice to diversify the links by having different keywords pointing to different pages or am I better off pointing as many links as I can at one page (varying anchor text)? Also, is it best to pick a more recent blog post, or is it ok to pick one from say, 2009?
Technical SEO | | MichaelWeisbaum0 -
Slight Drop after Minor Link Building
Hi, Last week I build around 10-15 high quality related links to my trampoline pads website which was ranking number 2 for "trampoline pads" and number 1 for "trampoline pad". After building the links this week it has dropped in the serps to around number 5-6 for both. Is this an effect of the link building and will it bounce back in? the url is http://www.trampolinepad.co.uk/. Kind Regards,
Technical SEO | | GardenGamer
Simon0 -
Javascript funtion as link? Why not show up?
We joined our Chamber of Commerce for the "link" as much as anything. After 9 months of having a link from our local chamber it has never showed up anywhere. You can see the link on my Chambers page, and you can click on it and it works. But it does not show up anywhere else....Not in any backlink checker, not in SEOmoz, not in Google Webmaster Tools. When I hover over our link on their page I see "javascript:encodeclick........my url" Is this link worth anything? What is a javascriptencodeclick? Does Google know it exists and give me credit for it? Our Chamber is clueless... they hire someone to do their website. Their webmasters response to my question was: Hi, These links look like this because this is just the way our system parses URLs that are entered into the membership directory so they can be clickable when displayed in the lister. These links will not have a negative effect on Google or SEO indexing purposes if that is what you are concerned about. They are not encoded or encrypted, this just happens to be the name of the Javascript function.
Technical SEO | | SCyardman0 -
Add to Cart Link
We have shopping cart links (<a href's,="" not="" input="" buttons)="" that="" link="" to="" a="" url="" along="" the="" lines="" of="" cart="" add="" 123&return="/product/123. </p"></a> <a href's,="" not="" input="" buttons)="" that="" link="" to="" a="" url="" along="" the="" lines="" of="" cart="" add="" 123&return="/product/123. </p">The SEOMoz site crawls are flagging these as a massive number of 302 redirects and I also wonder what sort of effect this is having on linkjuice flowing around the site. </a> <a href's,="" not="" input="" buttons)="" that="" link="" to="" a="" url="" along="" the="" lines="" of="" cart="" add="" 123&return="/product/123. </p">I can see several possible solutions: Make the links nofollow Make the links input buttons Block /cart/add with robots.txt Make the links 301 instead of 302 Make the links javascript (probably worst care) All of these would result in an identical outcome for the UX, but are very different solutions. What would you suggest?</a>
Technical SEO | | Aspedia0