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
-
Internal Linking
Hi, I'm doing internal anchor text links. Relative path. if I use /destination-page instead of https://website.com/destination-page will I still receive a transfer of internal Google trust to the destination page? Does google treat just the / url the same as full url??
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Scotty_Wilson0 -
Changing URL to a subdomain?
Hi there, I had a website www.footballshirtcollective.com that has been live since July. It contains both content and eCommerce. I am now separating out the content so that; 1. The master domain is www.footballshirtcollective.com (content) pointing to a new site 2. Subdomain is store.footballshirtcollective.com (ecommerce) - pointing to the existing site. What do you advise I can do to minimise the impact on my search? Many thanks Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mjmaxwell0 -
Same page Anchor Links vs Internal Link (Cannibalisation)
Hey Mozzers, I have a very long article page that supports several of my sub-category pages. It has sub-headings that link out to the relevant pages. However the article is very long and to make it easier to find the relevant section I was debating adding inpage anchor links in a bullet list at the top of the page for quick navigation. PAGE TITLE Keyword 1 Keyword 2 etc <a name="'Keyword1"></a> Keyword 1 Content
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ATP
<a name="'Keyword2"></a> Keyword 2 Content Because of the way my predecessor wrote this article, its section headings are the same as the sub-categories they link out to and boost (not ideal but an issue I will address later). What I wondered is if having the inpage achor would confuse the SERPS because they would be linking with the same keyword. My worry is that by increasing userbility of the article by doing this I also confuse them SERPS First I tell them that this section on my page talk about keyword 1. Then from in that article i tell them that a different page entirely is about the same keyword. Would linking like this confuse SERPS or are inpage anchor links looked upon and dealt with differently?0 -
URL Structure Question
Am starting to work with a new site that has a domain name contrived to help it with a certain kind of long tail search. Just for fictional example sake, let's call it WhatAreTheBestRestaurantsIn.com. The idea is that people might do searches for "what are the best restaurants in seattle" and over time they would make some organic search progress. Again, fictional top level domain example, but the real thing is just like that and designed to be cities in all states. Here's the question, if you were targeting searches like the above and had that domain to work with, would you go with... whatarethebestrestaurantsin.com/seattle-washington whatarethebestrestaurantsin.com/washington/seattle whatarethebestrestaurantsin.com/wa/seattle whatarethebestrestaurantsin.com/what-are-the-best-restaurants-in-seattle-wa ... or what and why? Separate question (still need the above answered), would you rather go with a super short (4 letter), but meaningless domain name, and stick the longtail part after that? I doubt I can win the argument the new domain name, so still need the first question answered. The good news is it's pretty good content. Thanks... Darcy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
How can I get a list of every url of a site in Google's index?
I work on a site that has almost 20,000 urls in its site map. Google WMT claims 28,000 indexed and a search on Google shows 33,000. I'd like to find what the difference is. Is there a way to get an excel sheet with every url Google has indexed for a site? Thanks... Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
What Should I Do With My URL Names?
I release property on my blog each week, and it has come to the point we will get property in the same area as we have had in the past. So, I name my URL /blah-blah-blah-[area of property]/ for the first property in that area right. Now I get a different property in that same area and the URL will have to be named /blah-blah-blah-[area of property]-2/. Now I'm not sure if this is a major issue or not, but I'm sure there must be a better way than this, and I don't really want to take down our past properties - unless you can give me good reason too, of course? So before I start getting URLs like this: /blah-blah-blah-[area of property]-2334343534654/ (well, ok, maybe not that bad! But you get my point) I wanted to see what everyones opinion on it is 🙂 Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JonathanRolande0 -
Link Anchor Text
As I keep studing SEO I reach to the conclusion that the Anchor Text from other site is crucial to get more positive results for our website and for the link-building strategy. My question is - Is it better to have an Anchor Text to my main link our should I ask for a determine targeted keyword? Tks in advance! Pedro M Pereira
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PedroM0 -
Increasing Internal Links But Avoiding a Link Farm
I'm looking to create a page about Widgets and all of the more specific names for Widgets we sell: ABC Brand Widgets, XYZ Brand Widgets, Big Widgets, Small Widgets, Green Widgets, Blue Widgets, etc. I'd like my Widget page to give a brief explanation about each kind of Widget with a link deeper into my site that gives more detail and allows you to purchase. The problem is I have a lot of Widgets and this could get messy: ABC Green Widgets, Small XYZ Widgets, many combinations. I can see my Widget page teetering on being a link farm if I start throwing in all of these combos. So where should I stop? How much do I do? I've read more than 100 links on a page being considered a link farm, is that a hardline number or a general guideline?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rball10