Culling Bad SEO Links
UPDATE: Video transcript available for ‘Culling Bad SEO Links’.
This is my second part to getting ready for for the inevitable lumbering Google Penguin that will be crushing businesses near you some time soon. In the first part I explained how to tell a if a back link is spammy. If you have hundreds or thousands of backlinks though, you may not want to check each of them to see if they meet the “4 sign your backlinks are spammy” criteria. You may need to cull the sites on that list quickly.
SEO Gone Bad
Here is a case in point. A former client still has us listed as an owner of their Google Search Console. Last night they realised Google hit them with a manual action back in October. They bought their SEO from a known backlink buyer earlier in the year and Google analytics shows a definite spike in organic traffic not long after they took over the account. Then shortly after that the crashing lows that come from a manual penalty.
I’m not sure if the business owner knew backlinks were getting purchased on their behalf but it does not matter as the outcome is the same. When I look at the backlinks using Majestic SEO I get backlinks from 42 domains from what looks to be relevant sites if I believe “Topical Trust Flow” metric.
However those 42 domains are just what Majestic has found in the last 90 days and the penalty was issued in October. Overall Majestic is reporting over 7000 links from over 100 domains. Google Search Console is reporting 92 domains. By downloading this list I can easily begin my initial cull of what sites need to be on the disavow list.
I Always Disavow These
The quickest way to cull is to find domains that contain one of the following word; directory, link, seo, article, submit or odd out of place country codes like .ru .pl .mx etc. The .ru revealed some usual culprits like prlog.ru and mysitecost.ru. The word “link” found another couple and the word directory a few more. Interestingly the directories were from .com.au sites. In this case I would still disavow them even though they are .com.au
Hope you enjoy today’s show and remember you can catch me live on facebook every weekday morning for the month of February at 7:30am AEST by subscribing on our FB page facebook.com/melbourneseo
Jim’s been here for a while, you know who he is.
