Is your ranking penguin Proof?
Google has run their system with the name of Penguin 2.0 update, here it has penalized websites as per the back-links profile. Most of the renowned sites got hit with this update are you one of them?
Back-links are an important factor associated with Ranking & Trust. The latest Penguin update has analyzed back-links and penalized unnatural link building practices. So, Get your back-links audited to prevent further penalization & subsequent drop in rankings.
How to Identify bad Back-Links ?
This is one question that is on every webmaster's mind. How to identify bad links? what are the basis or parameters through which one can evaluate back link quality?
To start with, one has to fetch the data from Google Webmaster Tools- by downloading the indexed links that are linking to your domain .
In the above webmaster screenshot , you click the "links to your site" option and you get "who links the most" with your domain. You click on more and download a list of latest links, 500 back-links in excel (csv).
The next step is time taking as there is no concrete guidelines to how to judge link quality?
Links with following attributes (pointed out by Matt cutts post penguin 2.0 update) may cause harm to your back-link profile
- Links from Non-niche directories- the one that lists everything available on earth
- Irrelevant Blog or forum comment - blog not related to your product or services offered. spamming
- Footer links across different domain
- Link from Free article submission sites (with no specific niche)
- Links from sites that evede Google Privacy Policy- (pornography, Gambling etc.)
- Sites hacked, virus or malware affected. see here for more info https://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/hacked/
- For other critical Parameters on how to judge quality of links discussed in details.
Once you run a manual check of the link profile, you van rate them in a scale of 0-5 (5 being worst, 4 bad, 3 risky, likewise). Now you have a list of links that need urgent removal.
Note: One important and critical factor is to decide on weather to remove the bad link or remove the bad domain. One needs to carefully evaluate, as in many cases link from a particular page may be bad, so disavowing an entire domain can actually be a bad decision which may affect ranking.
Now that you have the list of bad links- how do you start removing them?
First things first, get in touch with the webmaster - collect webmaster information from contact us page of the site or alternatively look up to whois for information. If the webmaster has social profile, you may look in their to get in touch with him, and request for removal of the link (you may have to follow up- but persistence pays).
Disavowing Bad Links- using Google Webmaster Tool
Google offers a solution where you can notify Google to not to associate your domain with the list of domain or links whome you do not control, when judging the trust worthiness of the site via back-links. Google Disavow Tool for bad link removal allows you to explain google about the bad links and your disaasociation with it.
Note: It is always advisable to used such an advance feature cautiously. Back-links are still considered important for building trust and credibility in the web and is an important ranking parameter. However paid links, link schemes and other form of manipulative and unnatural link building can attract penalty.
The verified bad links are then put in a .txt file and uploaded in the Google Disavow tool.
Once Disavowed a reconsideration request is sent to Google. Alternatively,
Our back-link auditor conducts a detailed analysis & categorizes the back-links quality by degree of risk or danger and recommends the necessary action for sanitaization.
We have done this for many webmasters and we do it quick because we understand how important it is for your site to rank organically up (it lowers Cost Per Aquisition)
Given below is the brief snapshots of the detailed back-link audit reporting for Example.com (Due to non disclosure agreement we can't mention the name of the client)
Summary
We have analyzed the external links that links to Example.com with our in-house link analysis tool, and found 2% of the back links to be harmful and needs to be disavowed quickly, while a whopping 84% back links looks suspicious – which needs a detailed investigation.
Back Link profile Assessment:
The back link profile has been broadly categorized into three important categories:
- Healthy
- Suspicious
- Toxic
Graphical View :
The tool further categories the link risk factor into the following six categories:
- Deadly risk
- Very high risk
- High risk
- Moderate risk
- Low Risk
- Very Low Risk
Graphical View :
# Deadly Risk
These back links are labeled “deadly” as they are already harming the site and are on top priority for removal or disavow. It is further categorized into two groups with sub-groups under them:
A. Deadly 1 - This domain is not indexed in Google, a sign for a penalty.
a) Deadly 2 - This domain's Theme is listed as dangerous (Mal-ware, Malicious or Virus).
B. Suspicious* - This domain's Theme is listed as suspicious (Hacking, Suspicious or Pornography).
b) Suspicious** - Links coming from typical web link directories. This is a common way to inflate link popularities and/or sell links. Not recommended these days.
Graphical View :
#Very High Risk
These links are second to the deadly risk and are also harming the site. These back links are further classified into seven sub-categories with well defined reasons.
A. Deadly - This domain is not indexed in Google, a sign for a penalty.
Suspicious - This page needs manual investigation.
B. Suspicious 1- This page has more than 1,000 outgoing links. This could be a sign for a spammy blog or directory.
C. Suspicious* - This domain's Theme is listed as suspicious (Hacking, Suspicious or Pornography).
D. Suspicious** - Links coming from typical web link directories. This is a common way to inflate link popularities and/or sell links. Not recommended these days.
E. Suspicious**** - This page has no Page Rank but at least some weak links. This could be a sign for a page punishment by Google. Google Page Rank is more and more inaccurate and many webmasters don't trust that metric anymore.
F. Suspicious***** - This page has more than 10 back links from a possible Link Network.
Graphical View :
#High Risk
These back links are more suspicious and going by the latest Penguin 2.0 update, these links will soon be penalized or will not be indexed, hence needs to be removed before it harms the site. Based on the degree of risk they are categorized into six sub-categories:
A. Deadly – This domain is not indexed in Google, a sign for a penalty.
B. Suspicious* - This domain's Theme is listed as suspicious (Hacking, Suspicious or Pornography).
C. Suspicious** - Links coming from typical web link directories. This is a common way to inflate link.
D. Suspicious*** - Site wide Footer Link detected - a typical way how paid links or "friend"- links are artificially.
E. Suspicious**** - Page Rank is inaccurate and many webmasters don't trust that metric anymore.
F. Suspicious***** - This page has more than 10 back links from a possible link network.
Graphical View :
# Risk profile defination
The links are further classified in to twelve categories based on the degree of suspicious:
- Deadly - This domain is not indexed in Google, a sign for a penalty.
- Suspicious - These pages need manual investigation.
- Suspicious 1 - This page has more than 1,000 outgoing links. This could be a sign for a spammy blog or website.
- Suspicious 2 - Links coming from typical article directories, this is a common way to automatically spread content on many domains. Not recommended these days.
- Suspicious 3 - This domain has the same REG (Domain name registrant) as 13 other linking domains - possible Link Network.
- Suspicious 4 - This domain has the same IP as 16 other linking domains - possible Link Network.
- Suspicious 5 - This domain has Link Velocity Trend < -70% Domain < 16 - probably part of an Expired Link Network or a domain that the public has lost interest in.
- Suspicious* - This domain's Theme is listed as suspicious (Hacking, Suspicious or Pornography).
- Suspicious** - Links coming from typical web link directories. This is a common way to inflate link popularities and/or sell links. Not recommended these days.
- Suspicious*** - Site wide Footer Link detected - a typical way how paid links or "friend"-links are artificially placed.
- Suspicious**** - This page has no Page Rank but at least some weak links. This could be a sign for a page punishment by Google. Google Page Rank is more and more inaccurate and many webmasters don't trust that metric anymore.
- Suspicious***** - This page has more than 10 back links from a possible Link Network.
Graphical View :
