SEO Specialist for Link Penalty Help

[dragon]

@ Khalid - could give these guys a shout - www.linkaudit.co.uk

 

[Oceanic]

Perhaps I should state that in my daytime role, I am a penalty and algorithms specialist for one of the larger SEO agencies in Europe!

You can use the disavow file to your hearts content, just don't put any good links in there or you will devalue your site further. The skill comes in knowing how to get your full backlink profile and then working out what is a bad link!

 

[Oceanic]

I had a very successful site (6k+ a month) that got link spammed because I was doing so well. I've been trying to bring it back ever since. Tried and kept updating the Google Disavow tool but no luck. Been trying for 5 months and still the traffic decreases week on week. Maybe time to kill it. Negative SEO from competitors killed it.

Any chance you could 301 to a different domain?

That was a tactic that I used last year and got away with it and there are some cases when it does work but generally it is either try and recover by doing a proper backlink clean-up or start on a fresh domain.

 

[Oceanic]

Jumping from domain to domain via a 301 every time you have a problem is probably not a realistic solution for a real business like this.

If it works, it would only likely be temporary at best. Look at some of the seo companies who have spent the last 12-18 months switching domains on almost a fortnightly basis every time the original problems catch them again.


I don't think there is any realistic solution involving moving domain - you need to fix the problem, not try and hide from it.

^ This ^

 

[mally]

The skill comes in knowing how to get your full backlink profile and then working out what is a bad link!

Any hints / tips??

I'm currently using my google webmaster account and msn webmaster link downloads to show what links I have

 

[Retired_Member38]

This took me a while to do recently, but you should really download data from multiple sources and get it into one spreadsheet with the duplicates removed. WMT and MSN don't give you a complete list of backlinks. Try and get Majestic and AHREFS in there also.

 

[Oceanic]

Any hints / tips??

I'm currently using my google webmaster account and msn webmaster link downloads to show what links I have

I would use the data from those sources but they are just samples of your backlinks and so you need some other third party tools to get the fuller picture. I use Majestic SEO, Opensite Explorer and Ahrefs. Once I grab all the links from these tools I then de-duplicate the list and then I manually review all of the links.

I scroll down the list and mark-off sites I know fall below my own quality criteria, it is quite funny how some sites crop up so often. Any site I am not familiar with I will then manually review this site and the link placement, things I look at include the quality, relevance and nature of the site, the anchor text used and also where the link is placed. A quick win is to deal with any sitewide links that you might have pointing at your site, also any links you have recently built or have had built on your behalf - this will rely on you being brutally honest with yourself though.


Hope this helps.

 

[mally]

I would use the data from those sources but they are just samples of your backlinks and so you need some other third party tools to get the fuller picture. I use Majestic SEO, Opensite Explorer and Ahrefs. Once I grab all the links from these tools I then de-duplicate the list and then I manually review all of the links.

I scroll down the list and mark-off sites I know fall below my own quality criteria, it is quite funny how some sites crop up so often. Any site I am not familiar with I will then manually review this site and the link placement, things I look at include the quality, relevance and nature of the site, the anchor text used and also where the link is placed. A quick win is to deal with any sitewide links that you might have pointing at your site, also any links you have recently built or have had built on your behalf - this will rely on you being brutally honest with yourself though.


Hope this helps.

Thats a great help thanks.

Do you have an example of a disavow file you've used? I've seen one that had loads of info in like details of emails sent etc to try and get links removed

 

[mally]

Anyone able to produce a complete backlink download for "Opensite Explorer"

I've tried fiverr but no ones offering the service. Managed to find gigs for Majestic SEO and Ahrefs

 

[Retired_Member38]

Forget it... OSE is garbage in comparison to the others.

 

[mally]

Forget it... OSE is garbage in comparison to the others.

agh ok cheers mate

 

[mally]

I would use the data from those sources but they are just samples of your backlinks and so you need some other third party tools to get the fuller picture. I use Majestic SEO, Opensite Explorer and Ahrefs. Once I grab all the links from these tools I then de-duplicate the list and then I manually review all of the links.

I scroll down the list and mark-off sites I know fall below my own quality criteria, it is quite funny how some sites crop up so often. Any site I am not familiar with I will then manually review this site and the link placement, things I look at include the quality, relevance and nature of the site, the anchor text used and also where the link is placed. A quick win is to deal with any sitewide links that you might have pointing at your site, also any links you have recently built or have had built on your behalf - this will rely on you being brutally honest with yourself though.


Hope this helps.

I'm looking at a list of sites from a href download, would you things like their AhrefsRank or would you ignore that.

Also when you removing duplicates, would you also remove from the list "no follow" links, before looking at each individual link?

 

[woffer]

Hey Mally i can do you an excel download from ose if you want? I find the domain authority and page authority useful when checking link quality.

Its another tool and can only help.

Just pm me your website and email to send file to.

 

[Oceanic]

Thats a great help thanks.

Do you have an example of a disavow file you've used? I've seen one that had loads of info in like details of emails sent etc to try and get links removed

Nope, don't bother with that as the disavow file is machine read and not looked at by the webspam team.

Your file should just look like this...

Domain: examplespam.com
Domain: examplespam1.com
Domain: examplespam2.com
etc, etc

Just disavow at the domain level if you can, it will be more effective. Matt Cutts said the other week that you need to use it like a "machette"


Hope this helps.

 

[Murray]

would you also remove from the list "no follow" links, before looking at each individual link?

Don't bother with Nofollow links, they are as good as not existing already.

Did you get a message in your webmaster tools and a manual penalty may I ask?

 

[Oceanic]

Don't bother with Nofollow links, they are as good as not existing already.

Did you get a message in your webmaster tools and a manual penalty may I ask?

I tend to just work on a principal that whatever is low quality will get blocked, as Google can see everything anyway. It makes the process a lot quicker.

 

[mally]

Nope, don't bother with that as the disavow file is machine read and not looked at by the webspam team.

Your file should just look like this...

Domain: examplespam.com
Domain: examplespam1.com
Domain: examplespam2.com
etc, etc

Just disavow at the domain level if you can, it will be more effective. Matt Cutts said the other week that you need to use it like a "machette"


Hope this helps.

makes perfect sense cheers

Don't bother with Nofollow links, they are as good as not existing already.

Did you get a message in your webmaster tools and a manual penalty may I ask?

thanks for the no follow info, no I've not received a manual penalty via webmaster tools

 

[mally]

I've got the 3 big backlink downloads and then on top of that I've got bing anf gwt downloads.

Lots and lots of links (over 150,000) , now where to start, this is hard work!

Wish I knew how to make excel show only 1 link per website so I can reduce my url list massively.

There's defo room for a good system to help merge the files altogether and to use the info provided by the Majestic SEO, Opensite Explorer and Ahrefs to try and identify the poor links that need removing

 

[Retired_Member38]

150,000 links or 150,000 linking domains?

If that latter it might not be that bad. Its as much work to deal with a site wide link on a 20,000 page blog as it is to deal with a solitary link in a blog post.

 

[mally]

150,000 links intotal, I think about 2000 domains