[Build Backlinks Online] Link Audit Guide for Effective Link Removals & Risk Mitigation

Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'Link Audit Guide for Effective
Link Removals & Risk Mitigation'

Posted by ModestosThis post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the
main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The
author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of Moz,
Inc.

This step-by-step guide aims to help users with the link auditing process
relying on own judgment, without blindly relying on automation. Because links
are still a very important ranking factor, link audits should be carried out by
experienced link auditors rather than third party automated services. A flawed
link audit can have detrimental implications.
The guide consists of the following sections:How to make sure that your sites
issues are links-related. Which common misconceptions you should to avoid when
judging the impact of backlinks. How to shape a solid link removal strategy. How
to improve the backlink data collection process. Why you need to re-crawl all
collected backlink data. Why you need to find the genuine URLs of your
backlinks. How to build a bespoke backlink classification model. Why you need to
weight and aggregate all negative signals. How to prioritise backlinks for
removal. How to measure success after having removed/disavowed links.
In the process that follows, automation is required only for data collection,
crawling and metric gathering purposes.
Disclaimer: The present process is by no means panacea to all link-related
issues feel free to share your thoughts, processes, experiences or questions
within the comments section - we can all learn from each other :)
#1 Rule out all other possibilities
Nowadays link removals and/or making use of Googles disavow tool are the first
courses of action that come to mind following typical negative events such as
ranking drops, traffic loss or de-indexation of one or more key-pages on a
website.
However, this
doesnt necessarily mean that whenever rankings drop or traffic dips links are
the sole culprits.
For instance, some of the actual reasons that these events may have occurred
can relate to:Tracking issues Before trying anything else, make sure the
reported traffic data are accurate. If traffic appears to be down make sure
there arent any issues with your analytics tracking. It happens sometimes that
the tracking code goes missing from one or more pages for no immediately
apparent reason. Content issues - E.g. the content of the site is shallow,
scraped or of very low quality, meaning that the site could have been hit by an
algorithm (Panda) or by a manual penalty. Technical issues - E.g. a poorly
planned or executed site migration, a disallow directive in robots.txt, wrong
implementation of rel=canonical, severe site performance issues etc. Outbound
linking issues These may arise when a website is linking out to spam sites or
websites operating in untrustworthy niches i.e. adult, gambling etc. Linking out
to such sites isnt always deliberate and in many cases, webmasters have no idea
where their websites are linking out to. Outbound follow links need to be
regularly checked because the hijacking of external links is a very common
hacking practice. Equally risky are outbound links pointing to pages that have
been redirected to bad neighborhood sites. Hacking This includes unintentional
hosting of spam, malware or viruses that come as a consequence because of
hacking.
In all these cases, trying to recover any loss in traffic has nothing to do
with the quality of the inbound links as the real reasons are to be found
elsewhere.
Remember: There is nothing worse than spending time on link removals when in
reality your site is suffering by non-link-related issues.
#2 Avoid common misconceptions
If you have lost rankings or traffic and you cant spot any of issues presented
in previous step, you are left with the possibility of checking out your
backlinks.
Nevertheless, you should avoid the falling victim of the following three
misconceptions before being reassured that there arent any issues with your
sites backlinks.a) Its not just about Penguin
The problem: Minor algorithm updates take place pretty much every day and not
just on the dates Googles reps announce them, such as the Penguin updates.
According to Matt Cutts, in 2012 alone Google launched 665 algorithmic updates,
which averages at about two per day during the entire year!
If your site hasnt gained or lost rankings on the exact dates Penguin was
refreshed or other official updates rolled out, this does not mean that your
site is immune to all Google updates. In fact, your site may have been hit
already by less commonly known updates.
The solution: The best ways to spot unofficial Google updates is by regularly
keeping an eye on the various SERP volatility tools as well as on updates from
credible forums where many site owners and SEOs whose sites have been hit share
their own experiences.

SERPs volatility (credit: SERPs.com)b) Total organic traffic has not dropped
The problem: Even though year-over-year traffic is a great KPI, when its not
correlated with rankings, many issues may remain invisible. To make things even
more complicated, not provided makes it almost impossible to break down your
organic traffic into brand and non-brand queries.
The solution: Check your rankings regularly (i.e. weekly) so you can easily
spot manual penalties or algorithmic devaluations that may be attributed to your
sites link graph. Make sure that you not only track the keywords with the
highest search volumes but also other several mid- or even long-tail ones. This
will help you diagnose which keyword groups or pages have been affected.c) Its
not just about the links you have built
The problem: Another common misconception is to assume that because you havent
built any unnatural links your site's backlink profile is squeaky-clean. Google
evaluates all links pointing to your site, even the ones that were built five or
10 years ago and are still live, which you may or may not be aware of. In a
similar fashion, any new links coming into your site do equally matter, whether
theyre organic, inorganic, built by you or someone else. Whether you like it or
not, every site is accountable and responsible for all inbound links pointing at
it.
The solution: First, make sure youre regularly auditing your links against
potential negative SEO attempts. Check out Glen Gabes 4 ways of carrying out
negative SEO checks and try adopting at least two of them. In addition, carry
out a thorough backlink audit to get a better understanding of your sites
backlinks. You may be very surprised finding out which sites have been linking
to your site without being aware of it.
#3 Shape a solid link removal strategy
Coming up with a solid strategy should largely depend on whether:
You have received a manual penalty.
You have lost traffic following an official or unofficial algorithmic update
(e.g. Penguin).
You want to remove links proactively to mitigate risk.
I have covered thoroughly in
another post the cases where link removals can be worthwhile so lets move on
into the details of each one of the three scenarios.Manual penalties Vs.
Algorithmic devaluations
If youve concluded that the ranking drops and/or traffic loss seem to relate to
backlink issues, the first thing you need to figure out is whether your site
has been hit manually or algorithmically.
Many people confuse manually imposed penalties with algorithmic devaluations,
hence making strategic mistakes.If you have received a Google notification
and/or a manual Impacts Links action (like the one below) appears within
Webmaster Tools it means that your site has already been flagged for unnatural
links and sooner or later it will receive a manual penalty. In this case, you
should definitely try to identify which the violating links may be and try to
remove them.
If no site-wide or partial manual actions appear in your Webmaster Tools
account, your entire site or just a few pages may have been affected by an
official (e.g. Penguin update/refresh) or unofficial algorithmic update in
Googles link valuation. For more information on unofficial updates keep an eye
on Mozs Google update history.
There is also the possibility that a site has been hit manually and
algorithmically at the same time, although this is a rather rare case.Tips for
manual penalties
If youve received a manual penalty, youll need to remove as many unnatural
links as possible to please Googles webspam team when requesting a review. But
before you get there, you need to figure out what
type of penalty you have received:Keyword level penalty Rankings for one or
more keywords appear to have dropped significantly. Page (URL) level penalty
The pages no longer ranks for any of its targeted keywords, including head and
long-tail ones. In some cases, the affected page may even appear to be
de-indexed. Site-wide penalty The entire site has been de-indexed and
consequently no longer ranks for any keywords, including the sites own domain
name.1. If one (or more) targeted keyword(s) has received a penalty, you should
first focus on the backlinks pointing to the page(s) that used to rank for the
penalized keyword(s) BEFORE the penalty took place. Carrying out granular audits
against the pages of your best ranking competitors can give you a rough idea of
how much work you need to do in order to rebalance your backlink profile.
Also, make sure you review all backlinks pointing to URLs that 301 redirect or
have a rel=canonical to the penalized pages. Penalties can flow in the same way
PageRank flows through 301 redirects or rel=canonical tags.
2. If one (or more) pages (URLs) have received a penalty, you should definitely
focus on the backlinks pointing to these pages first. Although there are no
guarantees that resolving the issues with the backlinks of the penalized pages
may be enough to lift the penalty, it makes sense not making drastic changes on
the backlinks of other parts of the site unless you really have to e.g. after
failing a first reconsideration request.
3. If the penalty is site-wide, you should look at all backlinks pointing to
the penalized domain or subdomain.
In terms of the process you can follow to manually identify and document the
toxic links, Lewis Sellers excellent
Ultimate Guide to Google Penalty Removal covers pretty much all you need to be
doing.Tips for algorithmic devaluations
Pleasing Googles algorithm is quite different to pleasing a human reviewer. If
you have lost rankings due to an algorithmic update, the first thing you need to
do is to carry out a backlink audit against the top 3-4 best-ranking websites in
your niche.
It is really important to study the backlink profile of the sites, which are
still ranking well, making sure you exclude Exact Match Domains (EMDs) and
Partial Match Domains (PMDs).
This will help you spot:Unnatural signals when comparing your sites backlink
profile to your best ranking competitors. Common trends amongst the best ranking
websites.
Once you have done the above you should then be in a much better position to
decide which actions you need to take in order to rebalance the sites backlink
profile.
Tips for proactive link removals
Making sure that your sites backlink profile is in better shape compared to
your competitors should always be one of your top priorities, regardless of
whether or not youve been penalized. Mitigating potential link-related risks
that may arise as a result of the next Penguin update, or a future manual review
of your site from Googles webspam team, can help you stay safe.
There is nothing wrong with proactively removing and/or disavowing inorganic
links because some of the most notorious links from the past may one day in the
future hold you back for an indefinite period of time, or in extreme cases, ruin
your entire business.
Removing obsolete low quality links is highly unlikely to cause any ranking
drops as Google is already discounting (most of) these unnatural links. However,
by not removing them youre risking getting a manual penalty or getting hit by
the next algorithm update.
Undoubtedly, proactively removing links may not be the easiest thing to sell a
client. Those in charge of sites that have been penalized in the past are always
much more likely to invest in this activity, without any having any hesitations.
Dealing with unrealistic growth expectations it can be easily avoided when
honestly educating clients about the current stance of Google towards SEO.
Investing on this may save you later from a lot of troubles, avoiding
misconceptions or misunderstandings.
A reasonable site owner would rather invest today into minimizing the risks and
sacrifice growth for a few months rather than risk the long-term sustainability
of their business. Growth is what makes site owners happy, but sustaining what
has already been achieved should be their number one priority.
So, if you have doubts about how your client may perceive your suggestion about
spending the next few months into re-balancing their sites backlink profile so
it conforms with Googles
latest quality guidelines, try challenging them with the following questions:
How long could you afford running your business without getting any organic
traffic from Google? What would be the impact to your business if you five best
performing keywords stop ranking for six months?

#4 Perfect the data collection process
Contrary to Googles recommendation, relying on link data from Webmaster Tools
alone in most cases isnt enough, as Google doesnt provide every piece of link
data that is known to them. A great justification for this argument is the fact
that many webmasters have received from Google examples of unnatural links that
do not appear in the available backlink data in WMT.
Therefore, it makes perfect sense to try combining link data from as many
different data sources as possible.Try including ALL data from at least one of
the services with the biggest indexes (Majestic SEO, Ahrefs) as well as the ones
provided by the two major search engines (Google and Bing webmaster tools) for
free, to all verified owners of the sites. Take advantage of the backlink data
provided by additional third party services such as Open Site Explorer, Blekko,
Open Link Profiler, SEO Kicks etc.
Note that most of the automated link audit tools arent very transparent about
the data sources theyre using, nor about the percentage of data they are pulling
in for processing.
Being in charge of the data to be analyzed will give you a big advantage and
the more you increase the quantity and quality of your backlink data the better
chances you will have to rectify the issues.
#5 Re-crawl all collected data
Now that have collected as much backlink data as possible, you now need to
separate the chaff from the wheat. This is necessary because:Not all the links
you have already collected may still be pointing to your site. Not all links
pose the same risk e.g Google discounts no follow links.
All you need to do is crawl all backlink data and filter out the following:Dead
links Not all links reported by Webmaster Tools, Majestic SEO, OSE and Ahrefs
are still live as most of them were discovered weeks or even months ago. Make
sure you get rid of URLs that do no longer link to your site such as URLs that
return a 403, 404, 410, 503 server response. Disavowing links (or domains) that
no longer exist can reduce the chances of a reconsideration request from& being
successful. Nofollow links Because nofollow links do not pass PageRank nor
anchor text, there is no immediate need trying to remove them - unless their
number is in excess when compared to your sites follow links or the
follow/nofollow split of your competitors.
Tip: There are many tools which can help crawling the backlink data but I would
strongly recommend Cognitive SEO because of its high accuracy, speed and low
cost per crawled link.
#6 Identify the authentic URLs
Once you have identified all live and follow links, you should then try
identifying the authentic (canonical) URLs of the links. Note that this step is
essential only in case you want to try to remove the toxic links. Otherwise, if
you just want to disavow the links you can skip this step making sure you
disavow the entire domain of each toxic-linking site rather than the specific
pages linking to your site.
Often, a link appearing on a web page can be discovered and reported by a
crawler several times as in most cases it would appear under many different
URLs. Such URLs may include a blogs homepage, category pages, paginated pages,
feeds, pages with parameters in the URL and other typical duplicate pages.
Identifying the authentic URL of the page where the link was originally placed
on (and getting rid the URLs of all other duplicate pages) is very important
because:It will help with making reasonable link removal requests, which in turn
can result in a higher success rate. For example, its pretty pointless
contacting a Webmaster and requesting link removals from feeds, archived or
paginated pages. It will help with monitoring progress, as well as gathering
evidence for all the hard work you have carried out. The latter will be
extremely important later if you need to request a review from Google.
Example 1 Press release
In this example the first URL is the authentic one and all the others ones need
to be removed. Removing the links contained in the canonical URL will remove the
links from all the other URLs too.

Example 2 Directory URLs
In the below example it isnt immediately obvious on which page the actual link
sits on:
http://www.192.com/business/derby-de24/telecom-services/comex-2000-uk/18991da6-6025-4617-9cc0-627117122e08/ugc/?sk=c6670c37-0b01-4ab1-845d-99de47e8032a
(non canonical URL with appended parameter/value pair: disregard)
http://www.192.com/atoz/business/derby-de24/telecom-services/comex-2000-uk/18991da6-6025-4617-9cc0-627117122e08/ugc/
(canonical page: keep URL)
http://www.192.com/places/de/de24-8/de24-8hp/ (directory category page:
disregard URL)
Unfortunately, this step can be quite time-consuming and I havent as yet come
across an automated service able to automatically detect the authentic URL and
instantly get rid of the redundant ones. If you are aware of any accurate and
reliable ones, please feel free to share examples of these in the comments :)
#7 Build your own link classification model
There are many good reasons for building your own link classification model
rather than relying on fully automated services, most of which arent transparent
about their toxic link classification formulas.
Although there are many commercial tools available, all claiming to offer the
most accurate link classification methodology, the decision whether a link
qualifies or not for removal should sit with you and not with a (secret)
algorithm. If Google, a multi-billion dollar business, is still failing in many
occasions to detect manipulative links and relies up to some extent on humans to
carry out manual reviews of backlinks, you should do the same rather than
relying on a $99/month tool.
Unnatural link signals check-list
What you need to do in this stage is to check each one of the authentic URLs
(you have identified from the previous step) against the most common and easily
detectable signals of manipulative and unnatural links, including:Links with
commercial anchor text, including both exact and broad match. Links with an
obvious manipulative intent e.g. footer/sidebar text links, links placed on low
quality sites (with/without commercial anchor text), blog comments sitting on
irrelevant sites, duplicate listings on generic directories, low quality guest
posts, widget links, press releases, site-wide links, blog-rolls etc. Just take
a look at Googles constantly expanding
link-schemes page for the entire and up-to-date list. Links placed on
authoritative yet untrustworthy websites. Typically these are sites that have
bumped up their SEO metrics with unnatural links, so they look attractive for
paid link placements. They can be identified when one (or more) of the below
conditions are met:MozRank is significantly greater than MozTrust. PageRank if
much greater than MozRank. Citation flow is much greater than Trust Flow.Links
appearing on pages or sites with low quality content, poor language and poor
readability such as spun, scraped, translated or paraphrased content. Links
sitting on domains with little or no topical relevance. E.g. too many links
placed on generic directories or too many technology sites linking to financial
pages. Links, which are part of a link network. Although these arent always easy
to detect you can try identifying footprints including backlink commonality,
identical or similar IP addresses, identical Whois registration details
etc. Links placed only on the homepages of referring sites. As the homepage is
the most authoritative page on most websites, links appearing there can be
easily deemed as paid links especially if their number is excessive. Pay extra
attention to these links and make sure they are organic. Links appearing on
sites with content in foreign languages e.g. Articles about gadgets in Chinese
linking to a US site with commercial anchor text in English. Site-wide links.
Not all site-wide links are toxic but it is worth manually checking them for
manipulative intent e.g. when combined with commercial anchor text or when there
is no topical relevance between the linked sites. Links appearing on hacked,
adult, pharmaceutical and other bad neighborhood spam sites. Links appearing on
de-indexed domains. Google de-indexes websites that add no value to users (i.e.
low quality directories), hence getting links from de-indexed websites isnt a
quality signal. Redirected domains to specific money-making pages. These can
include EMDs or just authoritative domains carrying historical backlinks,
usually unnatural and irrelevant.
Note that the above checklist isnt exhaustive but should be sufficient to
assess the overall risk score of each one of your backlinks. Each backlink
profile is different and depending on its size, history and niche you may not
need to carry out all of the aforementioned 12 checks.
Handy Tools
There are several paid and free tools that can massively help speeding things
up when checking your backlinks against the above checklist.Cognitive SEO Ideal
for points 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9 Google Backlink Tool for Penguin & Disavow
Analysis Can greatly help with point 2 to identify unnatural links based on
various footprints. Netpeak Checker (Free) Can extract all metrics needed in
point 3 and help with WhoIs scrapping in 6. LinkStat by MattSight Can assist
with 4. Scrabebox Can assist with 6 , 11. Net Comber Can help with points 6,
12.
Although some automated solutions can assist with points 2, 4, 5, 8 and 10, it
is recommended to manually carry out these activities for more accurate results.

Jim Boykins Google Backlink Tool for Penguin & Disavow in action
#8 Weighting & aggregating the negative signals
Now that you have audited all links you can calculate the total risk score for
each one of them. To do that you just need to aggregate all manipulative signals
that have been identified in the previous step.
In the most simplistic form of this classification model, you can allocate one
point to each one of the detected negative signals. Later, you can try
up-weighting some of the most important signals usually I do this for
commercial anchor text, hacked /spam sites etc.
However, because each niche is unique and consists of a different ecosystem, a
one-size-fits-all approach wouldnt work. Therefore, I would recommend trying out
a few different combinations to improve the efficiency of your unnatural link
detection formula.

Sample of weighted and aggregated unnatural link signals
Turning the data into a pivot chart makes it much easier to summarize the risk
of all backlinks in a visual way. This will also help estimating the effort and
resources needed, depending on the number of links you decide to remove.

#9 Prioritizing links for removal
Unfortunately, there isn't a magic number (or percentage) of links you need to
remove in order to rebalance your sites backlink profile. The decision of how
much is enough would largely depend on whether:You have already lost
rankings/traffic. Your site has been manually penalized or hit by an algorithm
update. You are trying to avoid a future penalty. Your competitors have
healthier backlink profiles.
No matter which the case is it makes common sense to focus first on those pages
(and keywords), which are more critical to your business. Therefore, unnatural
links pointing to pages with high commercial value should be prioritized for
link removals.
Often, these pages are the ones that have been heavily targeted with links in
the past, hence its always worth paying extra attention into the backlinks of
the most heavily linked pages. On the other hand, it would be pretty pointless
spending time analyzing the backlinks pointing at pages with very few inbound
links and these should be de-prioritized.
To get an idea of your most important pages backlink vulnerability score you
should try Virantes
Penguin Analysis tool.

#10 Defining & measuring success
After all backlinks have been assessed and the most unnatural ones have been
identified for removal, you need to figure out a way to measure the
effectiveness of your actions. This would largely depend on the situation youre
in (see step 3). There are 3 different scenarios:If you have received a manual
penalty and have worked hard before requesting Google to review your backlinks,
receiving a Manual spam action revoked message is the ultimate goal. However,
this isnt to say that if you get rid of the penalty your sites traffic levels
will recover to their pre-penalty levels. If you have been hit algorithmically
you may need to wait for several weeks or even months until you notice the
impact of your work. Penguin updates are rare and typically there is one every
3-6 months, therefore you need to be very patient. In any case, recovering fully
from Penguin is very difficult and can take a very long time. If you have
proactively removed links things are vaguer. Certainly avoiding a manual penalty
or future algorithmic devaluations should be considered a success, especially on
sites that have engaged in the past with heavy unnatural linking activities.
Marie Haynes has written a very thorough post about
traffic increases following the removal of link-based penalties.Summary
Links may not always be the sole reason why a site has lost rankings and/or
organic search visibility. Therefore before making any decision about removing
or disavowing links you need to rule out other potential reasons such as
technical or content issues.
If you are convinced that there are link based issues at play then you should
carry out an extensive manual backlink audit. Building your own link
classification model will help assessing the overall risk score of each backlink
based on the most common signals of manipulation. This way you can effectively
identify the most inorganic links and prioritize which ones should be
removed/disavowed.
Remember: All automated unnatural link risk diagnosis solutions come with many
and significant caveats. Study your sites ecosystem, make your own decisions
based on your gut feeling and avoid taking blanket approaches.
and if you still feel nervous or uncomfortable sacrificing resources from other
SEO activities to spend time on link removals, Ive recently written a post
highlighting the reasons why link removals can be very valuable, if done
correctly.Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the
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