Cleaning your backlinks - ideas and suggestions

[tedster]

With all the "over-SEO" and "webspam updates" recently - and especially with the flood ov WMT notifications about backlinks - a lot of webmasters have their attention on what they can do practically to make Google happier about their backlink profile.

The general SEO blogging community has recently begun pumping out ideas and articles. While we do not usually approve links to blog articles here (unless they are by a Google authority of some kind) I feel it's a good idea to start looking at some of the ideas being shared. So this thread is an exception to our normal rule. Let's use the general SEO community to help everyone out, here!

Some of these approaches look pretty darned good to me, and they mirror the kinds of steps I've worked out with several clients who had some real success.

[edited by: tedster at 3:53 am (utc) on May 7, 2012]

[indyank]

I am not sure if you are saying that with Penguin, if you have keywords in your domain name, would it be okay to have the domain name (e.g. [buildmetalwidgets.tld)...] or site name included in your signature or not?

IMO it wouldn't be OK unless you have have a number of other "natural" links with "natural" anchor texts.

The percentage of other natural links might even be the test that is applied for keyword based domain names.Greater the percentage, better it is.

[Regular_Joe]

Sure Indyank, but if they're going to show me 1000 links, and they're listed from the most to the least, I'll at least get a shot at dumping some of the really flagrant offenders. And, as the "BAD" links get dropped, the 1000 will get populated with more I can work on.

Heck, I don't need Google to tell me what links I have, since I can check that myself with some of the tools already mentioned in this thread, but they could at least stick in a box for "BULK LINK REMOVAL", and I could put them in myself. They wouldn't have to tell me jack s**t.

What's got me PO'ed, is that I've got like a million links I need to get dumped, and there ain't no way baby.... sure I can get links I control fixed or removed, but that still leaves 999,996. LOL

(Seriously folks, all it takes is $50 at fiverr.com to ruin anyone who's not flipping huge. Think how many social networks, forum posts, spun article garbage and web 2.0's you could dump on someone for even $20...)

[HermanMunster]

When the majority of the bad backlinks that I think are hurting my site were purchased by my competitor, which was at the end of 2005, I tried contacting the site owners. These were all Movable Type blogs, many of which were long dead even then, and my link was one of hundreds of spammed trackbacks already on the pages.

I'll tell you the kind of reactions I got, none of which included getting any of those links removed. Most of them couldn't be contacted at all, due to either bad contact info or just getting no response. The ones I could contact didn't have a clue how their own blogs worked, and had no idea how to remove the spam. I'll never forget one guy who insisted that the spam wasn't even a part of his site, even after I sent him a link to his page with his site address on it, and showed him how the page was indexed by Google.

Many of the original links are gone already because the sites are closed down, so I thought I might have better luck trying again with the few hundred that remain. But I'm getting the same results. A grand total of one person has agreed to remove the links from his pages -- when he gets back from a trip, and if I can tell him exactly how to do it. Interestingly, the spam pages are still indexed by Google and don't seem to be affecting the ranking of the sites they are on at all, which makes no sense.

This doesn't even begin to touch the new links that were posted since March. Those are on sites that are obviously set up for no other purpose but spam, and there's no point even trying with those degenerates.

I give up. I pulled the AdSense ads off my site, and I will no longer be giving Google any business unless I absolutely can't avoid it. As someone else suggested, from now on I'll be focusing on social media instead.

[gouri]

I am not sure if you are saying that with Penguin, if you have keywords in your domain name, would it be okay to have the domain name (e.g. [buildmetalwidgets.tld)...] or site name included in your signature or not?

IMO it wouldn't be OK unless you have have a number of other "natural" links with "natural" anchor texts.

The percentage of other natural links might even be the test that is applied for keyword based domain names.Greater the percentage, better it is.

@indyrank,

Thanks for the responses. When you say natural links, I think you mean phrases such as "click here" and "please visit."

At the moment, I am not sure that I would be able to build those backlinks so I think that it would probably be better not to have a link in my forum signatures.


I was also looking at some of my other backlinks, and I saw a couple of articles in article directories that I had written a couple of years ago. In the resource box, I have 4 links going to a site. Two of them are phrases that a page is trying to rank for (both links go to that page), one link is the url of that page and the other link is a phrase going to another page on the site.

Even though I only have a couple of articles like this, do you think that it could be having an effect on the site?

[Webwork]

Correct me where I'm wrong, but didn't Google's ranking algo give rise to a SEO culture/mentality of "preserving and siloing link juice" AND didn't this instigate an era of "no links for YOU" mentalilty, shredding what was once a "natural linking" culture?

And didn't the era of pagerank/link juice "hording" give rise to the era of "paid links" - paid because more and more people were hording their link juice? And didn't some of the people now advising how to "solve" the unnatural links issue once advocate for "preserving link juice", i.e., penurious outbound linking, link sculpting, link siloing?

And didn't Google's over-reliance on links ALSO give rise to the prevalence of "unnatural linking"?

And then didn't Google start a public campaign intended to compel and/or frighten people who had begun paying for links BECAUSE fewer and fewer websites would "just give links away" BECAUSE links and link juice was valuable and outbound linking MIGHT make "the other site" - the one you kindly gave an outbound link to - then rank higher than your site/page? So, DON'T DO IT?

So now we're going to continue down the "dogs on a leash" path be creating a NEW culture where even natural links MAY NO LONGER BE GIVEN . . BECAUSE . . if you go to the trouble of granting such outbound links . . AND Google, for whatever secret reason decides of its own initiative that "the link given is unnatural" . . NOW, YOU - the kindly grantor of outbound links is going to start receiving whining, whinging, threatening emails requesting, demanding that said links be removed . . .

Does anyone see where this is going?

AFAIC, "the solution" to this (latest) Google "problem" was an idea handed out by Justin Sanger at a PubCon-Las Vegas several years ago: ATOMIZATION.

The idea being that, in the future - which just keeps coming at us with the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. - inbound traffic will be "atomized". In other words, your qualified, converting inbound traffic will be coming from EVERYWHERE.

Do you want to spend another week, day, or hour of your time or endless $$$$$$ serving the demands of a search engine that will NEVER love you OR do you want to build defensible traffic and the "traffic pattern of the future"?

So, really? You want to spend your time asking webmasters to "unlink to you"? Really? Well, guess what? You start doing THAT and guess what will happen?

EVEN FEWER PEOPLE WILL GIVE OUT LINKS, because linking will now not only threaten to erode your rank but it will also now be a PITA when people start asking you to unlink.

Guess who will benefit from a "no traffic from links" culture? You? Think again.

I haven't been a voice in the chorus singing (traditional) SEO is dead but this idea - of spending valuable time and resources on UNLINK requests - tells me that the patient is in extremous and serious thought needs to be given to triage, i.e., going with what's likely going to survive. That, IMHO, is to STOP NOW with old fashioned ideas about easy traffic generation by virtue of search engine love, from a machine that will NEVER love you, and move on to pandemic traffic, multisourcing taffic, defensible traffic. Purely and only efforts to atomize your site's life blood. Lots and lots of veins full of RBCs feeding sustainable life to your site and/or business. (Now, there's a word for this decade: sustainability.)

Not another minute spend in servitude and, above all else, NOT THIS . .

______________________________________
Subject: Please REMOVE link to my site
______________________________________

You WANT to further KILL "natural linking", perhaps kill natural linking once and for all times?

Start making unlink requests.

[Leosghost]

Great post webwork..I'll link to that..:)

[Regular_Joe]

Amen

[crobb305]

Correct me where I'm wrong, but didn't Google's ranking algo give rise to a SEO culture/mentality of "preserving and siloing link juice" AND didn't this instigate an era of "no links for YOU" mentalilty, shredding what was once a "natural linking" culture?

You nailed it. I've been in this biz for 12 years now and I've seen the progression of the War on Links. It may not have been Google's intention, but they have scared many webmasters into thinking they could be punished if they don't link properly, unknowingly link to a "bad neighborhood", or any other action that Google may happily penalize. I recently discovered a site that referenced my work, by referencing the domain name ("Source: Example.com"), but it wasn't hyperlinked. I politely asked them if they could make it a clickable link, and their response was "we have a policy of no links from our site." They went on to explain to me that they felt it was frowned upon to link to other sites and may hurt their rankings in the long run. That was very unfortunate because it would have been a very nice link to my referenced works. That hasn't been my only such encounter with a webmaster who refused to link out as a general policy (not on an editorial basis).

It's unfortunate that Google destroyed "natural" linking years ago. As I go through my backlink profile, I see thousands of unsolicited links that LOOK unnatural. One webmaster linked to my site, as an authority resource, on every page of his site. Actually, I see severel webmasters who did that. He chose anchor text that happens to be a phrase from my <h> tag ("money phrase" - not "click here" which is a ridiculous expectation). Other sites have linked to me using the phases in my <title> tag (perfectly reasonable).

Rarely do I find someone linking to me with "here", "click", "hit this link -->", "click here", "visit", "go to this site", "for more information", "click the link above", "1, 2, 3", etc. My links may LOOK unnatural, but given that they are unsolicited, they are, by definition, natural. Google needs to take another look at how they are treating backlinks as a document spam classifier. Short of reducing the authority of the linking source (the linking source is the one providing the link, after all) they should simply discount the links they don't want to use. A sitewide blogroll link could/should count as a single link. Who cares if a webmaster provides a blogroll?

Some Natural Links that I am Finding ("Natural" is anything unsolicited/unpaid):
Some are sitewide ("Valuable Resources" or Blogroll sections)
Some are in footer resource sections ("Important Resources")
Some are on a "links" page as valuable resources
Some are redirects
Some are nofollow
Some will use the <h> text from my site as anchor
Some will use the <title> tag from my site as anchor
Some will use other phrases or sentences from my site, or summarize with a phrase for the anchor
A handful will use overly touted action statements like "click here", "visit this site", or or just provide your url.

If Google doesn't like those links, discount them. Don't classify the whole site as a spam document.

Now, to be fair, I am also finding a lot of links from spammy redirect pages that provide content to Google then redirect the visitor to a landing page. Unfortunately, a link to my site was provided in the text content. For ME this is a natural link! I didn't ask for it, I didn't pay for it, but someone thought highly enough of my content to link to it. Google should just discount it, since the linking webmaster is doing a spammy redirect. Sadly, I am finding thousands of these types of links and there is NOTHING I can do about it.

[edited by: crobb305 at 3:58 pm (utc) on May 9, 2012]

[Panthro]

I was surprised how fast one of my sites recovered from Penguin by a small adjustment to the backlink profile. I'm still in the process of experimenting with that, but I've regained pre-Penguin spots for the more-competitive, broad-match keywords.

[edited by: Panthro at 4:01 pm (utc) on May 9, 2012]

[crobb305]

I was surprised how fast one of my sites recovered from Penguin by a small adjustment to the backlink profile.

Congratulations! It's great to hear about a recovery. I've made some tweaks to the backlink profile by asking some of those webmasters who link to me sitewide to remove the link, but Google is indexing the changes very, very slowly. One site was linking to me on over 75,000 pages. Two weeks later, Google still has 60k in the index.

[Webwork]

Google has done more than any other entity to screw up natural linking. From instigating the era of automated guestbook / forum / webstats / blog link spamming (talk about link removal headaches) TO the era of the spamming of email link requests TO the era of PR notice blasting TO the era of NOT linking because linking might drain your "link juice" TO the no-follow era TO the era of not even linking for money because paid links are EVIL TO the era a link/site-bowling or link attacks TO now, the era of unlinking.

Stop the madness. This seemingly rational, pragmatic, intelligent, even necessary conversation - about how to deal with what G says is unnatural links - needs to stop. Unlinking requests, as a business practice or mandated necessity, is simply a bridge too far.

And IF, in fact, you have sought to game G by deliberately deploying linkspammy methods well . . live and die with your choice. Heed the warning. See how easy it is to undo what was so easy to do in the first place.

And IF the unnatural linking is the result of someone else's efforts to screw up your link profile then it shouldn't be up to you to waste time sending emails to anyone BUT Google advising "Look, if YOU can't figure out that I'm not that stupid to do this let me tell you I'M NOT. You, Google, are free to discount these links you've identified. I have NO OBJECTION."

But, really, having to undertake any greater effort to fix a problem brought on by G, itself, is just a set up for having to fix the next one and the next one.

Full stop.

Atomize your traffic or face your inevitable "one day this will be you too" traffic death.

[bwnbwn]

/\/\/\/\/\/\ I completely agree nice post webwork /\/\/\/\/\/\
Working on a site that has gotten the email two times in WM area. There is a site with only about 20 pages linking to the client site, and this site has a search fuction on the site. The site linking to my clients is pretty much dead now (dead means owner gave up on it) but still live on the net. Google has 56k links from this site to my clients probably due to G using the search fuction and creating URL's.

Owner was contacted said O yea I will take the Banner off but that was a week ago Banner Image still there. This is not an anchor link it is a Banner image link.

I just feel this is wrong if this is the unnatural linking issue. My clients site hasn't been updated in over a year. No links added no content added nothing has been done to this site in a year.

No bad spammy links profile looks good but that one ding.

If this is the problem it opens up a can of worms so big Google will now be working on how to figure when an unnatural linking pattern is from me or from some John Doe that was hired to take me out.

[edited by: bwnbwn at 4:11 pm (utc) on May 9, 2012]

[Play_Bach]

> And IF the unnatural linking is the result of someone else's efforts to screw up your link profile then it shouldn't be up to you to waste time

Bingo. That's my feeling exactly. I'm not responsible for hundreds of directories out of India, Russia or China linking to my site. I never asked them to do squat. That it should somehow be my responsibility to clean up those sites is absurd. I'm not doing it - no way, no how.

[Panthro]

Congratulations! It's great to hear about a recovery.

Thanks crobb305. Of course my limited recovery is only in certain geographies, but that's where we had exposure pre-penguin. Maybe the same idea will apply on a larger stage, though.

[canuckseo]

I think this thread might confuse some people when talking about "natural" versus "unnatural" links and paid links. In my experience "buying" links from a link building firm can still appear "natural" even though they are technically unnatural.

Even after penguin update many of these links still exist and many link building firms have adjusted their strategies accordingly. Many are smart enough to see what sites Google targeted and are staying away from them.

So what I read here is a lot of rhetoric - sure you can assume google is trying to target "unnatural" links and link buying schemes but in reality Google has only shut down the worst link builders. Link building via buying "naturally appearing" organic links is still alive and well in my books. You just have to be careful how you do it, if you do it. I don't really see how Google can determine which links are truly naturally achieved and which are not.

That's just my humble opinion. And BTW I'm not a link builder, just my observations from a few of the sites I regularly monitor.

[aleksl]

tedster, that's like telling the company who advertises matresses everywhere on Radio and TV that they can't use the word "mattress" in their ads, because "it is over-SEOed".

THat's like telling beer companies they can't advertise beer because it is "over SEO-ed".

That's just nuts.

Google needs to figure this one out without telling businesses what they need and need not advertise.

If my business is "red widgets", I will advertise "red widgets". It is a given. Whether it is offline, or online.

What webwork said:

Webwork:
Google has done more than any other entity to screw up natural linking. From instigating the era of automated guestbook / forum / webstats / blog link spamming (talk about link removal headaches) TO the era of the spamming of email link requests TO the era of PR notice blasting TO the era of NOT linking because linking might drain your "link juice" TO the no-follow era TO the era of not even linking for money because paid links are EVIL TO the era a link/site-bowling or link attacks TO now, the era of unlinking.

Stop the madness. This seemingly rational, pragmatic, intelligent, even necessary conversation - about how to deal with what G says is unnatural links - needs to stop. Unlinking requests, as a business practice or mandated necessity, is simply a bridge too far.

[Kendo]

I think that it's ridiculous to give any credibility to the gossip about filtering SEO spam all of a sudden. After all it has been SEO consultants encouraging and promoting such measures, and if it didn't work then why would they bother?

And the least credulous part about it all is that why, after more than a decade of propaganda about their search algorithm prowess, didn't Google do something about SEO spam before?

It doesn't take a genius to write some code to detect such things. I say pull the other leg to see if it has bells on it.

[indyank]

Oh yes, "paid natural links" work very well and it will always work. That is what the big boys do and google never works against them in all these updates. They just cannot and wouldn't.

[edited by: indyank at 4:28 pm (utc) on May 9, 2012]

[aleksl]

Planet13:
If I understand correctly, a *natural* link CANNOT be built. If it is a built link, then isn't it ipso facto an unnatural link (or inorganic, as google calls them)?

That what Google PhDs sitting in the cubicle think. They need to get out more. When offline business gets created, they do what? THEY ADVERTISE. Advertising is a way for business to bring customers. Business that stops advertising DIES. That is the most natural way.

So, technically, it is only in academic world you write a smart paper and expect everyone to give you citations. And whoever got the most citation is the smartest, that is until it turns out they all've been wrong and burned the only guy who was right. In the real business world, which is basically what Google made this internet into with Adsense, EVERYONE ADVERTISES.

What surprise that is...

[Zivush]

My site hasn't been affected by the penguin update. It has even gained some thousands of visitors probably from those who lost their ranking.
I have never engaged in any text link building what's or ever and let the word of mouth to spread.

However, I wonder if some types of links such as 1. SPONSORED LINKS at many blogs and websites, 2. Blogroll links and 3. in-text links of ad networks (infolinks for example) are part of the targeted links and considered unnatural.

[aleksl]

I want to add this one, because it has been thrown around and I see it as one of the factors that got us killed in SERPs:

* Aggressive exact-match anchor text

If you have affiliate program, and you banners carry alt tag on it, especially if it is your money KW, all it takes one affiliate to blast it across his/her own large non-related site with your alt tag to get you an "aggressive exact-match anchor text".

Does Google suggest we do not include alt tags on banner images? That is against W3C best practices.


It was good when GoogleGuy was here and was able to answer these questions. Because it feels like I am preaching to a choir here, and that's just talk between us and not a dialog or even a feedback to Google team.

[netmeg]

I think you're spot on about the aggressive anchor text. If your anchor text is an exact match for your page title, part of your URL, your H1 tag and half a dozen terms in your content, that's probably going to look unnatural. Particularly if there are a lot of them.

[HermanMunster]

It has been possible to sabotage a competitor with bad linking since early 2006. I know because it happened to my site after a spam campaign by my competitor in late 2005. A couple of months later the site took a dive with obvious actual penalties, not just undesirable results, and there was no other reason for it. I've never understood why there is so much speculation about whether it is possible or not. Obviously it is, and has been for some time.

In 2009, Google had finally removed the penalties, after several reconsideration requests (read: begging) by me. I'm not sure what got through to them the last time, except that I pointed out that the sites they were showing as related to mine had titles describing a certain male sexual function, and they were embarrassing me and disparaging my site's reputation.

Now the competitor is up to more dirty tricks recently. Could any sane person really think I would do that myself at this point, when I already know from experience what the results will be? I tried another reconsideration request and all I got back was an automated message telling me no manual spam actions had been taken. Yeah, I know. What I don't know is why your brilliant algorithm is re-penalizing for issues that were established as not having been done by me a long time ago.

[aleksl]

netmeg. do you read what you are posting? no, seriously, read once more and laugh out loud :)

if the product I sell and the banner is exact match - and why would I have it differently(?) - (which also according to Google Adwords is "a must" and is "good practice to get high Quality Score", including H1, page title, etc.), that's probably is going to look unnatural to Google to give you free traffic.


Seriously, some of us are going insane here with their business shut, and they can't look to a guy in next cubicle and see that what they preach AGAINST is exactly what Adwords is REQUIRING?


What, every time they majorly screw up like with this Penguin, they get all defensive and PhD-I-know-all quiet and cocky and would only listen to a class action law suit of some sort?
Google Faces Class-Action Lawsuits Over New Privacy Policy [pcworld.com]
The Banality of “Don’t Be Evil”: Google Slapped With Class-Action Cookie Monster Suit [tech.li]
Google Hit With Another Class Action Suit Over Stored Wi-Fi Data [articles.businessinsider.com]

What, is it time to create a Webmaster Union for us to be heard?

[opraus]

"flood ov WMT notifications about backlinks"

Every time a read about some hopeful way to recover, I try it ... but, things only get worse!

When I started in 2005, I was one of the original sites in what is now a competitive niche'. Between Panda and Penguin I went from $30/day to $0.12/day. No manual penalty. No messages in WMT. No 'black hat'.
My site is in my profile. Apart from being small, I could never figure out why it must be the worse site on the web. Every new algorithmic change, every refresh, I lose more and more. There is nothing left now. I Am likely going to abandone it before G starts charging me!

[Leosghost]

If you have less than 100 posts ( no matter when you joined ) you are the only one who will see your site in your profile..But TOS [webmasterworld.com] does not allow you to post it in fora..Helps to prevent people joining WebmasterWorld merely to use their profiles for linking..

[Go60Guy]

This is my announcement that, if I get your email requesting that I remove links to your site, I'll be happy to do so. My charge is $500 per link, prepaid by cashiers check.

[Planet13]

"...prepaid by cashiers check."

Correct me if I am wrong, but cashier's checks are, I believe, easily forged.

Sucks to have a bank tell you the check is good and "cleared" two weeks after you deposit it, only to have them remove that amount from your bank account two months later when they realize that it was a forged check.

Doesn't matter that they told you it had cleared earlier. You are royally hosed.

[HermanMunster]

This is my announcement that, if I get your email requesting that I remove links to your site, I'll be happy to do so. My charge is $500 per link, prepaid by cashiers check.

Well aren't you the beneficent one.

What this reminds me of is one of those sites that posts arrest records. There is a mechanism to remove them, but it costs money to do so. Why does it seem like extortion to me to post something embarrassing about someone, then charge them $100 to remove it?

The whole world has gone wacky.

[Planet13]

Does Google suggest we do not include alt tags on banner images? That is against W3C best practices.

I don't pretend to have an answer.

However I do believe that many affiliate programs use either nofollow tags, or some sort of way of "encrypting" the link (for lack of a better word) so that it didn't flow page rank.

I am pretty sure that was designed specifically so as to avoid penalties to either the site giving or receiving the link.