How can I recognize spammy links that harm my website

[ThomasH]

Hello,

Can someone tell me how I can recognize links that can harm my website?

I have OpenSiteExplorer and CognitiveSEO as tools to create nice backlinking reports for me.

But my problem is, how do I know if a link shown on these reports can harm my website so I can remove them? Is it linktypes, low auth. links etc?

Thank you for your answers in advance!

Regards,

Thomas

[RogerElliott]

As someone who has also been pecked by the Penguin Thomas, I can relate. The best advice I've read on this topic is here: http://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/penguin-strategies/

Good luck!

Roger

[Andropenis_Australia]

Assuming you have not got any messages from google in WMT, you can go to the specific link page, and see if there is hundred/thousands of links that are obviously all there for the wrong reasons.

Numbers is the main way, PR of 0 or N/A may be an indicator too (why would hunfreds of sites want a link from a 0 PR page) put both together..... a link page with hundreds of outbounds with a 0 page rank (indicating google has stripped it)..... is apretty sure bet.

[ThomasH]

Nice article! Thanks!