Our site has too many backlinks! How can we do a bad backlink audit?

[seoninjaz]

Webmaster Tools is saying we have close to 24 million links to our site. The site has been around since the mid 90s and has accumulated all these links since.

We also have our own network of sites that have links in their templates to our main site. I'm fighting to get these links "nofollow"'d but upper management seems scared to alter this practice.

This past year we've found our rankings have dropped significantly and suspect it's due to some spammy backlinks or being penalized for doing an accidental link scheme network.

24 million links is too many to check manually for using the disavow tool and it seems that bulk services out there to check backlinks can't even come close.

What's an SEO to do?

[jesse-landry]

Use spreadsheets and other tools like OSE and Majestic and dig in. Roll up your sleeves and get after it. I wouldn't start with Webmaster tools, it's not the best, but whatever you do export your reports to excel and start narrowing 'em down.

Remove domains you know are good or search for domains you know are bad, etc.

Filter search in OSE to remove nofollows and internal links.. There are things you can do to narrow this down but it will be a daunting task, no question.

[EGOL]

We also have our own network of sites that have links in their templates to our main site. I'm fighting to get these links "nofollow"'d but upper management seems scared to alter this practice.

This past year we've found our rankings have dropped significantly and suspect it's due to some spammy backlinks or being penalized for doing an accidental link scheme network.

Those spammy backlinks might be the ones from your own network of sites?   I hope that they don't have money terms as anchor text and are in a big block in the footer?  If they do then upper management might want to reconsider in an effort to get your traffic back.

[yatesandcojewelers]

Going along with Rob L.'s question, what about spammy keyword links on one of your SUBDOMAINS? Ie, news.domain.com?  Will this hinder your rankings as well?

Back in the pre-penguin days we created poor content loaded with keyword links in blog.domain.com and news.domain.com.  I don't use them anymore and thinking I just blow up those subdomains.

Thoughts?

[RichardSEO]

Try using Link Detox

[seoninjaz]

Agreed. It's been a company practice to do these types of links for years but with penguin/panda, I'm afraid it's only hurting us.

It's a tough case to change these links. They do bring traffic to the site so I'm hoping a nofollow is good enough.

Thanks for your input.

[seoninjaz]

I was afraid of an answer like this

Thanks for the tips. Are you aware of any database or list of spam sites I could easily run our backlinks through to cut down the list?

[seoninjaz]

Thanks, we'll check it out. Have you had any experience using this tool?

[MarieHaynes]

How many domains do those 24 million links come from?  It's possible you could find that they distill down into a manageable number of domains to manually review.  I think that tools like Link Detox can help in an initial review of links and perhaps you can use that as a first pass to find as many spammy ones as possible.  Then, I would take all of the links that were marked as suspicious or healthy, and visit one link from each domain manually.

In my experience, the only sites that I am seeing recovering from link based issues (either manual penalty or Penguin) are ones who have been EXTREMELY thorough on their audits.  It sure is a lot more work to evaluate links by hand but I think it is necessary.