Finding toxic backlinks

[seo-apprentice]

This post is deleted!

[Stewart_SEO]

Have you pulled off your back link reports from Google Webmaster Tools?

You should also run a complete backlink analysis using OSE, Majestic and another if you have one - drop them all into a sheet, removed dupes, and go through the sheet manually. You can often detect a toxic link quickly just by the url and anchor text. It can be a slow process but worthwhile.

You need to contact spammy sites and request they remove the offending links, otherwise you disavow them using the google tool.

That's the best way, I don't trust these auto apps to find toxix links. Remember that google still penalises manually which proves they still do manual work over automation.

[ClaudioHeilborn]

Hi Stewart! Hi L E N  Bernal!

I endorse each and every of your suggestions Stewart, except losing your time trying to remove them by asking third party, usually spammy blogs and pages to remove anything. I would go directly to GWMT as you said and remove them, then, if you have problems doing so, maybe try another way but this shouldn’t happen.

I have lost so much time doing so after a hack to a site that I wouldn’t advice to do so (unfortunately very seldom (spammy) sites would pay attention to your requests)

Good luck and let us know how it finally worked!

Cheers

Claudio

[seo-apprentice]

Hello Stuart Thank you very much indeed for your answer! My problem is how to identified those toxic backlinks, I know I can disallow using GWMT.

you mention by the anchor text, but still I am very new on this, I don't want to mess up this task your know!

can you point me a tutorial of a guide to do it.

[Dr-Pete]

This is a decent post from our competitor, Majestic:

http://blog.majesticseo.com/general/how-you-can-use-majesticseo-to-identify-toxic-links/

The post reveals just how complex the problem is, though. They're basically looking at link "velocity" - in other words, tracking if you built a bunch of links rapidly (which could look suspicious).

"Bad" links may not be high-volume. They could be a handful of paid links, they could be links from link-networks, etc. You could have a clear imbalance in your anchor text (targeting keywords too heavily, for example), or you could be over-using one tactic, like guest blogging.

What's a bad link on one site may be fine on another, in some cases. There are some tools to help, but there's no fully automated process. It's important to take the time to understand your overall profile and what might constitute a bad link for your particular site. There are many free tools to get started, including our own Open Site Explorer.

I'd highly suggest this post from Julie Joyce, which explains why you need to spend some time manually assessing links:

http://searchengineland.com/the-problem-with-identifying-problem-links-163602

[KeriMorgret]

Hi! Was Dr. Pete's answer helpful, or do you still have more questions?

[PinpointDesigns]

Hi,

I wrote an article on Moz about this exact subject a while ago. There's a whole section on finding low quality backlinks and handling outreach to webmasters to get the URLs removed. The article can be found here - http://moz.com/blog/ultimate-guide-to-google-penalty-removal

If you're on a budget, the best way to find the toxic backlinks is to just use excel and split your list into sections. Start by identifying article directories, blog comment, forum profiles and link directories. These are the most common form of low quality backlinks and a good place to start. Once you've identified those, outreach to the webmasters and get those links removed. To get more indepth, take a look through the article above which should hopefully be helpful.

We're launching a tool in the near future called Peel App. We'll also be launching a free contact finding tool in the near future to help find contact details of webmasters.

I hope this helps!
Lewis

[Stewart_SEO]

Yes it's true, that if you're on a budget, the best way to find the toxic backlinks is to pull data from GWT's, OSE, and Majestic etc - use excel and split your lists into sections such as article directories, blog comment, forum profiles and link directories. These are the most common form of low quality backlinks and a good place to start. Once you've identified those, outreach to the webmasters, ask them to remove, don't pay. If they won't remove then disavow.

The Bing/Yahoo disavow tool is the best but that depends on if you get decent traffic from them.

Whatever you do, don't buy link removal software and don't listen to sales people spinning the benefits. The best way is the manual way, in otherwords, do it yourself.

[PinpointDesigns]

I agree with most of the above, but would have to say that link removal software does have it's place in the market. Software can automate finding a huge number of terrible links very quickly, for example:

• Links that are no longer indexed in Google (sign for a penalty).

• Separating out all of the blog comment, forum profile, link directories, article directories so that you can manually sift through them quickly and spot the spam.

• Identifying nofollowed links that you don't need to remove.

• Scraping pages to identify commercial keyword terms on pages.

• Find contact details for webmasters in bulk

• Identify potential link networks etc.

The above are only a few examples of where tools can help... By doing this manually, you're going to spend a lot more time and most likely make errors. Yes, human eyes will always need to check the links, but software will speed up the process.

Googles system is mostly automated to pick up spam sites in the first place. Yes, there are manual actions that can be taken on webmasters, but these sites are picked up in the first place either from someone reporting them as spam, or presumably from Googles system flagging a site as being potentially low quality. If you've been hit by an algorithmic penalty, then a piece of good quality software 'should' be possible to identify the majority of the low quality links.

Automation definitely helps speed up the process. I'm not advocating using 'only' a piece of software as manual reviews are always necessary, but you can certainly save time by using software to analyse your links once over.