What Makes A 'Natural Link Profile'?

[T0BY]

I find it hard to recognize unnatural link patterns when the links to my site are so familiar.  It can be hard to see the wood for the trees!  How many links from one site is too many?  Does it depend on the size of the site?  Thanks for your advice on this.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

In terms of a neutral link profile, it needs to, above everything else, appear natural. If your link profile consisted of nothing but dofollow links, then this could be considered unnatural.

There is no limit to the number of links that denote something odd, per se, but you must step back and look at it from Google's eyes. Would they want to see 400 article links all coming from submissions at the same site? Would this suggest article spam? Are these articles each going to be high quality?

It is much more natural to have a few links from a site, but if someone is genuinely seeding all of your content, then I would expect this to be, at worst case, a neutral signal to Google. They will know how good the articles are, how often they are shared, who is posting them, etc.

Also, keep your anchor text neutral / clean. Don't over-optimise it as this will undoubtedly bring problems with it.

I don't really like plugging my own site, but have a read of this: http://bit.ly/1LyeiAh. You may get some additional info there.

-Andy

[Highland]

Let's start with the first important question: Did I pay for this link? If the answer is "Yes", then do they nofollow the link? If no, you need to either get it removed or make sure they nofollow it.

So now we've gotten the obvious ones out of the way. Now... how to spot the unnatural links. A link can be unnatural if

• It shares specific keyword rich words with other links. For example you have 200 sites that link to you saying "Buy widgets now"
• The sites are low quality. Blogs with 1-3 posts that look abandoned after posting content that reads like an ad for you. Article writing sites.
• The site has no logical relation to your site whatsoever. Tire stores linking to doll stores doesn't make sense.
• There's a network of these links. If you've not gotten the hint from the previous two, look for patterns that stick out to you.
• There's little diversity. You have lots of links from very few sites.

So how to spot them? I'd cross-reference AHrefs with Open Site Explorer and look at keyword text and, in OSE, look at the strength of the site (PA/DA columns).

Lastly, what to do about them? If you think there's something that is actively hurting you then slowly begin to chip away at the links either by requesting removal or disavow. but remember that if you don't do this without a plan you WILL hurt your site.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Let's start with the first important question: Did I pay for this link? If the answer is "Yes", then do they nofollow the link? If no, you need to either get it removed or make sure they nofollow it.

That isn't actually correct. A lot of link buying goes on with the big names, but there is no way for Google to find this out. Link buying does have it's place, but must be done very carefully.

If you were buying a link on a spammy blog site though, then you would hope someone wouldn't go there in the first place - but people do. These are the sites that Google can be aware of. Before anyone proceeds down this line, you would need to check the site out, traffic, look if it has been penalised, etc.

I'm not justifying the practice of buying links (as this this against Google TOS), but it happens. If you get found out, expect a big hit.

-Andy

[Highland]

I'm trying to address the above-board methods. Can you buy links without getting caught? Sure. But why do you think Google built Penguin in the first place? And what's to say they won't roll out something in the future that can catch them more readily?

nofollow is the only safe route with paid links. Anything else is playing with fire.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

I know, but that all comes down to Google being able to find them. Poor links they can identify more readily than something that has been bought on a trusted site (and there are a lot).

You should take a look through the finance market - I don't bother with that now because in order to compete, you should see how much link buying goes on! The same with a few other cut-throat industries too.

-Andy

[T0BY]

Thanks for your help everyone, you have answered my question very thoroughly!