The Advanced SEO's Guide To Link Penalties And Clean Ups By Rob Woods

SMX Advanced 2014

25 Link Acquisition & Auditing Issues For The Advanced SEO

Link Penalties and Clean Ups

#smx #14A

Who Am I?

12 years of in-house online marketing

SEO, Social, and Content

2 years publisher/affiliate marketing (BlackFriday.com)

Run my own consulting business (4 years)

Link Penalties Manual vs. Algorithmic

Vs

Link Penalties Messages

Link Penalties Messages

Link Penalties Messages

Link Penalties Messages

Link Penalties Diagnosing Algorithmic Penalties

Link Penalties Diagnosing Algorithmic Penalties

Link Penalties Diagnosing Algorithmic Penalties

http://moz.com/google-algorithm-change

Link Penalties Diagnosing Algorithmic Penalties

http://www.barracuda-digital.co.uk/panguin-tool/

Link Penalties Diagnosing Algorithmic Penalties

Recovering from Penalties

Recovering from Penalties

Recovering from PenaltiesLink Building History

Blog Networks

Link Rings

Reciprocal Links

Tons of blog commenting (especially on unrelated blogs)

Guest Blogging on unrelated sites

Building many links with exact keyword anchor text

Recovering from PenaltiesLink Building History

Article marketing

Tons of press releases no one cares about

Paid links

Lots of low quality web directory submissions

Forum spam

Sitewide footer or blogroll links

Widgets/Counters/Countdowns

Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Tools

Recovering from PenaltiesSort and Clean your links

Evaluating Your LinksManual vs. Automated

Vs

LinkResearchTools Link Detox Tool

Evaluating Your LinksTools to Use

LinkResearchTools Link Detox Tool

Evaluating Your LinksTools to Use

Link Research Tools - https://www.linkresearchtools.com

Sample Spreadsheet

Evaluating Your LinksOther popular services (I have not used)

Rmoov

Remove’em

Link Delete

Evaluating Your LinksTools to Use

Photo Credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/flamephoenix1991/

Cleaning Up Your Links

Cleaning Up Your LinksHow to plan / do outreach to sites

Find contact infoManuallyOutsource (Odesk, etc.)Scrape (Scrapebox or equivalent)

OutreachPersonalized emails including site name and URLAt least two rounds of emailsRecord results of each round

Cleaning Up Your LinksAutomating your outreach

Cleaning Up Your LinksAutomating your outreach

Cleaning Up Your LinksAutomating your outreach

Cleaning Up Your LinksAutomating your outreach

Cleaning Up Your LinksAutomating your outreach

Cleaning Up Your LinksIf you just can’t wait…

Just submit your disavow manually or via a tool like LRT

Try Link Detox Boost (claims not tested) http://www.linkdetox.com/boost/

Works better with manual actions

Submitting Your Disavow RequestHow to format and submit

What to Expect How will you know if the request was successful?

Set realistic client/manager expectations for traffic recovery and timelines

It may take more than one round

What you can do while you wait Attract “good” links

Change your ratios

Take Aways1. Manual and algorithmic penalties get cleaned up the same way you

just don’t get the same feedback from Google

2. Find ALL your links!

3. Evaluate automatically (LRT) but review manually

4. Automate cleaning up the links and the outreach (Pitchbox)

5. Make sure your disavow file is formatted right

6. Expect the process to be a p.i.t.a

7. Be proactive, don’t just wait for the disavow

Thank You!

Rob Woods

rob@robwoods.org

Twitter: @robdwoods

Skype: rob.d.woods

604.374.5312

ResourcesQuick links to stuff mentioned above:

Moz Algo Updates http://moz.com/google-algorithm-change

Panguin Tool http://www.barracuda-digital.co.uk/panguin-tool/

Open Site Explorer http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/

Majestic SEO http://www.majesticseo.com/

Arefs https://ahrefs.com/

GWT https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools

ResourcesQuick links to stuff mentioned above:

How to de-dupe Excel spreadsheet rows http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/excel-help/delete-duplicate-rows-from-a-list-in-excel-HA001034626.aspx

Sample formatted CSV from LinkResearchTools http://robwoods.org/?attachment_id=418

Odesk https://www.odesk.com/

Scrapebox http://www.scrapebox.com/

LinkResearchTools Backlink Profile Report http://www.linkresearchtools.com/tools/blp/

LinkResearchTools Link Detox http://www.linkresearchtools.com/tools/dtox/

Pitchbox http://pitchbox.com/