Guide to Link AnalysisTo defeat the Penguin, you must become the Penguin

Guide to Link AnalysisWho Am I?

Product Manager and Director of the Link Removal Department at Angular Marketing (formerly Virante, Inc.) - a leading search marketing agency known for white-glove link development services, industry R&D, and their suite of innovative SEO tools, such as SEOAlarms, Remove’em, nTopic, PandaRisk, and more.

Love delving into data, finding patterns, and developing strategies to overcome the various algorithmic updates released by search engines (Google, Bing, Yandex, etc.) to prevent spamming of their search results.

Manage the various products for Angular, most importantly Remove’em, the best back-link removal tool on the market!

http://Angular.Marketing tripp@angular.marketing Twitter: @tripp_hamilton

Why do I need to analyze my back-links?

Almost EVERY search engine has denounced link spam in one form or another:Yandex’s AGS filter (2009)Google’s Penguin (April 2012)Bing Webmaster Guidelines (November 2012)Yandex’s Minisinsk penalty (2015)

Other Reasons for Analyzing Back-links

Previous SEO mischief Negative SEO from a competitor or disgruntled

employee Gauge on your website’s authority in search results Assess your website’s risk for a penalization

How Do I Analyze the Back-links?Step 1: Obtain Link DataStep 2: ???Step 3: Profit!

Wait, it isn’t that easy…

Obtaining Link DataWhere can I get link data? Google Search Console’s Latest Links export Bing Webmaster Tools AHREFS, Majestic, Moz (subscriptions required) Removeem.com OpenLinkProfiler.org & WebMeUp.com

Mash-up the Link Data!Extract the Source URL, Target URL, and

Anchor Text data from the link data exports (most important is the SOURCE URL)

Remove duplicate URL entries (Excel has a feature that does this automatically)

Check the LinksTwo ways to do this…

Check the source code (ctrl+U) for the links (check for no-follows, dead hyperlinks, etc.)

Use a crawler to do the tedious, manual labor for you!

Which Crawler Should I Use?• ScreamingFrog or SEO Backlink Monitor– Need lots of RAM to crawl large files.

• Remove’em or other server-based crawlers– Automatically checks for no-follows, contact data,

IP address, anchor text, etc.

Now that you have crawled link data…

Automated Link AnalysisPros: Quick and easy, typically not that expensive

either, but most services require a subscription.

Cons: Terrible inaccurate. Many of these automated analysis / scoring tools will mark GOOD links as bad, such as DMOZ.org and BOTW.org

Why should you manually analyze back-links?

Links were created by humans, therefore they should be analyzed by humans.

There are no better tools in the world than the human eye and brain.

How is it done?• Look for patterns!– URL Structure– Domain Names: article, directory, PR, bookmark, link, etc.– Page Layout: similar templates across many websites.– IP Addresses

Example of Link Spam: Directory

Example of Link Spam: Article Site

Other Examples of Link Spam

• Forum / blog comments with optimized links in the post or signature.

• Widely distributed links in footers or templates.• Syndicated articles / press released with optimized

anchor text.• Paid advertisements that pass PageRank.• Excessive link exchanges.

Look out for GOOD Links!• What is makes a LINK good??– CONTEXT! RELEVANCE! QUALITY!– Forbes, Business.com, HuffingtonPost, etc. (beware

of comment spam)– Human-edited directories such as DMOZ, BOTW,

and JoeAnt.– Social media (Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter)

Now that you have analyzed the links, what is the next step?

Remove the BAD LINKS!• Outreach to webmasters to have the

unnatural links removed so they are not attributed to your website.

• Use a tool to help with outreach such as Remove’em or another email-blasting platform.

Disavow the Remaining Links!• Most webmasters will NOT respond.

– Websites have been abandoned– Email inboxes are full of link removal requests

• Webmasters will return a variety of responses.– Outright refusals (some webmasters get insulted)– Ransoms (requesting MONEY to remove links)

• Invalid contact information.– Broken contact forms– Outdated emails on-site or on WHOIS

Image Credit: SERoundTable.com

QUESTIONS?

THANKS!!You can find me on Twitter:@Tripp_Hamilton

Or on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/tripphamilton

For my latest posts, check out the Angular Marketing blog!http://angular.marketing/blog/