How to find low quality backlinks?

[Xtm_Mike]

After readingthisthread it has left me wondering how an SEO company works out which backlinks are not holding much weight, are of poor quality or outright having a negative impact on a website.

I used to run quite a successful forum in the early naughties that accumulated a lot of links to websites as members would post links to sites etc..

The with the Facebook revolution the forum slowly died, it was being neglected, etc.. suddenly I started receiving lots of requests from SEO companies from websites they were managing on behalf of clients, to remove said banklinks.

How are the SEO companies coming to the conclusion that a backlink is poor?

 

[fisicx]

It's because they are rubbish at their job. It's easier for them to get everything removed and charge the client a wodge to start all over again.

 

[Xtm_Mike]

It's because they are rubbish at their job. It's easier for them to get everything removed and charge the client a wodge to start all over again.

What is the alternative?

I believe it's similar to a webmaster using a disavow file to remove spammy backlinks... obviously spammy sites wouldn't be contactable or respond.

I'm no SEO expert so correct me if I am wrong.

 

[garyk]

Charge them for your time if they want it done, simples.

 

[Xtm_Mike]

Charge them for your time if they want it done, simples.

I'm more interested in knowing the viability of what they're asking, and how I can do it myself for my own websites.

 

[fisicx]

Forum links aren't a major problem unless they added spammy signatures. I've got links all over the place, some of them from some really dodgy corners of the globe - and they don't matter because I didn't build them and Google ignores them

What google does take notice of is a whole load of links from directories, social media profiles, guest blog posts, articles and so on. The only reason these links exist is because someone was trying to do a bit of SEO link building.

If the client wants the links removed from the forum, all they have to do is login and manage their signatures. If the links are in forum posts then charge them one hour to remove each link.

 

[webgeek]

Visit the site.

Is there a contact page with company address, phone and contact form?
Do they publish their companies house registration number?
Are there a bunch of articles on everything from ecigs to condoms, gambling to viagra?


Look at them on SEMRush.

Do they have little traffic, little rankings and tons of backlinks?
Are their backlinks all from sites that allow free links to be added without editorial approval?


Look at LinkResearchTools. Cry, as you realise you could have had their assessment for your site in 20 minutes, instead of spending days evaluating backlinks. They don't get them all right, but their TOXIC flagged sites are usually toxic.


There's a couple dozen good indicators for doing a backlink audit and companies have invested thousands in getting those to accurately measure, without rejecting good as bad or bad as good. Hard to get that kind of intelligence report for free.

I've seen sites with disavows that kicked in and made phenomenal differences, and others that did virtually nothing - and indicate there's more than backlink issues (typically site quality / dupe content). Or, you can wait a couple of years and those toxic backlinks usually detoxify (or at least they used to do so anyway).

 

[justinaldridge]

I'm more interested in knowing the viability of what they're asking, and how I can do it myself for my own websites.

Don't bother! With Penguin 4.0 Google just ignores bad links now instead of negatively impacting rankings for a website.

Link clean-up isn't really necessary these days.

 

[webgeek]

What leads you to believe there are no such things as 'bad links', negative SEO or a need for link cleanup? Is it http://searchengineland.com/google-penguin-doesnt-penalize-bad-links-259981

The conventional wisdom and Google recommendations on disavow having't really changed:
https://ahrefs.com/blog/bad-links/
https://www.semrush.com/blog/penguin-4-0-update-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/

I'm familiar with some 2017 negative SEO campaigns that were brutally effective, so I'm not a believer in the fact link spam doesn't have any negative impact.

 

[Xtm_Mike]

So much conflicting information. I guess the best course of action would be to try some tools to see if anything is flagged and if it is try to remove links.. The way i see it, removing flagged poor backlinks wont cause any damage? if Google does not count them anymore then it wont make any difference, at worst it'll be a time wasting exercise.. at best it'll improve my search engine position.

So, any tool recommendations?

 

[UKSBD]

Think of it this way.

The benefit you can gain from 1 good link may outweigh the loses from 10,000 bad links
Is it worth accidentally deleting a good link?

 

[justinaldridge]

What leads you to believe there are no such things as 'bad links', negative SEO or a need for link cleanup?

We could spend a huge amount of our clients' money cleaning backlinks but there's no point. So many of them have huge numbers of spam links pointing to them but they are not impacting the rankings or growth of their websites.

We don't disavow now either. Since Penguin 4.0, when we've submitted a disavow file it's negatively impacted rankings! Removing the file has recovered rankings.

With some sites we have completely removed historical disavow files and it hasn't affected them at all.

Google said with Penguin 4.0:

• Penguin is now more granular. Penguin now devalues spam by adjusting ranking based on spam signals, rather than affecting ranking of the whole site.

We no longer worry about negative SEO, Google has made an enormous improvement in how it sees and handles this. Seeing as hacking and spam links are such a problem these days (see what happened with the scraping of UKBF) Google had to take a significant step to not penalise the hundreds of thousands of innocent sites that have huge numbers of spam backlinks caused by hacking, etc.

I am happy to say that cleaning up backlinks is not a service we offer these days. I wouldn't waste a client's money doing this quote pointless activity now.

 

[webgeek]

If you're submitting a disavow and it has a negative impact, then there's about 99% chance that you've disavowed something that was propping up the site, not harming it.

That doesn't not mean the other links on the disavow were also helpful, it's just that the baby got thrown out with the bath water.

Personally, I can't remember disavows harming sites - most people tend to go moderate with the removal, and not risk going aggressive, unless they've crashed and burned and can't go any direction other than back up up and away. (insert buzz lightyear reference)

 

[webgeek]

Think of it this way.

The benefit you can gain from 1 good link may outweigh the loses from 10,000 bad links
Is it worth accidentally deleting a good link?

I'd never want to accidentally do anything harmful to a client site (not that I do client work currently). But knowing it's a powerful tool doesn't mean I should avoid using because of possible downside. After all, I wouldn't want a cancer surgery avoided because the doctor could potentially cut out my heart.

The skill of the practitioner should determine their choice of tools. If they lack the confidence to operate them, then they should take up a different line of work, or practice on their test sites awhile longer.

 

[justinaldridge]

If you're submitting a disavow and it has a negative impact, then there's about 99% chance that you've disavowed something that was propping up the site, not harming it.

We only ever used to disavow the absolute dross, the pure spam. We never included borderline links.

We just don't do any link clean up or disavowing anymore, just no point. Waste of time and money.

 

[webgeek]

Without question, we are completely in disagreement on the importance of disavow and the threat of negative links.

 

[websensejim]

Disavow should be your last resort. Sometimes it is necessary, and there's no other option. But before you go there, try to clean it up yourself. In many cases creating new cleaner, stronger links will offset (or dilute) the effects of your dodgy links. Every case is different, though.

 

[Adam-Smith]

Because, A poor backlink comes from Low authority website which contain high spam score approximately 6-9. This kind of backlink mostly affect your website to increase you spam score, decrease your domain authority, also decrease your site trust flow, and google consider it website negativity.
These kind of poor link mostly disavow for make your website secure. But mostly websites having millions of backlinks, they never choose disavow option.

 

[theemailguy]

To find low quality links, first you have to find out the list of backlinks to your site. It will be easy if you keep track record of each link you build. If you are not tracking links, it is good to use tools like Ahref, MajesticSEO, Moz Open Site Explorer. Just sort the links as per the Domain Authority & Page Authority. Now make a list of links from low Quality Domain (Low DA), Sent a mail to each sites to remove links and add it to Disavow file. There is no guarantee that your BAD links will not be counted but it will assure you at least you have done the process. If you are lucky enough you will notice some improvement in terms of Site DA or traffic increase etc.

 

[aflat9]

Have you got any proper backlink checking tools like a href or linkody? You can check your sites backlinks and see the spam score. They might be right - they're more probably just trying to get some business out of you though.

 

[StevePoster]

The with the Facebook revolution the forum slowly died, it was being neglected, etc.. suddenly I started receiving lots of requests from SEO companies from websites they were managing on behalf of clients, to remove said banklinks.

I will not compare Facebook vs Forum because they have different field and has nothing to do with SEO. The point here is why are those service creating links from low quality sites and that will be removed due to bad links. They are just getting your bucks.