{"id":32,"date":"2014-07-10T15:10:00","date_gmt":"2014-07-10T21:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.topspotims.com\/blog\/?p=32"},"modified":"2021-07-13T12:07:04","modified_gmt":"2021-07-13T18:07:04","slug":"guide-understand-links-pt-2-evaluate-links-know-need-take-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.topspot.com\/blog\/2014\/07\/guide-understand-links-pt-2-evaluate-links-know-need-take-action\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Evaluate Your Links & Know if You Need to Take Action"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Guide to Understanding Links: Part 2<\/h2>\n

In the first post as part of this series<\/a>, we discussed exactly what a backlink is and why it\u2019s important to your website. We know that backlinks are important to organic visibility and that Google has quality guidelines regarding links, but how do we know where we go from here?<\/p>\n

The first step is understanding what links you\u2019re already working with. Who is linking to your site already and what sort of quality are they?<\/p>\n

How to Evaluate Your Link Profile<\/h3>\n

There are many free tools to give you estimates of the links you have including Google Webmaster Tools, MOZ\u2019s Open Site Explorer, Ahrefs.com and Openlinkprofiler.org. When evaluating your backlinks, there are a few things that you should keep in mind based on the estimates these tools give.<\/p>\n

Anchor Text<\/h4>\n

Anchor text refers to the clickable text in a hyperlink. Does the majority of your anchor text from external domains look like it exactly matches the keyword phrases you\u2019re trying to rank for? Then it could be a problem. Natural anchor text usually includes your company name or URL, because that\u2019s how most people will link to a site. Keyword rich or exact-match anchor text from external domains is usually a red flag for crawlers.<\/p>\n

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\"Screenshot<\/a><\/p>\n

Screenshot of TopSpot Internet Marketing\u2019s anchor text from MOZ Open Site Explorer<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Relevancy<\/h4>\n

Like your financial portfolio, it\u2019s good to make sure your backlink profile is\u00a0diverse. Having a diverse set of links is a great signal, but you also want to make sure they are relevant. For instance, maybe an industry association your company is in links to you and so does your local Little League Baseball association that you sponsored. Those are diverse links but they also meet a certain amount of relevance covering your industry and your community. If you are an industrial manufacturer<\/a> and have a lot of links from free casino sites or sites claiming to have cheap Gucci purses, that\u2019s not very relevant\u2026 unless you manufacture the cheap Gucci purses, which sounds illegal.<\/p>\n

The best way to know if you should take any action regarding your links is by evaluating the domains that are linking to your website.<\/p>\n

Does the majority of your backlinks have keyword-rich anchor text and not look natural? Are a lot of irrelevant sites linking to yours? Do you think your traffic is being affected because of an algorithm update? It may be time to consider action.<\/p>\n

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\"Screenshot<\/a><\/p>\n

Screenshot of TopSpot\u2019s top referring domains from MOZ Open Site Explorer<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Manual Penalties & Disavowing Links<\/h3>\n

As part of Google\u2019s enforcement of their quality guidelines, many sites have received manual penalties through Google Webmaster Tools, meaning someone at Google evaluates a site\u2019s links and issues a penalty. As part of the ultimatum from Google, you either clean up your links or face the consequence of \u201cde-indexation.\u201d To be de-indexed means your website is manually removed from Google.<\/p>\n

Cleaning up links is not an easy task.<\/p>\n

Google offers a Disavow Tool allowing you to ask Google to not take low-quality or spammy links into consideration when the assess your site. However, Google recommends that before resorting to their Disavow Tool, webmasters get in touch with websites directly to have their links removed. If those links aren\u2019t removed, disavowing them can be done by submitting links to Google in a specific format.<\/p>\n

Even if no manual penalty was received, poor quality links can still hurt your visibility in Google, meaning a loss of traffic and business. In these cases, it\u2019s still a good idea to reach out to webmasters to get spammy links removed. The best way to make that call is by evaluating your link profile.<\/p>\n

Keep in mind that the Disavow Tool is a powerful tool:<\/p>\n

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\"Google\u2019s<\/a><\/p>\n

Google\u2019s Disclaimer regarding their Disavow Links Tool: https:\/\/support.google.com\/webmasters\/answer\/2648487?hl=en<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

It\u2019s important to remember that just by going through the steps of disavowing links does not guarantee that a site will be re-indexed if it\u2019s been removed or that lost traffic will ever go back to where it was.<\/p>\n

And if you\u2019re thinking, well why not just create a new domain and start over? If you have a penalty on your previous site, it could follow you to your new domain even if you don\u2019t set up redirects.<\/p>\n