Presentation by Tripp from online SEO Conference 6th of November "WebPromo SEOday"

1. Guide to Link Analysis
To defeat the Penguin, you must become the Penguin

2. Guide to Link Analysis
Who 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

3. Why do I need to analyze my back-links?

4. 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)

5. 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

6. How Do I Analyze the Back-links?
Step 1: Obtain Link Data
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit!
Wait, it isn’t that easy…

7. Obtaining Link Data
Where 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

8. 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)

9. Check the Links
Two 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!

10. 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.

11. Now that you have crawled link data…

12. Automated Link Analysis
Pros: 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

13. 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.

14. 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

15. Example of Link Spam: Directory

16. Example of Link Spam: Article Site

17. 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.

18. 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)

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

20. 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.

21. 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

22. QUESTIONS?

23. 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/