As many of you will be aware, Google recently launched another update to their widely-feared Penguin algorithm. Dubbed Penguin 3.0, it was expected to be a very large update given the time between the last update and this one – but it wasn’t. After confirmation from Google, it was noted that the update affected less than 1% of their search results. Quite surprising, really.

Regardless of size, many websites were still harmed by the update and many webmasters will also have seen their rankings improve following a clean-up after the last rollout in October. If you were one of those harmed, it’s time to take action. Today. Right now!

A little about me…

My name is Marty Rogers and I’ve been deeply involved with SEO for the last 8 years or so. There’s nothing I enjoy more than reverse engineering via a competitors link profile using the world’s leading backlink checking tool – Ahrefs. It’s a really rewarding adventure.

I’m going to show you how you can quickly and easily identify and action against bad links that could potentially harm your search engine visibility if not cleaned up.

Discover Low Quality Links with Ahrefs

Ahrefs makes it really easy to dissect a link profile and quickly and easily spot any offending links following a Google penalty, or even just during regular link profile health checks.

My favourite way to go through a link profile is to use the referring domains.

There are varying factors, of course…

If you were hit by a negative SEO attack, however, you could instead filter by referring domains in the last 7, 30 or 60 days in order to effectively grab offending domains and save time.

Spotting the Poison

The first things you’re going to want to look at when skimming through the referring domains is the Domain Rank and Alexa Rank – a really high or non-existent Alexa Rank with a really low Domain Rank is usually an instant sign of a toxic link.

Do remember, though, that these things alone are not always an indicator of a bad link. New domains, for example, will usually have both of these things and so make sure to dig a little deeper before making the decision to disavow those links / domains.

Digging into the Links

When I’m looking through a link profile, I will always hit the ‘backlinks’ tab on each row to expose the linking page URL as well as the anchor text. This is usually all you will need to be able to distinguish a bad link versus a good link, although I would usually still visit all of these to get a real understanding for the link profile at every level – it helps a lot.

Negative SEO attacks are usually very easy to spot as the offending links will usually carry anchor text relating to porn, viagra and other similar dark stuff.

Root Domains vs. Page URLs

“Should I disavow the root domain or specific pages?” – This is a common question.

The answer is quite simple – if the referring domain looks like it was created for the purpose of SPAMMING, or if it’s a low quality link or article directory charging for removal, you’re best disavowing these on a root-domain level as links from these domains overall are not going to benefit anybody they’re pointing to, and they never will. Google appreciates this.

However, if offending links are coming from a trusted domain that has a community that is largely driven by users then it’s usually a better idea to only disavow links from specific pages where your links are placed. These are often used in negative SEO attacks.

Create a Disavow File for Submission to Google

Now that you have a list of all of the low quality and artificial links that you think have, or could have, a negative impact on the visibility of your website in Google’s search results you will now need to put together a disavow file which will be submitted directly to Google.

But what is a Disavow file?

A disavow file is basically a set of instructions for Google.

You’re trying to let them know that you know about any bad links pointing to your website, and that you would like them to ignore them when analyzing your link profile and calculating the various weights for your website before working out where you should show up.

But how do I do that?

It’s easy, actually, because I made a neat generator that helps you!

I recently created an SEO tools section on Geekiti because I enjoy helping others, and the first tool I created was a disavow file generator – this will enable you to enter your full list of bad links and then create a properly formatted .txt file which you can download and submit to Google instantly without any issues. It’s free, too!

The generator supports both root domains and individual page URLs.

Once you’ve run the tool, you should now have a disavow.txt file in the Downloads folder on your PC or Laptop. Once you have this, you will need to open up Google’s disavow tool page where you can select a website from Webmaster Tools and upload your file. Make sure your website is verified in Webmaster Tools before trying to submit a disavow file.

You’re done!

Well done, you’ve dissected your link profile, identified bad links and made an effort to action them by submitting a disavow file to Google. Remember, if you were hit by Google’s Penguin 3.0 update then you will need to wait for the next version to roll out after cleaning up your links for any signs of recovery to be seen. Unfortunately, you cannot recover any sooner from Penguin 3.0.

TIP: You should regularly check your link profile – once a week is great unless you’re crazy like me. I check mine daily. Keeping on top of your link profile means you can quickly spot any issues should they arise in the future. Have fun!