Your Backlinks Can Be Killing Your Site

Off site strategy or  the problematic implementation of which is often the culprit in manual Google penalties, and others such as Penguin.  Often companies think they are getting a good deal when they use vendors to outsource link building, but in actuality they are dooming their sites.  Often clients call in a panic saying my site has been hit. Or our traffic has dropped and we are no where to be found.  That is when a link audit comes into play and a possible link detox after.  Here are some of the things you should be mindful of in any back link audit you wish to conduct.

Natural Link Velocity

A natural link velocity is important to maintain.  Having unnatural periods of spikes or lulls can trigger the beginning of a possible penalty based on the level of activity or lack there of.  Pin point the possible fluctuations and track back to the original instance where you discovered the penalty.  Often times site wide links can create the look of unnatural link fluctuations.

Anchor Text Usage

Are you using exact mach anchor text for a large percentage of your backlink profile? Look at all the anchor text used in your profile, identify the total percentages for each, and make sure a large amount are not exact match anchors.  The majority of your anchors should be brand focused to look as natural as possible.

Identify Link Sources

In order to keep a healthy backlink profile it is important you keep the sources your getting links from diverse.  Whether it be local profiles, hyper local links, business directories, guest blogging, vertical specific links, or another type of effort keep it diverse and keep it natural.  If you determine that a majority of links are from one source you may want to invest the time to naturally dilute with links from other source types.

Look at Referring Domains

Look at all the sites that link to you.  An accurate depiction of what Google sees as links to your site can be found in Google Webmaster Tools.  Look at those individual sites.  Actually visit them and ask yourself if this looks like a domain I want pointing at my site.

Referring Domain IPs

When you are looking at referring domains it is important to look at the IP addresses themselves.  When you see numerous sites from the same IP it is the first sign that those sites belong to a site network.  At minimum you want to see sites from unique C blocks.  Also in terms of IP you want to see addresses from the country you business is in.  Often times links come from link networks from countries like India and the Philippines.

To avoid such issues future proof your search engine optimization  efforts so you are naturally building over time and not trying to gain the system.  For more information on audits, how to recover from a backlink penalty, or any other digital marketing effort contact our team today.