One of the easiest routes that a Search Engine Optimization specialist will give you to improve your website’s ranking in SERP is by having as many backlinks as possible. And in that process, many actually end up hurting their website even more.
For those of you who do not know, a backlink is a link that displays you on any other website. It is also commonly referred to as an inbound link or an incoming link. These links are beneficial for a website’s ranking as they tend to authenticate the trustworthiness of the website and its content. Google credits those websites more that have more backlinks to their name. And it is the reason why many also go for buying the backlinks instead of pleading to other websites for it. There are a plethora of online websites selling backlinks in bulk.
However, some of these backlinks can be spammy. Since you can’t identify the ones that are spamming just by looking at them, they can hurt your website for as long as they are not removed. Therefore, it is always advised to monitor one’s website every now and then to get rid of them as soon as possible.
According to SEO Experts at VM Interactive, a London-based digital marketing agency, these are some of the easier ways to identify spammy links,
Use Monitor Links
Monitor Links is one of the most frequently used tools for monitoring a website. The first thing you need to do is to get yourself an account on it.
Register and then log in to use it. Once your dashboard opens click on the Backlinks to view them.
Once you choose the ‘Backlink’ option, a complete set of data for all of your backlinks will appear. You can view the backlinks and check each individually.
For sites that have an exhaustive list of backlinks, this may seem an arduous task.
On the top bar, you will see figures for different types of backlinks that your site has. Here, you will find a category that says ‘’Links with warning.’’
Choose it to apply its filter in the search. Once selected, a list of all these links will appear.
Before manually checking each, you can also apply a filter to see which of these links have potentially an unnatural anchor text according to this tool.
On the right side of the page, a bar of filters will appear, choose ‘’unnatural anchor texts.’’
The list will then filter all the sites that the tool thinks have unnatural anchor text.
Now under the column of anchor texts/links, you will see the anchor text that each of these links has.
Here, have a look and see which one looks odd to you:
The one highlighted appears to be the weirdest, right? Now that is the kind of spammy links you are looking for.
Select all of such links first. Once selected, mark all of these bad. Alternatively, you can also add a tag of ‘Spam’ in each of these links that will make it easier for you to remove them in the later stage.
Now comes the exhausting process. You will have to check all the links with the warning for the anchor text. Remember the links shown above are the result of the application of the filter ‘unnatural anchor text,’ which means there are still more links out there that could be spammy.
Check each individually. In order to make that process easier for you, here are a few common types of links that are usually spam:
- Comments from sites that do not moderate their comment section
- Links from completely irrelevant websites
- Link directories (a very obvious one)
- Links from websites that either have dummy content or hardly content at all
So, keep these in mind while looking for potentially bad links. Also, make sure to check each and every link that gives you a social share. This is one of the most common ways to put spam on a website.
This is merely the identification process. You need to remove all of these in order to get rid of all of the spam hurting your website.
For the next time, buy backlinks from the sites that are trustworthy. One of these sites includes Healthy Links.
Make sure you monitor your website every once in a while so that none of these spammy links stay there long enough to hurt your website.
If you do not want to use Monitor Links, there are other tools available that can do the job for you.
Until next time!
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