Google seems to be all set to reduce the visibility of substandard sites, especially those which were surviving on spammy links. Though websites owners were preparing for this for long to qualify the new norms set by the giant search engine but it went harder than their expectation. Link removal and disavow campaigns bring just a little more visibility to the sites. Moreover, Google’s penalty has gone more focused than ever before considering not only site as a whole but all the parts individually.
A Fresh Approach For Link Removal
Though, there are lots of ways to find unnatural links but not even a single one among them seems to be perfect. But there’s a new way which may prove to be very efficient for the purpose. Let’s see.
It has been more than one year to the penguin update but still more than 80% of the sites are still struggling. Besides, lots of people are suffering from manual penalties and are making constant efforts to be reconsidered by Google but the success is still far to seek for them. We can conclude two things from it-
- Recovering from the penalties is not an easy task.
- No existing link removal method is perfect.
Before discussing the fresh approach to the removal of the links, let’s first discuss the existing methods and their shortcomings which make them imperfect.
Link Removal Methods Being Currently Employed
When it comes to link removal, the methods being used currently are related to-
- Over Optimization of Anchor Texts
- Inundating sites with low quality links
- Using just one particular type of link
- Links scattered throughout the site
These metrics are considered to be very reliable techniques for link removal, and that’s why they have gained extreme popularity. These techniques are really essential to be kept in a link removal campaign but observing the results obtained through them clearly indicates that some more efforts are needed to be done.
The present methods are very efficient in finding links from those sites which have done excessive link building but all these techniques go inefficient in finding plenty of branded links, even if they are unnatural. Such links can easily stay undetected. This shortcoming gave rise to the need of finding a new, and really efficient, way to detect the unnatural links.
Let’s Check Out the New Method
There’s a very good method for detecting unnatural links which don’t feature the limitations of the methods being used presently. This method is based on the trust of the sites that links to you. To understand the importance of this “Trust Factor”, you are required to be educated about the linking of the entire web and the process of Google for considering the overall web architecture linking.
It’s quite difficult to understand the complex link graph as a whole but there are two easily comprehensible facts..
- Authoritative sites link to authoritative sites.
- Spammy sites are linked to spammy sites.
These facts are known to every website owner on the planet but nobody wants to read between the lines. There are so many things which can be learnt from it. Authoritative sites follow the practice of linking to only those sites which are authoritative and relevant. On the other hand, due to the structure of current methods, spammy sites get linked to other spammy sites within the same niche. We can understand with a very simple example. Bad people get along better with other bad people whereas the good people belong with other good people. As they say, same feather flock together.
Most of the link building methods are automated. They insisted on creating a high volume of links through various techniques like blogs, forums, article sites etc. These techniques used to create links with any low trust sites. So it’s very imperative to ascertain the trust of the sites which link to you.
Method to Determine the Trust
You must have understood the importance of the trust of the sites that link to you by now. So now, you are highly interested in knowing the way to find that trust. Lets’ have a look.
The process doesn’t suppose to be a complicated one. It can be done easily and conveniently with the help of Majestic SEO link metrics. This metric is based on the same principals and technologies on which Google works to evaluate links. This metric has Citation Flow and Trust Flow which perform similarly to Google’s Page Rank and Trust rank.
How do Majestic SEO link Metrics work?
To understand the overall functioning of Majestic SEO link metrics, we need to understand the functioning of its two main components, i.e. Citation Flow and Trust Flow.
- Citation Flow- This one is based on the Page Rank model. It’s helpful in finding what rank can a site get. It can help site owners a lot in finding the potential of the site.
- Trust Flow- Trust Flow is there to ascertain the trust inherent in a link. It employs manual SEO methods to evaluate the trust of the site which makes it a very reliable metric.
It’s very simple to understand that a link having good citation flow but poor trust flow is a spammy link. Thus the metrics can be of very help in finding unnatural links. Isn’t that very simple and beneficial.
Majestic’s Metrics Let You Create a Trust Ratio
Creating trust ratio is a cakewalk, provided you are using Trust Flow and Citation Flow. Its formula is:-
Trust Flow/Citation Flow = Trust Ratio
Let’s understand it through two examples.
Site 1
Citation Flow = 40
Trust Flow = 50
Trust Ratio= 50/40 = 1.25
Site 2
Citation Flow = 35
Trust Flow = 7
Trust Ratio= 7/35=0.2
Through the above examples, one can easily guess that Site 1 is an authoritative site whereas Site 2 is a spammy one. The trust ratio of Site one is above 1 and is way higher than Site 2. This trust ratio can be very valuable in locating spammy links on a website.
Your Research Should Be Niche Specific
Before ascertaining the trust ratios of links attached to a site, one must figure out and consider the trust of the particular niche. All the niches have their own trust standards according to the competition level. For example a domain having a trust ratio of 0.5 may be a poor site for one niche but it may be an average one for another niche.
How to Find Average Trust Ratio of a Niche?
In order to find average trust ratio of a given niche, we need some specialized tools like SEO Quake which can help in exporting some data from SERPs of Google. If you want to download SEO Quake, you need to follow the following steps.
- Download and install the suitable version of SEO Quake for your browser.
- Set it up properly to install the Google SERPs overlay.
- Go to the search engine settings of Google and raise the amount of results to be displayed in 30.
Installation and utilization of SEO Quakes can be very useful in determining the trust ratio of a niche.
How to Locate Low Trust Ratio Links in a Penalized Site?
When we are educated about the average trust ratio, all we need to do is to find the low trust ratio links linking to the site. Those links with poor trust ratios are needed to be removed or disavowed as soon as possible. This thing is to be done manually as you need to consider the ratios carefully. Let’s have a look at the process.
The domain of the penalized site should be put in the Majestic site explorer. You need to select the domain option button instead of the URL as all the links related to the domain are to be considered. You can click of the “Ref Domains” tab to have a look at all the referred domains. To export the data, you are required to click on “Download CSV” button. By observing the data obtained carefully, you can easily recognize the spammy links.
How to Remove the Spammy Links?
Once, we have recognized the spammy links, we need to think about getting rid of them. You can contact the sites to which the spammy links are related and ask them for removal, but this method is very complicated and time consuming. There’s a very simple way to do it. Make a list of all such domains in a text file and submit to the Google disavow tool.
After disavowing, you are required to either resubmit to the search engine or wait till the next algorithm penalty refresh to find whether the penalty has been withdrawn or not. If it’s of no use, you need to tighten the ratio. Higher the ratio and repeat the process. You can also use excel sheet, if more domains are to be captured. Keep on repeating the process until the penalty is lifted.
Michael Johnson is a well known Seo Consultant working for Webitmd: Seo company in Los Angeles. And have more than 6+ years of experience in Seo field.
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