Backlink Analysis: How to Judge Good Links from Bad

“Please share a post about how to classify good and bad quality links.”
blog commenter Mike Jone, July 25, 2015

Backlink analysis is a much-needed skill today. Our SEO analysts spend hours analyzing backlinks for clients — whether they come to us specifically for help removing a Google penalty or not.

Let’s dive into the details of effective SEO link building and analysis. Here’s a handy Backlink Evaluation Flowchart you can refer to when doing backlink analysis and cleanup. (Click to open it full size.)



Backlink evaluation flowchart

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Overview of the Backlink Eval Process

These days, all webmasters need to keep an eye on their backlink profiles to identify good links to count as wins and bad ones to target for link pruning. Here we’ve outlined our internal process for analyzing SEO client backlinks to judge which links to keep and which to get rid of.

  1. Understand your goal. Approach backlink cleanup differently when working to remove a penalty vs. performing regular backlink maintenance.
  2. Create your master list. A spreadsheet is your tool for keeping track of your research and backlink analysis activities.
  3. Check your site’s backlinks against any previously submitted disavow files. If you’re inheriting a website that has had search engine optimization management, you may find that a Google disavow file has been submitted. It’s always a good idea to confirm that the previously created disavow file was accurate and did not prune links unnecessarily. Once you’ve confirmed that the disavowed links are low quality, you can continue to include them on future disavow files.
  4. Score backlinks (keep, request removal, disavow) with tools. Tools including DisavowFiles, Ahrefs, Majestic and Moz can indicate quality of backlinks.
  5. Visit the pages linking to your site. While you can get some idea of backlink quality with tools, nothing can evaluate topical relevance and overall appropriateness like a human visitor.
  6. Choose to keep, request removal or nofollow, or disavow each link. Then take action.

At the end of the article you’ll find additional backlink cleanup resources:

Backlink Analysis

Analyzing backlinks is a messy and time-consuming business. When we perform SEO penalty assessments and link pruning services for our clients, the most tedious part is manually evaluating the individual backlinks. It’s like sorting laundry, or weeding a lawn, or separating trash into recyclables and, well, garbage. But all of these tasks must be done.

Have the Right Attitude for Your Goal

Keep in mind that backlinks are necessary and good to help a website rank. Don’t go waving your machete around too wildly or you might hurt your website more than help it. Still, as Bruce Clay says, every site has its weakest link — and depending on the site, you may have a lot of spammy links that need removing.

Have a penalty? If your site has been penalized for unnatural links, then you should be harsher in your backlink analysis. Your site is already bleeding traffic and revenue. Find the bad links and cut them off! Websites not in a penalty situation can be more lenient in their backlink analysis. Adjust how strict you are in your attitude towards backlink cleanup based on your site’s situation.

Create a Spreadsheet to Track Your Findings and Decisions

Backlink analysis is a process that has many steps that may not be happening linearly or along the same timeline. Every one of your thousands of backlinks could be in a different stage of the process. Use a master list to combine the data from several different sources in whatever spreadsheet program you’re using (Excel or Google Sheets). Basically, you want to take the different spreadsheets you created doing the various downloads and combine them into one.

We recommend downloading your backlinks in bulk from Google Search Console and at least one of these additional sources:

In your spreadsheet, use the linking URL as your key identifier in one column, the root domain in an adjacent one, and get the various other data fields lining up. Merge and delete your duplicates to create a workable list of backlinks.

Your spreadsheet may have hundreds or thousands of web pages that link to yours. Here’s an example of how you might set up the combined list, with columns for Source, URL, Root Domain, Action, Trust Flow, Citation Flow, Nofollowed, Not Found, Notes, and Whois.

Backlink analysis spreadsheet example
Example backlink analysis spreadsheet (click to enlarge)

Check for Disavowed Links First

Save yourself some work and find out right away whether the website has ever submitted a disavow file to Google, which is the list of links a website asks the search engine to ignore. Get a copy of the most recent disavow file that was submitted (because each new disavow file submitted to the search engine supersedes any previously submitted versions for that site).

If either the specific URL or the domain of the linking site (which is the main site name, such as badsite.com) have been disavowed, consider the link disavowed also. The good news is that, once you are satisfied with the disavow file’s accuracy, you won’t need to do any more backlink analysis on those links! You’ve already asked the search engine to ignore them, so you can, too.

Find Out More about the Linking Sites

With the remaining (non-disavowed) backlinks, you need a way to tell the good from the bad. Can you tell just by looking at the URL? With practice, sometimes you may be able to. But usually, you’ll need some extra information in order to evaluate them.

The tools below provide quick intel for backlink analysis. They can help you judge the quality of websites linking to yours. Which ones you choose depends on your budget, time and tool preferences.

  • Majestic: Trust Flow and Citation Flow
    Majestic’s metrics top our list because our SEO analysts think this tool gives the most accurate, up-to-date link information available. In fact, we integrate our SEOToolSet Pro software with link data pulled from Majestic to provide link reports for subscribers. So if you gathered your original backlinks list using either your own Majestic account or an SEOToolSet Pro Link Report, then your spreadsheet should already contain columns for Trust and Citation Flow. Briefly … Citation Flow is a number from 0 to 100 that shows how much link juice the site has (based on how many sites link to it). So this number roughly shows how influential a backlink from this site may be, whether for better or worse. Trust Flow (also 0 to 100) shows how trustworthy the site is based on how close those links are to authoritative, trustworthy sources. In other words, this number shows whether a backlink from this site could be helpful or not.
  • Moz: Page Authority and Domain Authority
    Moz’s Open Site Explorer product shows you scores (on a 100-point scale) estimating the authority of a specific web page and of the site as a whole.
  • Ahrefs: URL Rating and Domain Rating
    Ahrefs’ proprietary scoring system can help you judge backlink quality. Ranking scores attempt to measure the authority of a URL (page) and its domain based on backlinks, similar to Google’s PageRank.
  • DisavowFiles.com (a free service of Bruce Clay, Inc.)
    DisavowFiles compares your backlink profile (pulled from Majestic) against disavow files others have submitted into a crowdsourced database, telling you how many times a particular linking site has been disavowed by others in the database. Knowing which of your backlinks have been disavowed by others can help you easily identify sites you might want to disavow, too. There’s no stronger red flag for backlink cleanup than knowledge that a site is a frequently disavowed suspect.

Visit the Linking Sites

Once you’ve combined download sources, merged duplicates, removed already-disavowed links, and added trust metrics and intel, it’s time to review your master list. Now’s when you roll up your pant legs and prepare to wade through a little mud.

Just kidding. (Not really.)

Unfortunately, there’s no substitute for going to look at most backlinks manually to determine whether they are OK to keep. Since you may be working with thousands of backlinks, prioritize the work so you find the worst offenders first. You may not have to wade far before you’ve discovered and removed the links that are hurting your site the worst.

To prioritize your backlink analysis, sort your spreadsheet by the metric you feel shows trustworthiness the most clearly. For example, you could sort by Trust Flow (with Citation Flow and Root Domain as second and third sort levels). Invert the order if necessary (by clicking on a column heading) so that the lowest trust metrics appear at the top.

Make Decisions and Take Action

Backlink analysis - gavel and scales
Create columns for where to put the results of your research. In the spreadsheet example we showed above, there were columns for Action and Notes. Use these to mark whatever you find out and what you decide to do, if anything, with each link.

There are several possible backlink cleanup decisions you can make from your backlink analysis.

  • Ignore (keep the link)
  • Request that the site remove or nofollow your link
  • Request that the site change the anchor text of your link
  • Disavow the linking page or domain

What Makes a “Good” vs. “Bad” Backlink

Unless the site engaged in illicit link-buying in the past and accumulated a slew of spammy links, most links are probably beneficial or at least neutral in their impact. You should be able to ignore the majority of backlinks in your spreadsheet for most non-penalized sites.

Good backlinks come from a trustworthy site, not a spam site. So look at those trust metrics you gathered. For example, a Trust Flow of zero could mean the site is new and hasn’t gotten any link love yet — but it also could indicate a problem. Watch out especially for a site with low Trust Flow and high Citation Flow — that means it’s getting a lot of link juice from all the sites linking to it, but they may all be spam! A link from that type of site could be poison.

Good backlinks come from web pages that are relevant to your page’s topic, as well. One or two links to your auto insurance site coming from a local dog groomer might be innocuous. But beware of patterns of unnatural linking. If every dog groomer in the state is linking to your auto insurance page, it could cause an eyebrow raise or even a penalty from Penguin.

Similarly, beware of global links to your site. For instance, if every page on a site has a followed link to your auto insurance quote page, that looks really suspicious to the search engines. If you see hundreds of links all coming from a single root domain, you should look to see what’s going on there.

Nofollowed Links Are Okay

Besides ignoring the good links you find, you can also ignore links that are nofollowed. Google won’t tell you which ones are and aren’t followed links to your site, meaning that they pass link value (for better or for worse). So it’s up to you to know how to tell the difference.

Look at the HTML source code of a page. If either of these are true, then the link is harmless to your site:

  • The attribute rel=”nofollow” is contained in the link tag itself.
  • The head section of the linking page has a meta robots nofollow tag.

Ongoing Link Maintenance

The first time you download links and go through them takes the most time. Once you have that initial work done and submit a disavow file with the stubborn links to Google, it takes a lot less time to do the ongoing maintenance of your link profile. Use our flowchart — feel free to print a copy for your wall — and make backlink analysis part of your regular (monthly or quarterly) SEO procedures.

Paula Allen started at Bruce Clay Inc. in 2008 as a senior technical writer and now manages the company's content and documentation. An English lover at heart, Paula enjoys working in a team where grammar is frequently discussed and in an industry where there's always more to learn.

See Paula's author page for links to connect on social media.

Comments (22)
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22 Replies to “Backlink Analysis: How to Judge Good Links from Bad”

Thank you for the great share
Backlink analysis is always useful for any kind of website

is not a comprehensive tool that does keyword research, SEO reviews, and on-page SEO analysis , It focuses 100% on backlinks

This is not cup of tea for everyone.. As google updates comes ranking flucates,, some bad link website do rank… But to be risk free its always good idea to have related link from Good website

AlreadyCoded

This tool can help you in removing unnatural backlinks to your site

http://www.alreadycoded.com/seo-tools/unnatural-links-removal-disavow-tool.html

This was a good start but not as in depth as I had hoped for (or have come to expect from bruceclay.com)

Hey Paula

I wished I would have had access to this article at the beginning of the year when another site of mine got the ugly G penalty.

It was a long and tedious process, although I have to give credit to the Google staff when I submitted my first disavow list. They simply stated, I needed to make an honest outreach to some of the websites where my links were coming from and ask them to remove them. Then re-submit with specifics.

I actually did that and after making a sincere attempt over a period of 5 -6 weeks, I re-submitted the disavow list.

What was interesting when I was submitting the 2nd go around, they wanted to know what specific steps I took to remove links, which I actually detailed for them. After about 3 weeks, they removed the penalty from the site and all is good…

The biggest takeaway from this hard lesson, I got lazy with another site and took the easier path as they say. It bit me in the butt. For that, I realize that it takes time and patience to do outreach properly.

cheers

Paula Allen

Angie, that’s a great story! It shows that going through the hard work does pay off. It also puts Google in a good light, living up to its desire to actually make the web cleaner by removing bad links, and then treating your disavow file fairly in the end. I believe your story may be instructive to others who think they don’t need to do link pruning correctly and want to take a shortcut. Thanks for reading & sharing!

Ultimately if you are building backlinks you should be aware of the choice you make in re-guards to a back-link BEFORE you have it placed. We have all made bad choices on backlinks in the past but future backlink choice should be a concision decision. The only way this really matters is if you take on a client with “dirty” backlink profile?

Great article, bad backlinks are certainly a pain. There are some good tools out there to identify the backlinks and put them into a spreadsheet to disavow them with WMT. Havent used disavowfiles.com before but I am going to check that out, thanks Paula.

Paula Allen

Esteem – Thanks for the feedback, that’s great to hear. Let me know how you like DisavowFiles!

Thanks for a great article on cleaning up backlinks. I am going through a project now with an attorney client who had some pretty messy SEO previously. The amount of work to identify the good / bad links and then the process of contacting website owners is very demanding. We may have to use an automated tool.

But the key focus is, manage your back links closely and get them taken care of as quickly as possible so that it does not turn into a huge job.

Ron

Paula Allen

Ron – We feel your pain. It can be time-consuming to clean up a messy backlink profile. Hopefully it won’t take long to identify the most spammy links, prune them, and start feeling relief. You might run the site through DisavowFiles.com for a social-proof type of check, to see the attorney’s most notorious linking sites based on crowdsourced data. Good luck!

Thanks for the great post to shared with us Paula Allen. specially I like to thank for “backlink evaluation flow chart”.

Hi,

You are absolutely right in this article. Back links analysis always helpful for any kind of website. You cover some good points in this article.

Thanks for sharing this article!

This will help in my site back link analysis. Thank you so much for sharing such a great post on backlink analysis.

Hi Paula Allen,

You did a fantastic job in this article. Now a day it really matters for organic result. After reading of this article I completely agree with your ideas. Thanks for sharing this informative article with us.

Cheers!

Hi Paul,

Great views on backlink analysis. I am sure this gonna help me with my site backlink profile audit. Is there any time span to analysis backlink like every month, two month?

Paula Allen

Siva: Happy to help! As for how often you need to do backlink analysis, that depends on what your site’s situation is. If you’ve had a manual action in the past or think you have a Penguin issue, then monitoring on a monthly basis makes sense. If not, then quarterly is a good time frame.

Backlink analysis is necessity in current era of penguin algorithm change. We should conduct backlink audit frequently every two months whether we build links or not.

Good points to identify good and bad link.

Thanks for sharing :)

I found this article to be very informative Paula. However some readers would be advised to do a bit of work to prooerly understandi Citation Flow. If they don’t ‘get’ it and how it works in conjunction with TF, they may make some poor decisions. But you’ve sent them on the path of discovery, and hopefully they’ll put in the extra effort to understand link analysis as well as you do :-)

Paula Allen

Hey Andy – That’s well-stated advice. The Majestic tools are our favorites, so I spent more time on them here than on the other tools. Nevertheless, such a powerful and finely tuned instrument requires some training to use well. Thanks for saying the post sends people in the right direction; that’s certainly the goal. Do you use Trust and Citation Flow on your sites? Feel free to explain more about some of the dangers/recommendations you have found.

No doubt backlink analysis is the most important part of SEO. You have mentioned some good points regarding how to judge good links from bad.

Paula Allen

Hindujaholdings: I tend to shy away from superlatives in general, but especially in SEO. ;) It’s hard to say any one task is “the most important” since on-page, off-page, branding, etc. all play synergistic roles to help with search engine optimization.

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