How to Find Bad Links

Have you had a significant drop in traffic and ranking? You probably have bad links pointing to your site.  If so, they could be hurting your ranking under Google's Penguin update.  Here's is how to find them.

Finding the Links
First log into your Google Web Master Tools account. You'll find a list of your sites.  Double-click on the site in question.  The dashboard will open.  Then find and click on the small triangle by "Search Traffic" so a drop down menu appears. Open "Links to Your Site."

You'll see some sample links but they're not specific enough since they only tell you the domain not the actual link.  You need to download the links themselves. Click on "Download more sample links" or "Download latest links".

The Spreadsheet

Google Webmaster Tools will ask you to choose the download format, either csv or Google docs.  The first will open in a spreadsheet like Microsoft Excel, the other in Google Docs spreadsheet.  You may need to download Google drive to access Google docs. I did.

Download and open your list.

You can copy and paste each link into your browser check out each link and find out the page rank.  You need to click on the far left column then drag and highlight the link with your cursor.  Paste that into the address bar of your browser. 

Check Page Rank and Quality 

I use Google Chrome with a PageRank SEO extension. You can also use a Google search toolbar with page rank.  Now you can check the quality of each link.  

1. Go to the site by pasting the link into the address bar and see if the site looks spammy.  If it doesn't look like a quality or even mediocre site, you may not want it as a link.
2. Check what the site's page rank is using your toolbar or page rank extension. If there is a question mark, n/a, or 1 then the site is low ranking.  PR4 and above is best. Be careful, however, sometimes a high-ranking site may have just been delisted and will still show a high rank.  Make sure you do the next check as well.
3. Check to see if the site is delisted.  To do this go to Google and type Site:yourdomainname.com, for example site:duunia.org.  If the site doesn't come up in the search results, it is delisted. You definitely don't want the link if it is. The example I gave for the Duunia directory is. You can also just search for the site.  For this site search for "Duunia directory."  If the site's actual domain doesn't come up in the listings it probably is delisted.
4. If there is a malware warning site, then the link is really bad.

Nofollow or Not

Also you need to check if the link to your site is "nofollow" or not.  If it is "nofollow" then it isn't passing much link juice either negatively or positively.  If the site linking to your site is low-ranking but has nofollowed your link then you don't have to worry about its impact, at least in most cases.

To check, go to the webpage where your link is by copying and pasting the link into the address bar of your Chrome browser. Type Ctrl + U.  That will take you to the page source where you can see the html coding. Now type Ctrl + F and search for your domain in the text box that opens in the top right corner

Type Ctrl + F and then type the name of your domain into the text box.

You`ll see the link within the html coding that links to your site. If you see rel = nofollow near your link or url.

This link is nofollow.

Record your Results

Inside your spreadsheet you'll want to keep notes so you don't have to check the sites of your links over and over especially if you have hundreds which many older sites do, you won't be able to remember.

On mine I've added columns for page rank and if the link is "followed" or "nofollowed".  I put in the word "gone" if the site is no longer online. I would also add in red if the site were delisted or had malware in red.  None of these sites do.

I`ve added PR and whether is link is nofollow to my spreadsheet.

Next you'll need to get rid of the bad links.  Click here to find out how to start.

The other posts in this series are:
How to Find Bad Links
How to Remove Bad Links Part One - Ask for Removal on the Site Itself
How to Remove Bad Links Part Two - Use Whois to Find the Owner
How to Remove Bad Links Part Three - Create the Disavow Tool Text

If you need help identifying bad links, Ducktoes can help.  We are an SEO and Web Design Firm in Calgary.

Don't Forget Dmoz and Yahoo

The Two Top Directories

Two great citations to raise trust in your website are Dmoz and Yahoo Directory. Don't overlook them. They can only help boost traffic to your site and ranking.

Dmoz
Acceptance into Dmoz Open Directory Project is difficult at best and if you get your site accepted you are doing something right. It is a goal worth striving for and attaining.

You can also apply to be an editor for Dmoz. You have to pick a category you know enough about to edit successfully. You choose three sites you think should be included in that category and write titles and descriptions for those sites.  If you do a good job Dmoz may accept you.  I have applied to be an editor for Dmoz.

Yahoo Directory
Yahoo costs $300 a year and does not accept all submissions, so there is a risk of losing your submission fee. You need to want the citation badly enough to come up with the money despite the risk.

If you would like help promoting your site on the internet please follow this blog and I'll give you ideas and help.  If you'd like even more help please go to my website.

Join the Discussion in your Niche

Some advice I give all my SEO clients is to start talking to other experts in their niche.  For instant if you are a catering company, I'd advise you go to other catering companies' blogs or food blogs and comment on their posts.  If you are a home builder go to new home design or construction blogs, and do the same. Talk to others and when they reply to you, answer back.

That way, whatever your niche is, you'll participate in a community, become even more of an expert in your field and niche, have more ideas to use in your own business, and your blog. You may even increase traffic to your site.  I use to advise that you would use your company name as the name and link back to your site.  But now I advise, since Matt Cutts suggested it, is just to use your own name.

Here's the video:

Never Worry about Penguin Again: SEO Experiment Revisited

Well, I couldn't keep blogging during my vacation in Europe.  For that reason, I won't know the results to my SEO experiment's  for many more weeks.  The experiment is supposed to find out whether or not blogging four to five times a week will improve a website's ranking, so we never have to worry about ranking or Penguin updates again.  An internet marketing expert claimed that this was true. All we have to do is write. To read more about the experiment click here.

My family and I went on two river cruises back-to-back and I just couldn't find much time to write blog posts. The wifi on the boats was too spotty and slow when I did have a moment or two.  I was too busy anyway going on walking tours in wonderful cities like Rouen, France, and Bamberg, Germany, watching the river of the farmland, forests, and the medieval castles and towns as we floated by, spending time with my family, and thoroughly enjoying myself.

My Ducktoes site did go down in ranking a couple of places for the keywords "Calgary computer repair" when I stopped blogging for the two weeks, so maybe that's an indication. Now I'm writing a lot again.  I think I'll give it a couple of months before I decide whether it worked or not.

If you would like us at Ducktoes to write posts for your blog or help you improve your search engine ranking, please see our Ducktoesseo and internet marketing page.

Great Free SEO Tool

I discovered a great free tool for internet marketers or anyone wanting to check their Google ranking. By Google ranking I don't mean the page rank number that you find in the Google tool bar, but where you are on the search results page. For instance, if you are fifth from the top your rank would be "5." If you are fifth from the top on the second page your rank would be "15." This tool tracks that ranking over time. If you have a lot of sites you're trying to track, it comes in very useful. The tool is called Rank Checker Ace which is also the domain: http://rankcheckerace.com.

Rank Checker Ace has a simple, easy to use interface:

To add a site, all you do is click "New Url" then fill in the details of Url name, keywords, search engines such as Google or Bing you want to track for.  Here is a how-to on how to add a site you want to track.  Here is their complete how-to guide.

If you like the tool, you consider donating to it.  I did.

Update:
Please note that after I wrote this post Rank Checker Ace became Pro Rank Tracker.   It still is free but only for up to 50 terms, and it still is a great tool to check your rankings.  I am going to pay because I use it so much.

Google PageRank is Not Dead After All

I don't know if you noticed, but Google updated its toolbar PageRank last week on December 6th. This was a surprise for many of us since it hadn't been updated since February, 2013.  Because of the inactivity many internet marketing and seo experts speculated PageRank was dead. They were wrong.

My sites went up in pagerank.

I for one am happy Google did not pull the plug on PageRank.  Many of my sites went up.

PageRank shows how popular a website is.  It is only one factor in 200 or so that determines ranking in Google search results, however, so it is definitely not as important as it once was.

If you'd like to see improvement in pagerank and ranking in search engine, visit Ducktoes Internet Marketing.

SEO Experiment on Ducktoes Blog

A couple of posts ago, I wrote about an internet marketing expert who said all you have to do to never worry about a Penguin update again is write four or five blog posts a week.  So I decided to experiment with my Ducktoes blog and have written 15 posts in three weeks.  So far I have only moved up one place in ranking but we shall see.

I write about the SEO experiment's progress here.  We shall see soon enough or maybe in a few weeks.  It takes awhile for things to progress on Google ranking.

I'm hoping to be number one for the keywords "Calgary computer repair."

Penguin Christmas present to my own website, if it works, that is.