An important part of SEO Off Page is based on inbound links, that is, external pages that point to ours. If we want to improve SEO with links we must follow the following steps:
- Know who links to our website.
- Determine which links are negative and positive for SEO.
- How to remove links that are negative for our SEO.
Not everything consists of obtaining links, we must also worry that they are of quality and, therefore, positive for our SEO.
How to know who links to our website?
To find out who links to us, we will go to Search Console. You will need to have the Google Search Console account correctly configured.
In the menu on the left we will look for the “Links” section. By clicking on it we will see a summary of the links to our site, both internal and external.
Internal links are those that we ourselves use within our website to direct the user to different parts of it. For this specific post we will not focus on it.
External links are those that point to our website from external pages. Within this section we find:
- Most linked pages. Which specific pages on our website have the most links from external sites.
- Websites with the most links. Domains that link the most to our website.
- Most frequent link text. What anchor text do external sites use to link to us.
For the objective of this section, which is to obtain a list of the websites that link to us, it can be done in several ways. One of them is to click on “More information” in the “Most linked pages” section.
A list will appear with the specific pages of our website ordered by the number of external links they have.
To know the domain from which they link to us, we will click on the URL of one of them. After that, if we want to know where they link to us from, we will click on one of the domain names and a summary table will appear indicating:
- Pages with links. Specific web page that links to us. This is the value that we will analyze later.
- Destination URL. What exact part of our website are they linking to.
This process can be done in several ways and most lists can be exported to Excel, CSV or Google Docs.
What links are negative for SEO?
Once we know who links to us and from where, we must decide if a link is positive or negative for our SEO.
Before starting, you need to be very clear about two points:
- There is no 100% reliable metric that tells us exactly if a link is good or bad for our SEO, all of them are approximations to the secret search engine algorithm.
- The best metric to remove links that you can use is common sense, your own judgment and experience. It is the only one that is completely free and with it, you will also make most of the decisions without the need for external metrics. Don’t get obsessed with metrics.
That said, we will look at a technique to know if we have to remove a link or not.
First we will obtain the following listings through Google Search Console:
- Domains that target us the most.
- Most linked pages on our website.
These listings are important especially for large web pages with many links. It is impossible to analyze them all manually, so we will divide the process, focusing on the part with the most traffic and influence and leaving the rest for later.
For the results of both lists we will perform, in order, the following steps:
- First we will analyze them manually, always using common sense and our criteria, in addition to a series of guidelines that we will see later. The goal is for most decisions to be made at this point.
- For the links that we have not been able to categorize in the previous point, we will use the metrics from both Majestic, Moz and Ahrefs, all together, to be able to make a decision. The goal is for as few decisions as possible to be made here.
Criteria for removing links
On the Internet you can find many criteria to remove links without having to use metrics and paid tools. All of them are based on visiting the page and examining, in summary, the following points:
- The most important point is whether the page is quality or spam.
If it seems like a spam page, untrustworthy, with poor quality content, with content completely copied from other sites, aimed only at trying to attract traffic without worrying at all about the user experience, which uses toxic techniques such as massive clickjacking… etc, you can discard it without taking anything else into account. - If they are links generated automatically and/or in bulk through some type of robot, we will also discard them without taking anything else into account. Here we could include purchased links, forget about them, in the end they will end up detecting and penalizing you.
- Another key point is the relationship with the theme of your linked page, that is, content, context and anchor text.
If the content of the web page that links to you has nothing to do with the linked content of your page, it is a negative point to take into account.
If the anchor text with which you are linked has nothing to do with the linked content or is very inaccurate, it is another negative point to take into account.
Also negative are over-optimized anchor text, that is, those whose words are so well chosen that they do not seem natural.
Another factor to correct is the links and anchor text that do not follow the normal flow of the text, which are “forcibly” inserted into the text, preventing comfortable reading. Both should flow naturally with the text.
In the last three cases, where the anchor text or words that link to us are wrong or can be improved and, only if the page is worth it because it meets the rest of the important points, before deleting them, I recommend contacting the page to correct them. This way we won’t lose the opportunity to have a good link because of a small mistake.
Metrics for removing links
If with the recommendations to remove links without metrics you have not yet decided whether a link is positive or negative for your SEO, it is time to use the metrics to remove links.
It is important to keep in mind that metrics are always an indicative and not decisive factor, the ideal would be to review the websites manually to make a decision ourselves. It is also advisable, if possible, to use all the metrics simultaneously to make a much more solid decision.
The first thing we will do is use Majestic to measure the domain that links to us. If the domain has a high citation flow (number of links) and a low trust flow (quality of links), as long as the difference is excessive, we will discard the link.
If we think about it for a moment… What does it mean that a domain has a very high citation flow and a low trust flow? It is a site to which many web pages point but none or very few of those links are of quality.
You should not confuse this point with a site having a low trust flow. For example, a site with a trust flow of 5 and a citation flow of 15, despite having a low ratio of 0.33 and being below the average (0.50), can be a quality site related to our topic that influences positively, although very little, in our SEO. It is possible that said site has just started and, as you already know, earning domain importance is something that takes time. The important thing is to rule out extreme values like the first one.
If with an inspection of the domain’s ratios and metrics you have not cleared up doubts, do it from the specific web page that points you to following the same guidelines, it is possible that the domain is not completely bad but the specific page is or vice versa.
You should complement all of the above with Moz and Ahrefs metrics. The objective is the same as before, that is:
- First examine the domain. If it has an exaggerated amount of incoming links and a low domain authority (Moz) or domain rating (Ahrefs) we will discard it.
- If the values for the domain are more or less correct, we will analyze the specific page that points to us for the same pattern.
How to remove links to our website?
The option to remove links from Google must be used very carefully as it can negatively affect our SEO. We should only use it when we are really sure that we are not interested in the site that is linking to us.
The first thing we will try is to ask them to remove the link through the contact form on the specific website or the corresponding email. A piece of advice, never pay to remove them, do not contribute to the objective of the Black Hat SEO websites.
After a few days, if we have not received a response, we will disavow the link on Google using disavow.
The process is simple, we have to generate a .txt file encoded in UTF-8 or 7-bit ASCII with the URLs to remove. You can only disavow entire domains or specific web pages. The format of the disavow file is the following:
Example of a disavow file with specific pages:
# Specific pages that we want to disavow
http://spamPage.com/folder/webPage.html
http://spamPage.com/folder/webPage2.htmlExample of disavow file with domains:
# Entire domains to disavow (must start with 'domain:')
domain:secondSpamPage.comFinally we must send the disavow file to Google, for which we have to select the affected website (ours, to which they point) and, obviously, the file.
As you can see, everything explained in this post is done quite manually and for free. If you need to carry out the process for large websites and in a slightly more automatic way, you will have to use payment solutions. Since I prefer free methods to remove links, I am not going to make any recommendations in this regard.
However, for both large and small websites, always keep in mind what I have told you, use common sense and your own judgment without being blinded by the metrics. A manual analysis will be much more effective than an automatic one, although obviously more expensive in terms of work.
