Clean up links, sometimes you need it, sometimes you don’t. Know how to do it as a techie does.
Hiring Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) may be, at times, the best thing to do. Some may have even done all the work on their own, but sometimes there is always the need to clean-up links. The key here is to know how to check if it is truly a problem at hand. Then careful analysis of the things to do, and finally, knowing how to do link clean-up.
Here is a useful step-by-step guide to help you just in case you do need to clean links:
Before you do anything, see if you get a message that says something about getting a Reconsideration request, then you have a problem and may proceed directly to step 2.
Step 1: go to your Google Webmaster Tools link list. Here you may get an idea by going to Search
Traffic > Links to your site. Then examine the numbers that present itself in front of the screen. Look into the figure under Links to your site; examine the numbers listed under ‘who links the most’. Take for example if your total number for Links to your site is 180,000, having 89k is a lot of the share if you refer those listed under Who links the most, if this is the case-clean up. The same is true if a huge percentage of your most linked content is your homepage. Look for “run of site” links which are the most common cause of penalty. Because they are valueless and may be anything from a list of link, blogroll, an ad, or a footer.
This step is very tricky since there are no rules to follow in distinguishing good links from the bad ones. But, with careful inspections, separating the two will hardly be a problem.
Step 2: gathering of information. Now that you know there is a need for cleaning up, the next step involves a lot of lists. Specifically the Download more sample links and download latest links, both from the Who links the most Webmaster Tool. Then run both through a header checker. What’s left will be a smaller list that is to be checked manually.
Step 3: manual checking of links. This actually involves another 8 steps. When recording the links already checked, you can actually use any format. These can be found on Archology and free for downloading.
Step 4: Segregate between domains and links. It is basically all about two steps:
Download a list of all domains
Check this domain list with the existing list.
Step 5: cleaning and stocking up. This last step is the most confusing. This is after you have finished with step four. After all that has been done, you will now have four lists, namely:
Removed Link
Removed Domain
No Follow – for 302 redirect links
Disavow – unremoved links
Cleaning up links indeed takes a lot of effort but you will be saving money in the process. Nobody wants to pay for anything that is of no use, and the same goes for links. And aside from the money saved, you even learned something new and now know how to clean up links like a techie.