Scott is one of the UK’s most experienced technical SEOs and adds a strong enterprise level technological focus to Yard’s work. Having worked on technical audits, internationalisation projects and migration support for hundreds of websites, including global household brand names, throughout his 12 year technical SEO career, Scott has industry insights, competitive intelligence and technical solutions readily to hand for Yard clients and he will be sharing some of this knowledge in his presentation on link health audits and organic traffic recovery.

1. #SEOJocktoberFest
Link Health Audits & Organic Traffic Recovery
ID: Yard Guest
Pass: y@rdgu3st
@YardDigital
@Scott_McLay

2. A bit about me

3. Technical Lead & Strategist @ Yard
15 Years Digital Experience
SEO Audits
Link Health Audits
Website Migrations
Technical SEO
SEO Strategy & Planning
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(Ex) Coder (HTML, PHP & C#)
(Ex) Link Spammer
<3 VW Beetles (Only those that predate 1980)
Worst Public Speaker - EVER!
A bit about me

4. Why do we need link audits?

5. Google’s Webmaster Guidelines
Any links intended to manipulate PageRank or a site's
ranking in Google search results may be considered part
of a link scheme and a violation of Google’s Webmaster
Guidelines. This includes any behavior that manipulates
links to your site or outgoing links from your site
Why we need link audits
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en

6. What types of links?
Buying or selling links that pass PageRank (Includes
free gifts or exchange of services)
Excessive link exchanges
Large-scale article marketing or guest posting
campaigns with keyword-rich anchor text links
Using automated programs or services to create links to
your site
Why we need link audits
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en

7. In addition they say…..
Creating links that weren’t editorially placed or
vouched for by the site’s owner on a page, otherwise
known as unnatural links, can be considered a violation
of our guidelines
Why we need link audits
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en

8. Break their rules and….
Why we need link audits

9. Why we need link audits

10. A yes to one of these = link audit required
Have you ever had an SEO agency that built links?
Have you ever had a PR Agency that syndicated stories
online?
Have you had a website online for over a year?
Why we need link audits

11. How to conduct a link audit

12. My link health check process
Conducting a link audit

13. Top level link audits

14. Tools used
Kerboo for link scoring
Link Research tools for site classification
Most Importantly…
Majestic, Ahrefs & Search Console for Link Data
Top level link audits

15. Metrics used
LinkRisk Classification (Bad, Suspicious, Good, etc…)
PageRisk & DirectoryRisk
Anchor Text Breakdown (Keyword, Brand, Natural, etc…)
Website Type Breakdown (Blog, Directory, Social, etc…)
Top level link audits

16. LinkRisk classification
Top level link audits
Investigation NeededHealthy Bad

17. LinkRisk classification
Top level link audits
Healthy Investigation Needed Bad

18. PageRisk & DirectoryRisk
Custom metrics used to aggregate LinkRisk score by a
single page or website directory and assign a score
between 0 and 10
Top level link audits

19. Anchor Text breakdown
Anchor text is one of the signals Google uses to work
out if a link is manipulative
High percentage of keyword anchor text is sign that
link spam may exist
Top level link audits

20. Website Type Breakdown
The following are considered as spam, no matter what
the anchor text or metrics are:
Low value website directories
Low value bookmarking websites
PR Syndication websites
Article syndication websites
Top level link audits

21. What is a healthy profile?
A healthy link profile contains the following
characteristics:
LinkRisk score of < 550
Small percentage of keyword anchor text
Low percentage or no low value links
Top level link audits

22. 90% of the time I end up like this….

24. Manual Reviews

25. Tools used
Kerboo for link management
Majestic, Ahrefs & Search Console for Link Data
Most Importantly…
YOUR EYES & experience
Manual Reviews

26. Classifying Your Links
During manual reviews I assign 1 of 3 classifications:
Healthy (In no way manipulative)
Suspicious (Guest posts & potentially paid links)
Toxic (Directories, Bookmarks, Scraper websites)
Manual Reviews

27. What does a good link look like?
Manual Reviews

28. What does a healthy link look like?
Manual Reviews

29. What does a suspicious link look like?
Manual Reviews

31. What does a Toxic link look like?
Manual Reviews

32. Ask yourself….
Is this an authoritative website?
Has it got the potential to drive traffic?
Was the link editorially placed?
How might Google view this link?
Manual Reviews

33. Link Removals

34. The process
1) Get contact details for all websites
2) Draft a email template
3) Email the list
4) Check if the links have been removed
5) Remove the webmasters that have taken action
6) Repeat steps 3,4 & 5 another 2 times
Link Removals

35. Finding contact details
Majority of websites will have contact info available
Check their website
Check the whois domain registration database
Check any other websites the webmaster owns
Check their facebook account
Link Removals

36. Email templates
Follow the following rules when creating your email
template:
1) Be polite
2) Be clear
3) Have a degree of personalisation i.e. first name
Link Removals

37. Email template example
Link Removals

39. Mail merge
Use data hook's ([Name]) within your template and use
your excel database of contact info and email template
within word to perform a mail merge to quickly contact
the list
Link Removals

40. Checking if a link has been removed
Use a crawler such as Screaming Frog to crawl the pages
where links exist - using a custom filter containing
your domain name
Link Removals

41. Disavowing Links

42. The process
To successfully disavow links you must
1) Create a notepad file (.txt)
2) Find which websites have multiple links
3) Use domain: prefix to disavow at domain level
a) Use excel’s CONCATENATE formula to quickly generate
b) Paste the list into the notepad file
4) Paste the rest of the URLs into the notepad file
5) Check the list for errors
6) Upload to Google
Disavowing Links

43. Reconsideration Requests

44. Writing a good recon request
● Be honest about previous SEO tactics
● Detail the steps taken to resolve the issues
● Highlight the number of links removed & disavowed
● Link to a gDoc with a list of all “bad” links
● Say it will never happen again
Reconsideration Requests

45. Organic traffic recovery

46. Manual action removed but not a full recovery
Organic traffic recovery

48. Algorithmic filters
Only a few algo filters are public (i.e. Penguin &
Panda) but many exist
● Link velocity
● Anchor text
● P13 / P30 / P60
Organic traffic recovery

49. Recovering your traffic
Organic traffic recovery
Some links removed may have been providing SEO value
despite having the characteristics of a “bad” link so
authority will be lost

50. Link building tactics that still work
● Link reclamation
● Content creation and outreach
● Real world sponsorships i.e. Events
● Releasing news stories to the media
Organic traffic recovery

51. Build topical authority
Don't concentrate on pure link authority, instead build
topical authority by creating topical hubs around the
products or services that will GAIN relevant links.
Organic traffic recovery

52. Audit your technical setup
● Are there redirect or canonical tag issues?
● Is the website IA optimal?
● Is the website multi device compatible?
● Is there any duplicate content?
● Is the website blocking crawlers?
Organic traffic recovery

53. Thank you!
Scott McLay
@Scott_McLay
@YardDigital