1.
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
Megan Geiss, Director, Marketing Strategy, Merkle | RKG
LINK PRACTICES:
KEEPING YOU OUT
OF “JAIL”

2.
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
Megan Geiss
Director, Marketing Strategy
Merkle | RKG

3.
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
 Major financial company
 4 domains (2 with manual action penalties)
 270,000 Backlinks
 4100 referring domains
 Reconsideration granted on first try
 HOW DID WE DO THAT?
CLIENT EXAMPLE

4.
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
 Assessing Your Risk
 Penalty Rescue
TODAY’S DISCUSSION

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#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
Are you at risk?
Backlink Profile Audit

6.
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
 Penguin or Manual Action
 Penguin = Algorithmic Penalty
 Manual action = Notification
 What to look for
 Assessing the overall health of a backlink profile
 Patterns, trends, red flags, anomalies
 Potentially threatening egregious backlinks
 Do you need a penalty rescue?
BACKGROUND

7.
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
 There are clear signals that will help in
determinations
 Quality metrics
 Referring Domains
 C-blocks
 Anchor Text
 Geo-Location
 Sitewide Links
 Advertorials
 Relevancy
RISK ASSESMENT

8.
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
 Link Velocity
 Newly discovered backlinks
 Referring Domains
 Link network detection
 ID client owned domains
 C-block analysis
 Anchor Text
 Low ratio of referring domains to backlinks
 High % of sitewide links
 High %'s for money terms/phrases
 Exact match anchor text % relative to entire backlink profile
 Followed images ("advertorials" passing PR)
 Links to home page vs. deep pages
TIME TO BE A DETECTIVE

9.
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
 Majestic SEO
 Comprehensive inventory of inbound links
 Ahrefs
 Deep dive into anchor text analysis
 Moz Open Site Explorer
 Analyzing authority and trust of backlinks
 Google Webmaster Tools
 Sample data from Google’s index
TOOLS

10.
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
ANALYSIS
Majestic SEO can
help determine
UNNATURAL
spikes in inbound
links

11.
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
AND MORE ANALYSIS…
Pivot table
anchor text data
to determine
ratio of referring
domains to links

12.
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
…AND MORE ANALYSIS
Use Majestic SEO
to pinpoint geo-
location red flags

13.
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
AND MORE ANALYSIS….
Highlight low
Citation and Trust
flow via Majestic
SEO

14.
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
EVEN MORE ANALYSIS….
Use MOZ’s Open
Site Explorer to
look at page level
link data

15.
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
Penalty Rescue
Has Your Site Been Hit?

16.
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
A significant drop in traffic and that is
not due to other site architectural or
crawling issues
HOW WILL YOU KNOW?

17.
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
Gather all backlinks
Rank by quality
Analysis
Outreach for removal requests
Follow up
Disavow tool
Reconsideration request
PROCESS, PROCESS, PROCESS
1
2
3
5
6
4
7

18.
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
 Create a comprehensive inventory
of all inbound links.
 There are 2 primary sources:
 Majestic SEO (fresh index)
 GWT for representative sample of
Google’s Index
GATHER ALL THE BACKLINKS1

19.
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
 Consolidate and de-dupe Majestic and GWT
 Remove nofollows
 Filter by Citation Flow (we use 30 or below)
 Look for IP patterns or trends within C-blocks
RANK BY QUALITY2

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#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
 Analyze and evaluate the filtered master list.
 Determine if a backlink or domain is outside of
Google’s quality guidelines or falls within an
identified link scheme.
 Manually review domains
ANALYSIS3

21.
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
 Gather contact information for the identified removal
targets
 Can be done during manual analysis
 Minimum 2 outreach attempts
 Be kind…. This is human interaction
 Document as much of the communications as possible to
later include in the reconsideration request.
OUTREACH FOR REMOVAL4

22.
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
 Typical removal request
responses:
 Webmaster removes link
 Webmaster requests payment
to remove link
 Webmaster removes link and
doesn't tell you
 No response
FOLLOW UP5

23.
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
 Completed due diligence to remove low-quality links
 Create file in .txt (must be encoded in UTF-8 or 7-bit ASCII) – one URL per line
 Disavow entire domains with this notation: “domain:example.com”
 Include additional information with the "#" character
 All lines beginning with # will be ignored
 Avoid common mistakes:
 Disavowing “just enough” to get by
 Disavowing everything
 Upload a new list overwrites the old
DISAVOW TOOL6

24.
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
 Tell the story…
 Google is looking for the
following:
 Admit the mistake
 Website has stopped the
violations
 Has cleaned up egregious
links as much as possible
 A good faith assurance
RECONSIDERATION REQUEST7

25.
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
HAPPY ENDINGS

26.
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
 Rebuilding a healthy backlink profile can lead
to more than just links
 39% rate of influencer engagement
 2,383 social mentions during (Likes, Shares, Tweets,
etc.)
 Site Visits from Campaign: Incremental 17k
 44 Unique Article Posts
 2,034 organically earned backlinks
WHAT’S NEXT?

27.
#SMX #14A @MeganGeiss
THANK YOU!
Megan Geiss
Director, Marketing Strategy
Merkle | RKG
mgeiss@merkleinc.com