This presentation is from Affiliate Summit West 2015 (January 18-20, 2015 in Las Vegas, NV). Session description: The Link Audit is an essential part of any SEO strategy. Links & External Factors account for almost 50% of Google's Algorithm and links that used to help could now be hurting your chance to rank.

1. Presented by: Scott Polk Founder – Marketing Nomads
The Link Audit
Guide to Penalties and Recovery

2. The Link Audit

3. The Link Audit
Reasons
• Preemptive … before you get a penalty
• Penguin … devaluing of links
• Penalty – Unnatural Link Notification
• Algorithm Update

4. Google Penguin Updates
Penguin = devaluing of links AND websites
There have been 6+ Penguin updates sine 2012
• April 24, 2012 – Penguin v1.0
• May 25, 2012 – Penguin v1.1
• Oct 5, 2012 – Penguin v1.2
• May 22, 2013 – new version Penguin v2.0
• Oct 4, 2013 – Penguin v2.1
• Oct 17, 2014 – new version Penguin v3.0
• Nov 26, 2014 – Penguin v3.1
• Dec 1-4, 2014 – Penguin v3.x (rolling update)

5. Google Penguin Updates
Penguin … devaluing of links (Penguin v1.0)

6. Unnatural Link Notifications
Link Penalty Types
• Site-wide Matches - section lists actions
that impact an entire site.
• Partial Matches - section lists actions that
impact individual URLs or sections of a site.
This generally does not indicate which pages
are affected.

7. Penalty – Unnatural Link Notification
Manual Actions – Site-wide Matches

8. Penalty – Unnatural Link Notification
Manual Actions - Partial Matches

9. Data Collection

10. Link Audit: Data Collection
Utilize various sources of data
• Google Webmaster Tools
• LRT (Link Research Tools)
• SearchMetrics
• Ahrefs.com
• Majestic SEO
• Internal Link Acquisition Reports

11. The Link Audit: Data Analysis
Datapoints to look for
• Unique Linking Domain Count
• Links from penalized domains (PR0 – not in index)
• Links with Exact Match Anchor Text
• Site-wide Links (Footer – Sidebar)
• Links from non-relevant content
• Links from Article Directories &
• Links from Traditional Directories
• Links from same IP or C-Block
• Hidden Links within HTML
• Comment Spam (Follow & NoFollow)
• MozRank, Alexa, Domain Authority

12. Link Audit: Visual Review

13. The Link Audit: Visual Review
• Relevancy – is this site relevant to your site?
• Natural – does the link look natural?
• Location – where is the link located?

14. What is a Bad link?

15. Link Audit: What makes a bad link?
Author Bio Links

16. Link Audit: What makes a bad link?
Exact Match Anchor Text

17. Link Audit: What makes a bad link?
Hidden Links within HTML

18. Data Action Projects

19. The Link Audit: Data Action Projects
• Link Removal Requests
– Manual vs. Automated Tools (Used automated tools
to create links? Got a penalty? Please learn from this
mistake and do not use an automated tool)
• NoFollow
– Link sending you traffic or part of brand strategy?
Affiliate Links to your site
• Disavow
– If a link cannot be removed via requests. Do not pay
to have a link removed
• Affiliate Links

20. Link Removal Requests

21. The Link Audit: Data Action Projects
Link Removal Requests

22. Manual vs. Automated Tools

23. The Link Audit: Data Action Projects
Automated Software - Link Removal Requests
• I am the owner of Google Plus 

24. The Link Audit: Data Action Projects
Disavow

25. Affiliate/Merchant Links
Affiliate Links
• Do NOT try to gain link equity from Affiliate Links
– If it is an Affiliate Link then it’s PAID
• NoFollow
• Custom Landing Pages
– Create Custom 404 error page for Affiliates to link to
and use so the link equity will not pass

26. What’s Next?
Once you have cleaned the link profile, then
submit your documentation to Google.
If under manual penalty for links, wait for
response, if it is rejected repeat process
Once clear … start on Link Acquisition

27. Link Acquisition
• Organic Outreach of content – unique
– Interviews / Thought Leadership
– In-depth Articles
• Content Marketing
– Infographics (image & interactive)
– Videos