With the latest major update recently launched by Google, the Penguin update, webmasters and SEO's have been desperately trying to figure out how to fix the issues caught by the algorithm. Using backlink exports from Open Site Explorer, Link Detective, and the amazing power of Excel, I break down my process for analyzing a site's backlink profile and identifying problematic areas for SEOs and webmasters to fix.
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Mark Ginsberg KahenaconMay 23, 2012
Announced on April 24 official Google post Originally feared
Over Optimization Algorithm mentioned by Matt Cutts at SXSW on
March 16, 2012 audio available here -
http://www.seroundtable.com/google-over-seo-update- 14887.html Matt
Cutts said at the conference: What about the people optimizing
really hard and doing a lot of SEO. All those people doing, for
lack of a better word, over optimization or overly SEO - versus
those Posted by Rick Bucich making great content and great site. We
are on Google+ trying to make GoogleBot smarter, make our relevance
better, and we are also looking for those who abuse it, like too
many keywords on a page, or exchange way too many links or go well
beyond what you normally expect
Penguin launch followed on heels of Panda refresh, parked
domain classifier bug, and previous deindexation of blog networks
Webmasters were already seeing major shifts and changes in the
SERPs Penguin followed on heels of infamous unnatural links email
in Webmaster Tools See Andrew Shotlands interesting theory Site
usually took a dive in the rankings ~2 about the origins of the
weeks after the initial email name on his blog Question of Negative
SEO can you hurt another site with offsite attacks
SEO Visibility data provided by Search Metrics
-http://www.searchmetrics.com/en/
Historical Ranking data provided by Search Metrics
-http://www.searchmetrics.com/en/
What you will need: A list of your sites backlinks Free
subscription to the awesome tool Link Detective Microsoft Excel
Steps Pull external links in OSE to root domain Upload the CSV file
to Link Detective and let Eppies magic tool go to work
Initial Steps Save the csv file as an Excel workbook any
formatting you do will be saved and will save lots of aggravation
later when you reopen it and its all gone With one of the cells of
data selected, hit CTRL + L and turn the data into a table much
more fun to work with easier to sort and filter
Clean Up the Data Make all anchor text lowercase Decode HTML in
anchor text (SEO Tools for Excel) Use nifty formula to clean up
target page URL Pull linking root domain to additional column Pivot
Table Row Labels Values (make sure you choose the right settings
for each) Target Page Count of Anchor Text Link Type Average of PA
Anchor Text Average of DA
Create a new pivot table Row Label link type | Values count of
link type Create a pivot pie chart from the table Thats a lot of
dead links!
Filter out for dead links That looks a bit better
Create the pivot table Select any of the PA values Right click
and select group Starting at 1 End at 100 By:10
After removing deadlinks, we seeunnatural rise athighest
spectrum ofgraph whatscausing this?
Break down each groupvia targetpage, LRD, specificlinking page,
thenanchor text canalways remove rowlabels you dont need!
Group smalleranchor textstogether
Break down backlink profiles with pivot tables Page level and
domain level Do this for your competitors and compare Identify any
unnatural footprints Look at your anchor text distribution use
branded anchor text, naked anchors, more variety and synonyms Clean
it up as best as you can, hope this helps Build more high quality
natural links w/ smart anchor text Give Google a mea culpa or
better yet, blame it on a competitor