This SOP is a work in progress. If you notice anything that is out of date, could be more clear or could be more efficient please update the SOP or add a comment to start a conversation.
Purpose
This document is to explain what backlinks are and how they affect SEO.
Procedure
What is a Backlink Scan?
A backlink is another domain or website has a hyperlink that links back to the client site. Every single link to your client’s website from another source is a backlink. Now when determining the authority of a website, Google looks at a site’s backlink profile to help decide how well or how highly to rank that website. It considers the topic of the linking domains, the authority of the linking domains, and a plethora of other factors that are used when determining how to rank a site. The more good links, the more trust Google will have in your website. If they notice too many bad links, especially those from private blog networks (PBNs) or spammy websites they don’t trust your domain as much, meaning they won’t rank your website as highly.
What does this mean?
It means we want links from relevant authoritative sites. However, just because a site may have low authority or be slightly off-topic doesn’t mean it’s a bad link. It’s up to us to determine what is a good and what is a bad backlink.
It is recommended that you only disavow backlinks if you believe they are a considerable number of spammy, artificial, or low-quality links pointing back to your site and if you are confident that they links are causing issues for you.
How does this help the SEO campaign?
By disavowing bad links, it allows us to tell Google “Hey, we know these links are linking to our website, but please don’t hold them against us.” Google will then not consider those links- good or bad- when analyzing our website’s backlink profile.
How is this done?
Using Majestic, the internet is crawled to find links to a client's domain. From there, our teams in Mexico and Belize will do an initial sweep of the list removing domains that qualify as good backlinks, since this will be a list of the bad domains we want to get rid of. This will be done every 4 months or 3 times a year for each client.
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Navigate to the client doc
There’s now a tab labeled “Backlink scan”
Here, there are a bunch of domains listed. These domains are sites that link back to your dealer's site! “Good Links” have already been removed from this list as this is a list we will be submitting to Google to “disavow”.
Give the list of Domains a read. If you notice any that may be relevant to your dealership, check them out in an incognito window.
IF they are relevant, remove the domain from the list by deleting the row with the domain. Domains on the list will be disavowed by Google, so if it’s relevant to your website, get it off of this list.
IF they are NOT relevant, leave them on the list!
A domain should only be considered not relevant if it is spammy, artificial, or a low-quality link pointing back to your site that is causing issues for the site
Once you’ve checked the entire list, respond to the person who initially messaged you letting them know that you’ve completed your check and the list is ready to disavow!
Make sure to add to your work done for the month that you completed a backlink scan.
This month we also performed a backlink scan for your site. We looked at all of the sites that are pointing to your site and disavowed any links that could be causing harm to your site. When we disavow a link we let Google know that we do not want that link to reflect on your site in the eyes of Google. This will prevent spammy, artificial, or low-quality links from bringing the ranks of your site down or causing us to incur a penalty.
Q&A
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Because we don’t want “bad backlinks”, we want to make sure any that exist (whether on purpose or accident) are not taken into consideration when determining the overall authority of your client’s website. When we submit our disavow list we’re literally telling Google, “Hey, we don’t want these websites to count against us when you determine our rankings.” |
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Sometimes, a dealer may receive an email about the disavow submission (depending on their connectivity to search console). We have this templated response prepared in case a client reaches out to you concerned or confused about the disavow submission: “Your backlink profile consists of every domain that has a link to your website. Google looks at your backlinks to help determine your relevance and authority on any given topic. An example of a good link would be from the New York Times, your local newspaper, or other reputable and relevant website. A bad link usually comes from spammy websites whose only purpose is to provide links. Google will boost sites with good links and the more good links you have, the more likely your site will rank higher for related queries. We analyzed all of your backlinks to determine which links were beneficial and submitted a disavow file to Google requesting that links from the bad domains are not counted towards our overall site authority. This helps us manage any spammy links that may have generated over the life of your site and ensure we're sending the proper signals to Google.” On months when a backlink scan is completed for your clients, be sure it’s mentioned in the work done. When having a reporting call, you can talk about the types of websites you found links from, what the disavow file does, and why it’s important in their overall SEO campaign. |
What are Some Common Dealer Questions?
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No. It directly violates Google’s TOS to buy links to your website and if caught, your site can face severe penalties. Additionally, if you have to buy the link, it’s unlikely to be a good link and will only hurt in the long run. You can always reference this official Google document: |
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