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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 If you notice anything that is out of date, could be more clear or could be more efficient please update the SOP or add a comment to start a conversation.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

Spam backlinks are links to your site from bad, irrelevant websites. Too many of these will cause Google to take action against your site. From time to time, we may need to clean up backlink profiles to maintain authority with Google.

Procedure

Inputs:

  • You have a considerable number of spammy, artificial, or low-quality links pointing to your site

  • The links have caused a manual action, or likely will cause a manual action, on your site.

 Step 1: Navigate into Google Search Console

 Step 2: On the left-hand menu, navigate to "Security & Manual Actions"

 Step 3: Select "Manual Actions"

If there's a manual action named "Unnatural Links to Your Site" then a backlink scan and disavow is necessary

 Step 4: Open the client sheet & create a new tab labeled “Backlink Scan”

This is where you will paste your list of backlinks

 Step 5: Open up the SEO Chrome Profile

 Step 6: Navigate to https://majestic.com/ to export backlinks data

  • Log in

  • Enter the name of the website into the search bar

    • You may need to search BOTH the HTTP and HTTPS to get the full backlink profile

    • If this is the first time this is being done for a client, select “Historic Index”

    • If this is part of their regular cycle (every three months) select “Fresh Index”

    • Search

      • Your results page should look like this ^

  • Select Backlinks

  • 1 backlink per domain

  • Show deleted backlinks

  • Click Export Data

  • Export the Data to a Google Sheet

 Step 7: Navigate to the newly created Google sheet

  • Select ONLY the data in the following columns (M-Q):

    • Domain

    • DomainTrustFlow

    • DomainCitationFlow

    • DomainTopicalTrustFlow_Topic_0

    • DomainTopicalTrustFlow_Value_0

 Step 8: Head to the Backlink Sheet

Do not edit the formatting of this sheet

  • Click on the little arrow by the title of the column and sort column C Z-A

  • Then sort column B Z-A

  • Your sheet should look like this ^

  • Look at column B and delete any rows with a 10 or higher

  • Now check the website for each remaining link. If it seems related to the dealership or the vertical (Powersports, RV, Boats, Agriculture), remove the row from the list.

There is no way to reverse a disavow. Be extra careful when leaving domains on this list as removing a valuable, relevant domain can hurt the client

If you’re unsure, compile a list of domains you’re unsure about highlight the domain so the Rep knows to double check those specifically before we submit the final disavow file

 Step 9: Copy your list of domains and paste them in column B on the disavow.txt file

Details…

 Step 10: Go back to your Backlink Scan tab on the client sheet & paste your data

  • Paste Column A rows 1-3 into the top of the sheet

  • Copy the list of domains in column C and paste it below the top three rows

    • When new domains are added after the first backlink scan, add them below the current disavowed list. We want to submit the full list each time we add more domains.

      • Your final sheet should look like this ^

 Step 11: Message the SEO Rep for a final check before submitting

  • Send the SEO rep a message with a link to the backlink scan tab on their client doc

  • Once approved by the rep, we can submit the list to Google.

    • This can take up to a month as some dealers have enormous lists to sort through.

 Step 12: Open your favorite text editor

  • Paste all of column A into the editor and save the file

    • Make sure the filename ends with “.txt”

      • Eg: athensrvdisavow.txt

 Step 13: Be logged into GSC & navigate to the "Disavow Links" page

  • Select the dealer website

    • If a site has moved to HTTPS, you may need to log into the SEM google account to find the most current search console entry

  • Click Disavow Links

  • Upload your .txt file

  • Submit

 Step 14: Head to the Client Sheet

  • In the client sheet, under “Juniper Work Done” in the “Work Done Import” tab, copy/paste the following:

    • Last month, we completed a backlink scan for your website. Backlinks are links to your site from other websites. Google uses these links to help understand how authoritative your dealership is for a broad range of keywords. Using our crawling tools, we analyzed your list of backlinks and requested that Google disavow- or not consider- links from unrelated or spammy websites.

Note: Please clean up the Backlink Scan document each time you finish with it. You can click into each tab and CTRL+Z until the document is how you found it.

Outputs:

  • Removal of backlinks that could be hurting your rankings

    • This makes backlinks from authoritative sites stand out even more

FAQs

 How often is spam link monitoring done?

This only needs to be done every 4 months (3x a year) and is done in batches to help keep things organized.