SEOClerks

Low Domain Authority - How to determine what backlinks you should keep



Write the reason you're deleting this FAQ

Low Domain Authority - How to determine what backlinks you should keep

There are a lot of factors when it comes to figuring out how much positive authority a website haves and if it is worth the trouble to get backlinks from the specific domain.
Worst yet, you may already be been having backlinks from certain websites that are deemed low quality in Google's algorithm and are actually dragging you down with them.

So how can you figure out if a backlink from a certain page or domain is good or bad for you?

Well, there are a lot of tools out there that can tell you the spam score a certain page haves by checking out their backlinks profile with the help of some algorithm.

1. The Open SIte Explorer from Moz - OSE is good at picking up spammy backlinks and letting your know the spam score.
This is the tool: https://moz.com/researchtools/ose/

If I stumble upon anything that haves a higher spam score than 5/17 I step away from getting a backlink from that domain or if I deal with a website that already haves such a spam score, I find the backlinks that produce the problem and disavow them in Google Search Console.

2. Another tool I use is Ahrefs - Ahrefs is the absolute master on one thing in particular: checking backlinks.
It won't tell you which are rubbishing and need removing but it will show you almost every live backlinks a website haves, including anchor text, actual source and everything in between and you already have more than enough information to implement a manual audit.

Usually, I filter everything by domain, showing just one backlink from every domain, this will filter and hide unnecessary site-wide backlinks, you can usually figure out if the backlinks are worth it just by checking one backlink. If the website I'm analyzing haves less than 200 unique domain backlinks I usually check all of them manually.

If the website I'm doing the backlinks profile analysis haves more than 200 unique domains backlinks I usually implement a few word based filters on the anchor text of each backlinks, spammy words that are usually used in low-quality link building or negative SEO attacks: porn, xxx, viagra, sex and stuff like that. I review each negative results and decide the outcome.

Once you have a list of negative backlinks you want to remove you can disavow from Google by using the Search Console tool here: https://www.google.com/webmasters/...savow-links-main

What are the main factors that deem a page or a domain low-quality in Google's eyes:

  • The content being displayed is not unique;
  • Too many external pages are linked on that page;
  • The page doesn't have any real value to users and searches, it doesn't solve any problem;
  • The page loads very slow giving an overall negative user experience;
  • The content itself is low quality with grammatical and spelling errors;
  • The structure of the website is chaotic and hard to understand;
  • No other high authority external sources link to it

So, these are my main methods and factors I take into consideration when reviewing a page possible authority score. If you have anything to add to all of this please do it in the comments below! I'll be glad if you can share with everybody some of your own and personal insights when it comes to this subject.

Comments

Please login or sign up to leave a comment

Join
kgord
Thank You for the information on backlinks. I think many on here will find it useful. It is always good to know what sites we trust and what sites to stay away from. I think that finding the sites that are trustworthy should be important for everyone who wants to use the internet and the information contained therein to make a super site.



Are you sure you want to delete this post?

Authord
Nice information, especially the Too many external pages are linked on that page; The benefit of reducing the number of links within a site’s global navigation is directly related to the number of links being reduced, and the amount of external links pointing to the site. Reducing the number of links by just a handful or a small percentage is unlikely to have much noticeable ranking effect. Similarly a site without substantial external links won’t have much PageRank to pass internally, and so even
doubling that amount won’t have a substantial impact on rankings.
improve the internal link structure of sites and as a result improve search engine rankings.Reducing the number of navigation links allows more benefit to flow from each link on the site, and since the navigation links appear on every page of the site, changes to the navigation link structure is multiplied greatly, increasing the link juice flowing from every single page on the site to the navigational items.



Are you sure you want to delete this post?

overcast
I think google goes through a lot of content related edits in that case. I have seen they even calling poor quality content to hubpages. Whereas most of the content from the hubpages was 1000 words and above. So this does look like a bad system to me. I am wondering if it's possible to make use of the backlinks internally to help the site. Domain authority seems to be dependent on that factor too I am hoping.



Are you sure you want to delete this post?

jpyy
Low domain authority might not always be bad. For instance, some websites are not trashy, but they haven't had time to really mature. In that case, we shouldn't simply be snobby toward them because of their young age and/or something else. Does anyone agree? I mean, a lot of low DA sites might even add up to something big.



Are you sure you want to delete this post?

kgord
Yes, it's possible, Rome wasn't built in a day after all, but some people may not waste time witha low domain site, nor wait for it to mature. That is the problem with that, as I see it.



Are you sure you want to delete this post?

Corzhens
Pardon me for this comment but I am again confused with the backlinks. It seems that the more I read about the details of backlinks, the more it becomes complicated. Where before my impression of backlinks is to post the site’s link on a popular blog or a big forum and also in social media. But now we are talking about low domain authority which is new to me. But thank you for the information that you are sharing. It is an added knowledge to me.



Are you sure you want to delete this post?