My First SEO and Site Audit
Hi Guys, So thought this might be helpful to share this. Last night I was looking into domain authority and backlinks on google. I know Kyle says that people shouldn't worry too much about backlinks and DA as they are not considered as criteria for ranking on google but anyway I googled as I was curious about building my DA organically.
I was led to a website by a guy called Neil Patel. A very good website may I add will be visiting again. It was a couple of articles I read and I will admit I probably didn't soak up too much information but anyway it lead me to create a new free account with SEMRUSH.
I actually opened an account with this company before when I first started out but back then I could not understand a thing. Fast forward to yesterday though and I took the advice of Neil Patel to create a new free account - NO TRIAL NECESSARY - and followed his instructions to do a BACKLINK AUDIT.
SEMRUSH - BACKLINK AUDIT - What Happened?
Wow, so with this it did a scan for all my backlinks on my site. There was a lot more than I thought but of these there was a good number that was marked with a high toxicity score. I noticed several websites with a backlink to my site all the same.
Probably 50 or so sites!
So, this may have been a mistake on my part but I took SEMRUSHs advice to create a disavow list for all these toxic backlinks. Maybe half of my backlinks will be disavowed because of this. Bad move - I don't know let me know what you think.
After this, I did a Site/SEO Audit
I am working on this now. Out the results so far has given me a list of Images missing ALT tags I need to update. There was one post with the too-long site title and other stuff as well to go through that may improve my SEO and site rankings.
The only problem I noticed ~ although it is quite limited as a free user you can still do quite a bit but with the Site Audit, you can only do once a month.
Still, I will be using this much more in the future I think. Results-wise I will have to see. I will write another blog if any noticeable changes because of this work. My current average position is 65 so let's see if this goes up any higher in a month or so's time.
Recent Comments
22
Very interesting, Alex, but right now, way over my head for the direction I am currently headed in! I wish you the best success with this endeavor!
Jeff
I also follow Neil Patel as he's a great authority on so many things. I've not yet joined SEM rush as was put off by the cost, but may go for the free account. Thanks for sharing
Hi,
Great post.
I personally follow Neil Patel and read a lot of his stuff. I actually audited just one page yesterday on Ubbersuggest. It was quite enlightening.
I actually use it in conjunction with Jaxxy for additional information.
I was actually planning to start exploring a few other keyword research tools to build a new post I am writing. I like to do more than just research a product. I prefer to use them in order to write my review.
I will join SEMRUSH now. I already know I need to fix some pictures because when I first started I didn't understand the importance of Alt text.
Candy Benn
Hi Candy, Highly recommend. I wouldn't jump right in with the free trial though. First, get used to its free resources. Backlink Audit and Site Audit are the 2 I recommend.
I'm there. I love this. I did a site audit and I found several errors which i'm fixing at the moment.
I love that it pinpoints all the errors and I don't need to search for them.
I'll be writing about this tool soon I know. I'll use it for a while first.
Candy Benn
Hi Alex,
Firstly, I'll say that Kyle's recommendations are not so much that backlinks have no bearing on rankings, because they do have some, but nowhere near as much as they used to.
I think Kyle's aim is for people to focus more on quality content, so that other's automatically link to your articles, rather than going out and chasing links for yourself.
A number of years ago it used to be the case that you could actually push yourself up in the rankings with high DA (domain authority) do-follow baclinks.
Do-follow simply means that some of that website's "authority" will be passed onto your website (or page/post) if you receive a backlink from them.
So, back in the day, some people went totally wild with purchasing backlinks, etc.
This is basically a form of Black Hat SEO, which is typically frowned upon.
If you want me to be honest, I've done it myself many years ago, and I've seen some superb results.
Basically a lot of forums and article directories had very high DA, so receiving a backlink from them (no matter how poor the quality of what you posted was) could literally push your own articles and websites up in the rankings.
From memory, I paid around about $100 a month and received around 30,000 of these links every month (someone basically owned some software that could automate this process).
I've seen many of my website articles rank this way, and I was getting bundles of traffic and sales.
BUT THEN, GOOGLE WISED UP
There were a few Google updates back in 2011 and 2012 that pretty much put an end to this type of backlinking,
However, there are still people who offer these types of services.
AVOID THEM AT ALL COSTS.
That being said, the vast majority of sites, especially forums and article directories now only have "no follow" links, which means you get no page/domain authority passed on through these links.
No follow links still have some bearing on ranking, but not as much as you would hope.
Nevertheless, purchasing backlinks of using the same type of services that I used will do more harm than good NOWADAYS.
In fact, purchasing one of these services and "getting caught" got see your website getting sandboxed, so no rankings, no traffic, no sales, no nothing.
And this is can take years to recover from,if at all.
As for Neil Patel, he's very known for his SEO stuff.
I believe he's been voted top 100 entrepreneurs under the age of 30 in the US a number of years ago, and is currently one of Forbes top 50 entrepreneurs under 35 in the world.
He's been going a long time, a great blog, and a great YouTube channel.
You will also want to check out his immeidate competition and friend most probably, Brian Dean, his website is Baclinko.
As for SEMRSUH, another fantastic SEO tool, but the toxicity score is a little hit and miss, in my opinion.
I would hazard a guess that most Wealthy Affiliate produced websites would have a "bad toxicity score" for at least the first 12-18 months, simply becuase they're new, have little authority, and not much content (as in 100s and 100s and 100s of articles).
In fact, I believe Neil has a YouTube video where he talks about backlinks, and the many sites that automatically link to him, but he discovered that nearly 80% of these sites were low authority and pretty new websites.
So, they would be considered "toxic" in SEMRUSH.
It hasn't done him any harm.
So the use of the word "toxicity" is a little misleading.
It's best to visit the site's that are linking to you, have a look around, and make your own mind up about the value they offer.
It will usually just be that they are less than a couple of years old, so aren't considered "trustworthy" yet., nothing untoward.
Thanks
Partha
Thanks Alex for the info on backlinks and Patel's Semrush and also Partha's sobering response. I believe that I can make a more informed decision on this.
Hugh
Hi Partha, Thanks for your input. The sites that I mostly spotted with my backlinks were all the same. I sent a disavow list to google last night which had a large % of my backlinks. Do you think this was a bad move? All were in the red for toxicity score.
Hi Alex,
I wouldn't say it was a bad move because SEMRUSH is an awesome tool.
However, it does very much depend on the score.
If the sites are scoring 100, then yes definitely disavow/remove immediately.
The great thing about SEMRUSH is it will tell you things that you won't see through the naked eye.
A prime example of this would be that a website that looks perfectly good at face value, but actually buys in spammy links every month.
You would never know this without using their tool.
However, SEMRUSH use 40 different toxic markers. You can check out what they all mean here:
https://www.semrush.com/kb/965-toxic-markers-description
That being said, there will also be websites that have a "good score" nearer to zero and a "bad score" nearer to 100, that you may not personally agree with.
I know there are many websites that have high DA, rank really well in Google, but when you visit the site, it's an absolute mess (in my opinion).
Pop-ups every 10 seconds, full of ads, affiliate links, slow load times, etc.
However, my main concern is how and why these sites are linking to you in the first place.
Are they linking to specific articles?
Are they linking to your home page?
Do you have a "relationship" with them on social media or within Wealthy Affiliate?
Have you actively sought links from these websites?
Why are they linking to you?
Tbh, this is not something that most people would need to worry about until a website becomes fairly successful, i.e. other website owners want to hang onto your coat tails.
So, just take a look at the websites yourself, see what you think, and work out what pages/posts they're linking, and why.
Partha
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I will watch you number with interest. This was a very informative post. Thanks.
Thanks drjec, I thought I would post as the info. may be helpful to people. If I see any improvements in respect to my SE ranking I will do another post.