More threads by Conor Treacy

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Hi folks,

I'm hunting for a tool to help sniff out bad sites. In particular it's targeted for link-wheel type setups, or dummy accounts created just for the purpose of generating a link.

We have run into a number of clients that are leaving a big, well known, "used to be a phone book business but now think they're in web design & seo", and we're going through link audits with them.

We use a number of different tools to see the various links, including ahrefs, but there are some blogs we stumble upon, can say without a doubt in OUR mind that it was setup purely as a link (dead traffic, hasn't been updated since early 2014, only has 5 posts etc), but there's no way to actually "prove" it was setup for that purpose - or is there?

Shady SEO's used to create link-wheels (some still do), and use various blackhat techniques for building hundreds or thousands of links. We can uncover the various links, but beyond checking the whois (which often links to cloudflare), does anyone have any tricks to sniffing out the bad places?

This is more for my own personal knowledge, we have clients that move from other "seo companies" that have been run through the ringer with bad links etc. Often times, the client (and the old SEO) claim there's been no blackhat performed, but we still find the bad links. While I have no intention on going back to the client and saying "see, I told you", it would be nice to have the knowledge for my own validation.
 
While it's not 100% accurate Moz' Spam Analysis tool in OSE is pretty helpful for identifying nefarious links. It doesn't show all the links in a profile 100% of the time but it's still a good resource.
 
Majestic. Pay attention to sites with low trust flow. Visit the site to see if they charge for links, removal, etc.

Moz would be another good 3rd option IMO but I find that the Moz index isn't as extensive, and updates a little later than ahrefs and majestic.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk
 

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