How much of your backlink profile comes from known link sellers?
Shane Dutka built a free database of 157,411 known link sellers from "various marketplaces, fiverr gigs, and those unsolicited emails we all love"
You can bet Google can identify these sites with ease.
It's a slick, impressive tool
Below is a partial link profile of a site known to have paid links and hit hard by Google's HCU. (For simplicity, only the first 2500 links from Ahrefs were uploaded- a larger upload would have found far more paid links)
Tool: SEO Shield 🛡️
Cost: Free 🆓
Now, IMPORTANTLY, you *shouldn't* run this tool and immediately disavow or remove all flagged links - especially if there's no evidence your site has suffered harm. Google seemingly has a large tolerance for paid/questionable links, and historically—if you believe them—they simply tend to ignore shady links.
On the other hand, since Google's Helpful Content Updates, we've seen Google crack down on over-aggressive SEO tactics, and many sites that have seen traffic declines have participated in paid link building, oftentimes from low-quality sites.
If you're working to "recover" a site, it may well be worth it to try cleaning up an overly-agressive, toxic link profile.
Nice work Shane Dutka!
Link in thread 🔗 🧵
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