Did you know that outbound links on your website could hurt your search rankings?
It sounds crazy, but it’s true.
The harsh reality is that Google takes a VERY dim view to any behavior that results in the manipulation of a websites organic search ranking.
That includes links pointing to your site and your outbound links.
And you want to keep on Google’s good side right?
So how can we manage our outbound links without having to go through posts, pages and blog comments with a fine tooth comb?
It can be done in a way that doesn’t involve excessive amounts of time or in depth SEO knowledge – really.
The answer is a plugin called LinkPatrol and in this review I’ll show you exactly what it is, how it will help keep your website healthy and save you an inordinate amount of time in the process.
What is LinkPatrol?
LinkPatrol is a WordPress plugin from the team at Search Engine Journal that allows you to manage your outbound links.
You can find potentially damaging links and anchor text through various reporting options. You can then strip the link or add a nofollow tag to help keep your outbound link profile healthy.
You have the option to sort by authors, domains and keywords which makes this process very easy.
No more having to manage outbound links by hand because you can resolve these issues in bulk with a few clicks.
LinkPatrol works in conjunction with your existing SEO plugin to keep your site outbound link profile healthy and improve user experience.
Why do you need LinkPatrol
Google takes their link policy very seriously and has a couple of strict guidelines for webmasters to follow. If you have spam in the form of comments in your site, the original spammer will get penalized, but you too will get caught in the crossfire. That’s one problem.
The second one is outdated outgoing links. Outdated can refer to irrelevant, broken or dead links. If your site is over five years old, chances are that there are quite a few links that are outdated.
And you really don’t want outdated links in your site.
As time goes by, the number of posts in your blogs increases progressively. If you employ multiple authors, the number of outgoing links increases by leaps and bounds. After a point, it isn’t practically feasible to keep track of each outgoing link.
You need some form of automation – you need a software. Or to be technically specific, you need a WordPress plugin.
Who can really benefit from LinkPatrol?
The short answer is that anyone who runs a website or blog would be able to benefit from LinkPatrol. But what interest me are specific examples of how it can be used and by whom.
Let’s take a look at some specific examples:
A website owner that receives a link removal request
Companies that have been hit by Google’s updates (e.g. Penguin) and lost their rankings resort to sending out rather un-targeted emails without doing the leg work to figure out which links to actually remove.
Generally speaking this means that the link has been added to your site possibly through a blog comment or through a guest post with the purpose of manipulating Google’s algorithm.
Using LinkPatrol you can search for the domain and remove all of the offending URL’s in bulk. This process previously would have taken anything between 30 minutes to weeks depending on how many links were left.
You are the editor of a blog and contributors have been linking out to dodgy domains
If you’re in charge of the editorial side of things for a blog and have multiple contributors, there may come a time when you find out that authors have been linking out to domains they shouldn’t.
There have been occasions where contributors get approached by link building agencies and offered payment in exchange for links/mentions.
If this happens you can use LinkPatrol to filter down right to the individual author and see which sites they’ve been linking too. You can also filter by domain and then strip the links or no follow them with a few clicks.
You have affiliate links on your site that need nofollow tags adding
Affiliate links are considered to be paid links in Google’s eyes so it makes sense to add a nofollow tag to them.
This stops them from manipulating Google’s algorithm, or at least it’s supposed to. In any case it’s worth adding just in case.
With LinkPatrol you can add a nofollow tag on a per domain basis. Adding the tag manually can be VERY time consuming.
There are plenty more…
There are a lot more ways you can use these plugin, these are just a number of the examples that stand out right now.
LinkPatrol’s feature
I can see that an incredible amount of thought has gone into LinkPatrol and it’s tailor built to solve a very specific problem that no other WordPress plugin has been able to solve.
At a top level, LinkPatrol will help you:
- Remove spammy links.
- Remove questionable anchor text.
- Monitor links and keywords to keep your site healthy.
Let’s dive a bit deeper – what can it really do?
- “At a glance” domain reports.
- Helpful filtering options via domain, author or keywords.
- See the breakdown between internal/external links.
- Strip links in posts or pages.
- Strip links from comments.
- No follow links in posts or pages.
- No follow links in comments.
- Monitor links and keywords.
- One click undo to restore links.
- Minimal impact on server resources.
- CSV data exports.
LinkPatrol pro’s and con’s
Pro’s
- Straight forward and easy to use.
- See your outbound link profile at a glance.
- 1 click to remove links in bulk or individually.
- 1 click to add nofollow tags in bulk or individually.
- Minimal impact on server resources (it’s light weight).
Con’s
- No way to analyze links – but this is best left to external SEO tools.
- You can’t check for links that are redirects or broken – In a way this is a good thing because the server impact of running this feature would be huge.
Pricing
LinkPatrol follows a one-time pricing policy. It starts at $50 for one site, $100 for five and $200 for twenty sites. All plans include one year of support and updates.
Pricing policies for future updates and upgrades or extended support haven’t been announced as of yet.
Conclusion
LinkPatrol is in indispensable tool for site owners who are serious about SEO. If you’re an SEO analyst, you can conduct amazing audits using the LinkPatrol WordPress plugin and suggest your clients the changes they need to incorporate to improve their search engine rankings.
