Standard SW-1:2026.2 · Category 8 of 9

Authority & Off-Page

The lowest-weighted technical category and deliberately so — off-page work is the slowest and least controllable lever, and it is where the most money is wasted in this industry. We inspect for damage and for unclaimed equity you already own, not for a link count.

Weight: 7 / 100
Checks: 3
Pass-blocking: 0
WOF analogue: Emissions

AU-01Minor failweight 3derived

Backlink profile shows no manipulation signature

Does your link profile contain patterns associated with penalties?

Pass, advisory and fail criteria for AU-01
Pass	Exact-match anchors under 15% of total, no velocity spikes, no material concentration in link networks.
Advisory	Historical low-quality links present but diluted and not the dominant pattern.
Fail	Exact-match anchors above 30%, clear paid-network concentration, or an unexplained acquisition spike.

Why it matters

Most low-quality links are simply ignored, so wholesale disavowing is usually unnecessary and occasionally harmful. What matters is a pattern that looks deliberately manipulated — an anchor distribution no natural profile produces, or a burst of links from one network. This standard reports the pattern and its evidence rather than a made-up toxicity number, because that number would be a guess presented as a measurement.

How we inspect it

We analyse referring domain composition, exact-match anchor ratio, acquisition velocity, and concentration in known link networks. We report patterns and their prevalence; we do not assign a proprietary toxicity score, because no third party can observe how a search engine actually evaluates a link.

Source: Third-party backlink index with anchor, velocity and source-pattern analysis

Remedy

1Export referring domains and classify by acquisition route: editorial, directory, paid, network, scraped.
2Measure anchor distribution — natural profiles are dominated by brand and URL anchors, not commercial phrases.
3Do not disavow reflexively; only consider it for links you or a previous provider actually placed.
4If a manual action exists, document the removal effort before disavowing.
5Stop any ongoing purchase before remediating, or you will be cleaning up behind yourself indefinitely.

Verification

Recheck re-pulls the referring domain set and re-measures anchor distribution and velocity.

Usually fixed by: SEO
Effort: Large · 1–3 days
Est. impact: medium
Typical cost: NZ$640–2,400

AU-02Minor failweight 2derived

No link equity lost to broken or redirected inbound links

Are external sites linking to pages that no longer resolve?

Pass, advisory and fail criteria for AU-02
Pass	No URL with material inbound links returns 4xx or redirects to an irrelevant page.
Advisory	Dead targets exist but only with low-value referring domains.
Fail	Any URL with ten or more referring domains returns 4xx or redirects to the homepage.

Why it matters

This is the highest return-per-hour item in the entire standard. Someone already did the hard part — they linked to you — and a migration or deletion threw it away. Reclaiming it is a redirect, typically fifteen minutes of work, and the equity returns on the next crawl. Every site more than a few years old has some of these, and most owners have no idea.

How we inspect it

Every URL with recorded inbound links is resolved and its status recorded, ranking dead targets by referring domain count and authority.

Source: Backlink index cross-referenced against live response codes

Remedy

1Export all inbound-linked URLs and resolve each one, sorting dead targets by referring domain count.
2301 each dead URL to the closest genuine equivalent — not the homepage, which is treated as a soft 404.
3Where no equivalent exists but the links are valuable, recreate a genuinely useful page at that URL.
4Repoint any inbound link currently landing on a redirect chain directly at the destination.
5Add this to your migration checklist permanently — it is where the equity is lost in the first place.

Verification

Recheck re-resolves all inbound-linked URLs and confirms single-hop resolution to relevant pages.

Usually fixed by: SEO
Effort: Small · 0.5–2 hrs
Est. impact: medium
Typical cost: NZ$120–480

AU-03Advisoryweight 2derived

Brand entity is consistently identified

Can a machine reliably determine who you are and connect your profiles?

Pass, advisory and fail criteria for AU-03
Pass	Organization entity present with sameAs to all verified profiles and consistent naming throughout.
Advisory	Entity present but sameAs coverage is incomplete.
Fail	No Organization entity and inconsistent naming across the site.

Why it matters

Search engines and answer engines both resolve content to entities before evaluating it. If your organisation cannot be confidently resolved and connected to its verified profiles, corroborating signals fragment across several partial identities. Entity clarity is becoming the practical substitute for the authority signals that used to come purely from links.

How we inspect it

We check for a site-wide Organization entity, the completeness of its sameAs references to verified profiles, and consistency of legal and trading name across the site and those profiles.

Source: Organization markup, sameAs coverage and cross-source name consistency

Remedy

1Publish an Organization or LocalBusiness entity site-wide with a stable @id.
2Add sameAs references to every profile you control and have verified.
3Use one consistent trading name everywhere; note the legal name separately if it differs.
4Maintain a substantive About page stating who operates the business, where, and since when.
5Ensure author entities on editorial content are real, attributed and linked to verifiable profiles.

Verification

Recheck re-extracts the Organization entity and confirms sameAs coverage and naming consistency.

Usually fixed by: Owner
Effort: Medium · 2–8 hrs
Est. impact: medium
Typical cost: NZ$320–960