7 years old domain sandboxed for 8 months, wait or make a domain change?
-
Hello folks
The questions is, if a domain, 7 years old being sandboxed due to "notice of unnatural links to website" does it make sense to make a domain change (301 permanent redirect and make a "domain change" under google webmaster tools) to another, aged(!) domain name?
Website being sandboxed for over 8 months already and there is no chance to do anything with those "unnatural" links to website...Any suggestions?
-
Thanks! Interesting article.
-
Thanks, Sorry, it took me sometime to reply, I left on 16 and ust came back from abroad...
-
Unfortunately, there's no easy answer. I agree with Zsolt that this isn't a "sandbox" issue - it sounds like a classic (and severe) link-based penalty. The 301 can work, but it's not risk-free. Usually, you'll retain some of the link-juice and not carry the penalty, but the penalty does transfer in some situations. There's no good way to tell when and if it will.
I'm afraid you're right on reconsideration - you'd have to cut the vast majority of the bad links, and that's going to be very tricky. Your only other option, if the bad links are generally low-quality links (spammy article marketing, for example, as opposed to paid links), is to build strong, relevant links going forward and let the bad links fade out over time. That depends a lot on the severity and type of bad links, though.
If you've been waiting for things to change for 8 months and building decent links in that time, the 301 may be your best recourse. It's a bit of a last resort and it's not guaranteed to work, but it sounds like you may need to try it.
-
Also you can look at this as it is on this subject:
http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/getting-back-from-a-penalty-second-time-around
It took a very methodical approach to a reconsideration which i am sure Google appreciated, as cheesy as this might sound..... We all make mistakes, but it is if we learn from those mistakes that Google seems to care about..
-
Recently i remember Rand Talking in a white board Friday that the OSE Algo does not account for any spam metrics that Google does, it does gives a Trust ranking metric based on best practices and . The trust metric may be a good metric to look at.
I look up to page 180.... Any ideas if a link from page authority of "1" is "bad" link?
Not necessarily.... a 1 just means it has not been indexed by OSE i believe.
Also I am not sure that "Unnatural Links" automatically equates to a penalized domain link, it may just simply mean you got to many links from too many sources in too short of a time that could only be achieved by automation....
So looking for "penalized" domains could be a wild goose chase. I think you are in a pretty tough spot. The best course of action could be just wait longer and see if the penalty passes as links fall off that are "suspect"
-
Thanks...
it will be hard to find those bad links with this info:
| Page Authority | Domain Authority | Linking Root Domains | Total Links |
|
|
|
|
| 78/100 | 74/100 | 2,250 | 17,366 |
|
|
|
|I look up to page 180.... Any ideas if a link from page authority of "1" is "bad" link?
P.S. but it might be a good idea for guys at seomoz to implement some tool that will show those bad links... I think they can do this by looking for same sources of links for penalized domains....
-
Try to run opensiteexplorer here on seomoz.
This will expose your backlinks. Additionally, you may also want to try virante.com.
We just found out that we had some bad IP's on a shared server, so we decided to pay the difference for a brand spankin' new dedicated server.
Hope this helps and good luck Ferray!
-
I think Alan's theory is correct, but of course in theory
I would think as well that the bad links would not pass anything as he says they have already been discounted by G.
It appears you really do not have a choice.... And have little to loose with attempting the 301 as described, as you are already penalized.
At least if you do.... POSSIBLY the Good will follow, and the bad stay behind, but I am not sure if this is how it works though, but seems plausible. Also I believe penalties "drop off" after a while (1 - 2 years) as the "unnatural links" themselves will eventually drop off of G's index altogether.... Which will possibly drop the penalty.
Personally i would have a "Post 301 Strategy" in place to begin a link building campaign to this new URL that is high quality and informational in nature utilizing social signals heavily (BUT ETHICALLY ) and even stay away from White hat for a while as well until you establish a new "reputation" for yourself.
w00t!
-
yes, asked for reconsideration already, few times actually, that didnt work, and as I said if anyone knows how write a reconsideration email, which will make G people cry, I would pay for that
-
- All links dropped to position 200+
- Received notification from them: "notice of unnatural links to website"
- and yes, sent reconsideration to them, didn't work out.
If anyone can write a reconsideration email, which makes G people cry, I would pay for that
-
So do i understand you have already asked for reconsideration?
I have reason to believe that if you 301 your links, bad news wont follow you, but that is just my opinon I have no way of proving it, just a exprience I had, I could be completely wrong.
My thinking is that your bad links have been discouned already, your domain has ben punished, your 301 will not get credit for bad links only the good ones.
Changing is always a headache, but if you dont you will always wonder if you ae doing as well as you should.
-
How do you know it is penalized?
Did they notify you?
Have you asked for reconsideration?
-
doesn't penalized domain loses its PR? as our domain still has PR4...
-
Tried to explain to G... didn't work out... stuck here with penalized domain trying to figure out if to try and continue the hard work of creating press releases and articles to this penalized domains in hope that it will be break out from the penalty or just start from scratch and do all this work on new domain...
if moving to new domain, cant do that without 301... another question if there is anything good or bad in doing this, like getting all previous PR to new domain or getting this domain penalized right away, or maybe just neutral as we will have to make all SEO from the scratch...
still need to decide what to do..
-
You need to ask for a reconsideration if you cannot get those links removed.
You need to explain what happened (Did you hire an SEO firm who got these "unnatural" links.) Explain exactly what happened and if you were inexperienced when you did this, there are lots of SEO firms out there that claim they use "100% White Hat Tactics" Which in most cases is complete BS as a white hat tactic is not thousands of links in a day..... No matter how you want to spin it. (Before anyone screams at me yes there are perfectly rational explanations for a thousand links in a day sometimes.... Sometimes....)
There is a CHANCE (small chance) Google will take this info into consideration and give you a "reprise" or second chance...
I am not sure I would 301 a penalized domain to a new domain, but of course understand this may be un-avoidable.
Sorry for your troubles
w00t!
-
Great question, honestly, i haven't got a good answer
-
Thanks Zsolt
I see. The problem is that this website was pretty high in SEO results before the penalty happened, and this domain has too many links – tens of thousand, it is just impossible to discover which links are "bad" and even more harder to remove them... The domain authority is 72 which is pretty high as I see it, PR 4...
so if this is not a sandbox, there is no reason to wait for website to get out of it by himself, so, does it worth to move website to a new domain, as I understand 301 should pass PR, not sure about authority rank...
-
The case you mention is not sandboxing but penalty due to bad links. Sandbox only occurs with totally new domains in the first few months. Maybe you or the previous owner of the domain have purchased bulk links and google discovered it. You should remove those links and ask for reconsideration in google webmasters.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Gradual Increase in Domain Authority After Domain Migration But No Improvement in Organic Traffic Yet
We migrated our domain in early April and simultaneously added an SSL certificate. Everything was done by the books. All redirects implemented perfectly, very few errors. Google notified via Search Console. Despite all steps being done perfectly our domain authority dropped from 24 to 8. Organic traffic dropped from about 80 per day to about 10. Each month domain authority increases by 2 or 3. We are now back up to a DA of 16. But no improvement in organic traffic yet. At what point should organic traffic start to return? Hopefully the consistent improvement in DA is a good sign. I have been told that adding SSL and moving the domain at the same time was a very bad idea. We are starting link building next week. Hopefully that will help further. Any ideas as to when this situation will improve? Needless to say it has been awful for our business.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
Should I revive the old domain or just redirect all the juicy links to my new site?
I'm about to acquire a domain with a lot of great/highly authoritative backlinks. The links pointing to the domain are quite powerful and the domain is an exact match TLD. I have two options (that I know of 😞 1. I could redirect all the links to their new home(s) on my new site which offers the same resources the old site used to offer. or 2. I could rebuild the tools/content on this site. Ideally, I'd transfer to my new site as all those powerful links could help all my rankings. However, I'm worried that some of the powerful links will de-link once they see the site redirects elsewhere, even though it's offering the same content. Also, option one isn't an exact match domain. Which, I know, shouldn't make a difference now-a-days but regardless of what people say, it still seems to help out some sites in less competitive niches. One more thing to note: The domain that I'm purchasing is about 25 years old. I'm leaning toward option one. I want to make sure I put my best foot forward on this investment and thought it wise to consult the SEO gods.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ninel_P0 -
Changing categorisation effect on SEO
Hi I work on an ecommerce shop & we've discussed changing some of out categories. We have one named cupboards & lockers, but want to split this out, so we have Cupboards then Lockers so customers can browse through our main navigation like this. For SEO I know initially our rankings will be affected, but long term moving categories up a level will be an improvement & will be more relevant - has anyone does this before and could provide any advice? Becky
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Changing old style WP menu built with child pages or not?
Hi Mozzers, the very old theme of my client's site doesn't support the new WP menus, so the menu structure is built in the old way, with parent and child pages. For example the page whose url is www.site.com/rent/ is top level and the sub pages are like www.site.com/rent/cars/ or www.site.com/rent/trucks/ Also there are third generation pages like www.site.com/rent/cars/fiat500/ Since I am changing the theme, I am going to use the new WP menu system and I'd like to know if this parent/child url structure may hurt link equity propagation. My question is: should I detach the child pages from the parents and, according to that, change the urls of the child pages from:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DoMiSoL
www.site.com/rent/cars/ to www.site.com/rent-cars/ (and of course 301 redirect them) ? Or is it ok to leave the pages' url in the old parenting way? What is the best practice? Thank you very much! DoMiSoL Rossini0 -
Domain and Sitemap Question
Hi - I am hoping you can help me with this issue we are currently trying to solve. We are hosting our mobile site's content on a different domain than what the URL of the site is, though owned by same company. In Google Webmasters tool we have the mobile sitemap under "sitemaps.xyz.com", however the URL of the site is "m.xyz.com". We have submitted 60MM pages in the mobile sitemap, but only 1MM pages have been indexed. Do you think this set up causes confusion with the bots? Does this affect the crawlability of the site? Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ladylana
Eva0 -
Redirect on exact match domain to Brand domain question :)
Hi, If I have a website with the domain crazysocks.co.uk and a title tag 'black socks' would I see any benefit redirecting blacksocks.co.uk to crazysocks.co.uk, to give my keyword 'black socks' a boost in the SE's from the EMD. I see it loads where an EMD is indexed for its term but when you click the result it redirects to a branded domain. I personally cant see this being true but wanted to double check.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | activitysuper0 -
Where do I redirect a domain to strengthen another domain?
I've got a UK domain that I need to redirect to a US domain. Should I point it to the root domain or a landing page off the root and what it the benefit to doing one over the other?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JCorp0 -
Do any of you regularly use expired domains?
I know there has been discussion on using expired domains in the past. This is not so much a question as to how to do it or whether it works, but rather I would love to see how many of you use this in your backlink strategy. I have a domain in a low to moderately competitive niche that ranks really well, mostly on the power of a couple of expired domains. I bought the domains, created a quick wordpress site and pointed some anchor texted links to the site. It took some time for the expired domains to regain their PR, but when they did, the benefit was great. I'm considering whether I want to do this with another domain of mine. On one hand, it's a relatively inexpensive way to get some good quality anchor texted links. But, on the other hand, something in it feels "immoral" or "sneaky" to me. What do you think?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarieHaynes0