Reciprocal linking penalty?
-
Hey,
I have a site with a possible excessive reciprocal linking penalty. It has had a -50 penalty since October. I sent a reconsideration request in December but there has been no change.
I actually dumped all the recip links from my site back in 2009, but there were thousands of them - it really was an excessive campaign that went on for years.
Would it be worth it to try and have the recip links removed, like what people do with a paid links penalty? I can get the email addresses of most of these sites but it will be a huge undertaking.
I haven't done anything else wrong with this site, but it does have a content problem that I've been working on. It was hit by the very first round of Panda, but I was working that out up until the penalty in October.
What would you do?
-
No problem, Hope it turns out well for you.
-
Oh good ideas, thank you so much!
-
My thinking is that during this time you would have rehabbed the main site enough that it might not be penalized but also might not be as strong as your new site with a squeaky clean profile. So my thinking is that it wouldn't hurt. Now if you didn't rehab the main site and did a 301 then I do think it might hurt your new site. I hope this helps in your decision. Good luck and keep me posted on how it goes.
-
Thank you for your ideas - the only thing that worries me is 301ing a penalized domain to a new site.
Is it possible that the penalty could transfer you think? I've heard both that it does and doesn't.
-
You might want to consider doing both at the same time. Rehab your main site while you simultaneously build a new site. My thinking is hypothetical here but I believe it is worth a shot. What happens if you keep your main site and try to rehab but nothing ever fixes it because so much damage has been done? Or what happens if you dump that site to start a new one and it takes you years to get to where you once were, or possibly you could lose so much ground to others that you might never catch up. Now by doing a simultaneous site campaign you can give yourself 6 months to a year of hard work on both to see which one has the best results and then reassess your situation. Now this only works by not interlinking your sites. Google will think you are trying to game them instead of your real goal of having a clean link profile with a legit site. Once the test is done and you've determined which site is the strongest you can then 301 redirect one to the other. Just a thought.
-
Okay. Thank you for the advice!
-
I agree, starting from scratch would be a quicker and easier option. However, by doing this the authority and value that has been built up on the domain will be lost. Ultimately I think it would be better in the long run to clean up the current site.
-
Thanks, I'm thinking about it, but this site is almost 14 years old and has a number of good links from libraries and universities...
I'm totally willing to try and contact all the sites I exchanged links with - but is that a dumb idea?
-
Yes if I were in your position I would contact all the sites that you created reciprocal links with and have them remove your link from their sites. It is not enough to just remove their links from your site. Once you have done this you can then concentrate on gaining good quality links to replace the links you've had removed.
Finally, you can prepare you reconsideration request to Google. Check this link for tips from Google on how to prepare your request:
Tips on requesting reconsideration
Adam
-
Is it going to take longer to clean the site up than to start a new one?
If so, I'd bite the bullet and start a new one.
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
-
Internal links: How do I find keywords that are not linked to a URL?
Hi Moz members I'd really like to place an internal link of every instance of an important keyword phrase "cycling caps" or "cycling cap" to my eComm category page
Link Building | | andystorey
https://www.prendas.co.uk/collections/headwear/cotton-caps I feel this would not only help my customers browsing my store, but I believe it will help from an SEO perspective. How can I search my site using Moz, Screaming Frog, Google etc to find every time cycling cap(s) is used but is not linked to the above URL? I can then apply the same for cycling jerseys, socks, etc Andy0 -
Does nofollow link has any effect on link building
I recently read some article on noflollow link and the author says that nofollow link does have some effect on page rank. Can anyone explain the effect of nofollow link on website ranking?
Link Building | | petwho0 -
Do NoFollow links count at all?
Does anyone really know whether or not links with rel=nofollow provide any value for link building at all? Thanks in advance!
Link Building | | dan.backowski1 -
How To Increase Back Links
Our web store, www.audiobooksonline.com has good PageRank (6) compared to some competitors for the keywords audiobook, audiobooks, audio book, audio books. One big difference is that most top ranking competitors have significantly more back links including from .gov and .edu sites. Our domain URL has been on the Web since 1997 so naturally occurring back links likely has run its course. What is the best way to get more back links? Best tool to get back links with?
Link Building | | lbohen0 -
Finding links online that already exist as link juice based on search results
I'm curious about this, I can't find anything on the net that talks about it. I wrote an article about it on squidoo and have had no responses so I am thinking this is very rare subject. The question is I have done some backlink research with my competitors with linkdetective.com and found many links (even follow ones) related to sites that provide search results. Here are a link about what I am talking about as an example, I have found many more besides this one. http://search.lphant.com/es/webResults.html?q=free%20scrabble%20dictionary&hl=en&page=1&src=hmp_es&ref=1 My site appears in those results. When looking at the source there is no "nofollow". I found this page because linkdetective.com had this link listed pointing to my competitor. Are these valid backlinks? What I have been doing is adding these links to http://www.google.com/addurl so that Google knows about them. Is there something I am missing or are these valid?
Link Building | | cbielich0 -
Total Links vs Ext. Followed Links
Hi I'm fairly new to SEO and SEOMOZ. I've created a campaign for my own site and I've added 3 competitor sites. There are 1,385 total links to my site and a massive 49,450 links to one of my competitor's site. However under "Ext. Followed Links", there are 1,045 to my site and only 911 to the same competitor site. Am I correct that it is the "Ext. Followed Links" which are more important from an SEO point of view as the other links have the "no follow" attribute set? Or have I got this wrong? Thanks James
Link Building | | avecsys0 -
So I ran into a site that was not ranking 4 days ago and has over 2 million links to it on some keywords. My guess is this is a link bomb, but the issue is this is pushing one of my sites down. Does anyone know a good way to over come a bomb like this?
So I ran http://www.riogrande.com/ into this site not that long ago and wanted to see if any other SEO's have an opinion on it. I've seen a Google bomb before, but the amount of links going into this URL is insane. The thing is how does one over come a Google Bomb? Do you just wait to see what Google does or do you just hope to rank under that URL? I should also note that it appears that all the keywords to it are relevant to the sites content. Let me know your thoughts. Thanks
Link Building | | kateG12980