I am getting an error message from Google Webmaster Tools and I don't know what to do to correct the problem
-
The message is:
"Dear site owner or webmaster of http://www.whitegyr.com/,We've detected that some of your site's pages may be using techniques that are outside Google's Webmaster Guidelines. If you have any questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support.
Sincerely,
Google Search Quality Team"
I have always tried to follow Google's guidelines and don't know what I am doing wrong, I have eight different websites all getting this warning and I don't know what is wrong, is there anyone you know that will look at my sites and advise me what I need to do to correct the problem?
Website with this warning:
artistalaska.com
cosmeticshandbook.com
homewindpower.ws
montanalandsale.com
outdoorpizzaoven.net
shoes-place.com
silverstatepost.com
www.whitegyr.com -
Great advice!
-
I'd take a step back and stop building links, and start cleaning up the links that have already been built that are a bit fishy.
There's an article directory on a site with a domain about best pet insurance that links to the shoe store (http://bestpetinsurance.org/myarticledirectory/). A UK SEO directory has a link to the same shoe site, under the category of flowers (http://www.seoukdirectory.com/index.php?search=Internet).
If these links were built with your knowledge and you have access to the list of links that were built, go and remove the ones that were bought to just be links and serve no purpose to a reader. Also go through Google Webmaster Tools, Bing Webmaster Center, and Open Site Explorer to look at incoming links and remove those bad links.
Look at the content in those websites. Clean out the junk and make the content good enough that someone would link there without prompting.
In short, think about if you were sitting down with someone from Google and explaining why these sites should be included in the index and have a high ranking. Make sure that everything under your control can be explained and is not embarrassing or going against their guidelines. Clean things up, then ask for a reinclusion request.
-
So now we should look for links back to our site using the site's URL as anchor text?
-
Here is some reading that may help explain what changes Google is making as of late to combat unnatural linking practices:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/identifying-link-penalties-in-2012
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-survive-googles-unnatural-links-warnings-avoid-overoptimisation
-
The site: operator would be going to Google and typing in
site:artistalaska.com
for your search. It's telling google "My search is for everything you will show me on this one particular site"
-
People who do that are often ones who don't know about SEO or wanting to optimize anchor text and the ones who haven't been asked for specific information for a link. They're the ones who help contribute to a natural-looking link profile. If all of your links have anchor text that looks like someone coached them about what to write, it looks a bit suspicious to the engines and less like someone linked there on their own and more like they were prompted to do so.
-
"Web Page Design" is the keyword phrase we have targeted for our online web business and when you search for that phrase on Google our site is in #6 on the first page a place we have held for years. And yes we have asked for that anchor text and have never heard of using our site's URL as anchor text. Who does that anyway?
-
I would agree that this really is an unnatural links warning even if that is not stated in the actual message. I took a look at a couple of sites to see whether your backlink profile looked natural.
The first one I looked at was shoes-place.com. If you look at it in OSE and select "Anchor text", you will see that your most common anchor texts are your keywords. A natural link profile would have predominantly the URL as anchor text. It looks like you have placed a lot of directory links using keyword anchor text.
Next, I looked at whitegyr.com. You've got a whackload of links using the anchor text "web page design" and the next popular ones are all keyword anchor texted links like "good web content", "web design prices", etc. Your URL is not even on the first page (EDIT - I don't mean on the first page of Google, but rather, on the first page of what anchor texts your links have) when it comes to anchor text. This is definitely not natural.
I think you have an uphill battle and I don't envy you.
-
Thanks Keri:
Thanks for the look and will clean up those items this AM. And look after your other
suggestions ASAP, one question though, what is a “a site:” ? -
I took a quick look at the first site. I don't know about triggering any type of warning, but are you aware that there are multiple pages with lorem ipsum text still? http://artistalaska.com/about.htm You might want to clean that up for a better user experience. Also, some pages are indexed that you probably don't want viewable, such as http://www.artistalaska.com/$_alternate1.htm.
Just those eight sites got targeted, and not the others that you also did (via http://spyonweb.com). Look and see if you can find something in common with those that the others don't have? I noticed this page http://www.whitegyr.com/using_free_link_exchange_directo.htm and while the Google notice doesn't mention linking, I'd maybe clean that up as a preventative tool.
Right now I'm on limited bandwidth and time, but if this were me I'd go through and do a site: on each of the sites and see what google has indexed and see if anything jumps out (like the default text, see if there's evidence of anything being hacked, etc). I'd go into open site explorer and look and inlinks and look to see anything fishy is there. I'd look at the source code to see if something looks off there (like a bunch of hidden text). I'd look to see if I was using unique content on the site.
-
There was no "Unnatural Link Warning" >>> rather it was a "Quality Issues on" warning but no explicit explanation and I do not know what is needed to remove the problem.
-
Read this article about Unnatural Link warning. It provides a good explanation and how to access the problem. I hope it helps.
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
-
Redirects and site map isn't showing
We had a malware hack and spent 3 days trying to get Bluehost to fix things. Since they have made changes 2 things are happening: 1. Our .xml sitemap cannot be created https://www.caffeinemarketing.co.uk/sitmap.xml we have tried external tools 2. We had 301 redirects from the http (www and non www versions) nad the https;// (non www version) throughout the whole website to https://www.caffeinemarketing.co.uk/ and subsequent pages Whilst the redirects seem to be happening, when you go into the tools such as https://httpstatus.io every version of every page is a 200 code only whereas before ther were showing the 301 redirects Have Bluehost messed things up? Hope you can help thanks
Technical SEO | | Caffeine_Marketing0 -
What are the pros and cons of changing my domain from .com to .us in Google webmaster tools?
Hi, I'm migrating my site from a .com domain to local country domains. I'm wondering what to consider if i chose to move the .com to .us domain. What should I consider before deciding? BR
Technical SEO | | Quru0 -
Where did the 'Contributor To' area go in Google+
I went into my Google+ profile this morning to try to add a new guest blog in the 'Contributor To' section but I can't find it. Did they move it somewhere?
Technical SEO | | JonathanGoodman0 -
My sitemap in Google is coming back with an error
I submitted my xml sitemap to Google Webmaster tools. It is giving an error, not found. 404 Error. But I can't figure out why my site map is signaling a 404. Why? 😞
Technical SEO | | cschwartzel0 -
Has anyone had problems with google webmaster tools verified sites
Hi, i have just been into google webmaster tools and i have noticed that five of my websites are no longer verified. i have tried putting the code back into the head and also i have tried verifying it through google analaystics but nothing is working can anyone let me know what has happened and if anyone has noticed this regards
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Weird 404 Errors in Webmaster Tools
Hi, In a regular check with Webmaster Tools, I have noticed a sudden increase in the number of "not found-404" errors. So I have been looking at them and noticed something weird has been going on. There are well over 100 pages with 404-errors. The funny thing is, none of the ULR's are correct, For example, if the actual url is something like www.domain.com/latest-reviews , the 404-error points to a non-existent URL like www.domain.com/latest-re And when I checked where they were linked from, they are all from these spammy sites. Anyone know what could be causing these links, why would anyone link on purpose to a non-existent page? cheers,
Technical SEO | | Gamer070 -
Wordpress & use of 'www' vs not for webmaster tools - explanation needed
I am having a hard time understanding the issue of canonization of site pages, specifically in regards to the 'www' or 'non-www' versions of a site. And specifically in regards to wordpress. I can see that it doesn't matter whether you type in 'www' or not in the url for a wordpress site, what is going on in the back end that allows this? When I link up to google webmaster tools, should i use www or not? thanks for any help d
Technical SEO | | dnaynay0 -
Do or don't —forward a parked domain to a live website?
Hi all, I'm new to SEO and excited to see the launch of this forum. I've searched for an answer to this question but haven't been able to find out. I "attended" two webinars recently regarding SEO. The above subject was raised in each one and the speakers gave a polar opposite recommendations. So I'm completely at a loss as to what to do with some domains that are related to a domain used on a live website that I'm working to improve the SEO on. The scenario: Live website at (fictitious) www.digital-slr-camera-company.com. I also have 2 related domain names which are parked with the registrar: www.dslr.com, www.digitalslr.com. The question: Is there any SEO benefit to be gained by pointing the two parked domains to the website at www.digitalcamercompany.com? If so, what method of "pointing" should be used? Thanks to any and all input.
Technical SEO | | Technical_Contact0