Unnatural Link Warning - What to Do??
-
I just want to ask your advice or suggestions, my new client site received a link warning from Google regarding unnatural link, as I've checked his site backlinks using Seomoz site explorer there are almost 4000+ backlinks and almost 3/4 of the total links are from forum profile spam and blog comment spam. I know it is impossible to remove all those links totally. I would like to ask your advice if what's the best thing to do? Setting up a brand new site and domain or doing a cleanup. Thanks in advance.
-
Thanks for the additional advice.
-
Wait! Before you go "creating new quality links", make sure you are not making things worse!
If you've got a manual penalty, and that coincided with a traffic drop then this means that you are not going to recover until someone at Google manually looks at a reconsideration request and determines that you have done your best to clean up the link spam.
What I have found, however, is that many website owners cannot be objective when it comes to cleaning up their link profile. They look at a link and say, "Well, that's a good link - it's from a related directory." Or, it's in the blogroll of a niche website - it can't be considered spam.
The quality guidelines say this:
"Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank."
So, when you are thinking of "creating new quality links", whatever you do, don't go doing more of the same but simply replace anchor text with your domain url!!! This is something that may work for sites that have been affected by Penguin. We think that if the algorithm looks at your backlinks and sees that the vast majority are url links as opposed to anchor texted keyword links then you will be ok. But, it's a different story for manual unnatural links warnings.
As mentioned by others, you've got to address every single link that was self created with the purpose of improving your website's SERPS. You've got to make a good attempt to get the link removed or nofollowed. (Document that you contacted the email on site, used a contact form on site, and/or used the email in the whois info.) In your reinclusion request send copies of all of the emails you have sent and received. Tell Google that you realize you went against the quality guidelines and that you are committed to following them from this point out. Do this and you should get the penalty removed.
-
Thanks Donnie, I really appreciate your response
-
Yes new links will help out. However if you follow the article I mentioned it has a great 6 month plan to regaining trust.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-6-month-link-building-plan-for-an-established-website
I would highly recommend using this article as your 6 month plan it has everything you need in it and in detail.
-
Okay thanks for the response
-
Massive drop..you really need to remove those links then.
Create the spreadsheet of all the links that are spam (this is most time consuming), then use one of the tools I mentioned or Donnie mentioned or others. And just maintain those campaigns by sending notices every week or two. This would help you take down as many as you can but of course you have to make the list of all of the spam links.
Make sure to keep these documents on a spreadsheet and then show Google, Google will take into good faith because they understand some webmasters aren't available or will not respond.
-
Yeah, massive drop-down of traffic. By the way thanks for the suggestion, really appreciate it
-
Yes, that would help. But to be reconsidered, you should try your best to remove as many as you can.
So keep building links but on make sure to send notices to these sites to have these links taken down. 4000+ is A LOT of links and hopefully you can take at least 50% off with notices.
As Donnie mentioned, you should make sure that you are negatively effected by these links. Did traffic drop when or around the time you got the notice?
-
Thanks for the response. How about just continue building good quality links and forget the bad links, do you think it will help?
-
Do you think creating some new link (quality links) will help out?
-
I've heard many opinions on this matter, to start off Google sent these warnings to many people and also mentioned to not worry: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/googles-unnatural-links-warnings.
Some people say to just start building good links and forget the bad links.
However, some people say to clean them up using:
Since you are working on an existing site I recommend reading this article:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-6-month-link-building-plan-for-an-established-website
-
Depends how was the site ranking before hand.
I was recently suggested by others to use LinkDelete.com and other sites like Rmoov.com can help remove some of these links. However, it can be almost futile with so many links. You have to look at how the site was ranking before and if removing the links will help you and the amount of resources that need to be used.
Best ways is to extract the links from OSE and GWT, and then use some tools like the above links and send out mass takedown notices. But 4000 is a lot!
Weigh out your options and resources and come to what would best benefit the site and company. If your online presences is vital, it might not be a good idea to start a new domain etc.
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
-
Disavow links from legit sites but have spammy link profiles?
I'm currently doing a backlink audit for our site with a LOT of backlinks. Some of the linking sites are legitimate business websites in our industry who have linked to us for a totally legitimate reason (we have good content!). However, these businesses themselves have a spammy backlink profile—that is, the only sites linking to that site are obvious link farm sites. Here is an illustration: spammyseolinks.com; payforseo.xyz; blackhat.ru ==all link to==> legitbusiness.com ==links to==> mysite.com Should I disavow this backlink? I guess it's not really giving me much SEO worth since it surely been branded a spammy junk domain, but then again, it's a real website that we've earned a link from because we're doing stuff the right way. Is it hurting or helping me?
Link Building | | THandorf0 -
Links from coupon sites
Hi All, I post coupons on coupon sites a month ago and when I checked backlinks of my website I saw approx 1000 links coming from coupon sites on my Brand Name. IMO it is quite natural please share your views. *All the big brands listed on that coupon sites e.g amazon, dell etc Thanks
Link Building | | Alick3001 -
Reddit LInks
Are Reddit links worthwhile? I hear they are sometimes follow and sometimes not follow. Also what about links verses self links? I'm pretty handy with reddit so I can probably make content that would actually be upvoted a lot. Let me know, thanks.
Link Building | | RafeTLouis1 -
Link text
Can anyone give me any advise regarding anchor text in back links on external sites. I have about 8 bloggers reviewing our products on their sites. When they link to our site, they either use the words of our company name or something like “click here” as the words in the link. There are a few key words that we are wanting to improve for so should those words be made as the live link on their site?
Link Building | | Hardley1110 -
When do my links show up?
For the last two weeks I have been working on linkbuilding. I have downloaded competitors link reports and started contacting or submitting links. In the last two weeks I have gotten about 50-60 or so. In the newest report it shows I went up four c-blocks. Why is that? It is kind of discouraging.
Link Building | | EcommerceSite0 -
Link Exchange
Hi everyone, I just started working for a client in a new niche. After reviewing the backlink profiles of his competitors I can see that the top sites are using a ton of link exchanges. They are from really spammy sites too. The kind that will link to anyone that provides a link back. Anyone else seeing much of this?
Link Building | | SixTwoInteractive0 -
What are the pros and cons of using a link builder? Can link building be outsourced?
Hi, I have great content on my website which I would like to build external links to from other websites. I am told this will increase my domain authority and ultimately help search engine ranking positions. I have very limited time in my hands and now thinking of outsourcing the link building component to a specialist. Is this a good way of doing it? Could you recommend professional link builders?
Link Building | | Saunders18650 -
Links or Redirect?
My client's company has just acquired another company in the same industry and with that acquisition came two websites; companyname.com and companyname.co.uk. companyname.com has PA13 and DA10, companyname.co.uk has PA15 and DA10. At the moment, the two companies are to be run as separate companies but will become fully merged in time. My client's own website is brand new (PA1 and DA) and I'm wondering what is the best way to use these other two sites to improve my client's search ranking. Should I use the two sites to link to my client (these would be logical and natural links e.g. explaining the acquisition, under new management) or would it simply be better to redirect the domains to the new site? Many thanks
Link Building | | mikecartmel0