How to get rid of black hat links?
-
I have recently discovered that one of my clients has either been sabotaged or has done this himself. In the case that he didn't do anything, how do you go about getting rid of bad links? There is now over a 1000 bad links linked to his site, do I report them as spam or what is the best way to fix this?
-
Have you received a warning? Seen a drop in traffic/rankings? If so, then your best hope is to have them taken down - ideally by the person who built them. If that's not possible, get a spreadsheet together and list the actions you took on each crappy link. It's extremely tedious, but you can then link to the GDoc in your re inclusion request and show which ones were removed and which ones you tried to remove.
-
Have you been penalized yet? If not, you're probably not in as bad a situation as Richard is describing. Unfortunately there aren't easy ways to get rid of these links, as Richard also states.
You can submit a spam report using Google Webmaster Tools. It might not really help, but it's one of the only options.
Here's a great post from Rand about this spam situation: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/what-if-my-competitors-point-spammy-links-to-my-site
-
You basically have to contact the websites from whence the links originate and ask them to remove the links, which can be an arduous process.
We were penalized for links one of our vendors got for us, so we are now going through the process of getting the offending links removed. We are working with Virante, who is an SEOMoz recommended vendor and they are doing a great job. Hopefully, as a result of their work, we will get our penalty lifted soon.
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
-
Is there a paid link hierarchy?
It seems like the more I learn about my competition's links, the less I understand about the penalties associated with paid links. Martindale-hubbard (in my industry) basically sells links to every lawyer out there, but none of the websites with those links are penalized. I'm sure you all have services like that in your various industries. Granted, Martindale-hubbard is involved in the legal community and it's tied to Lexis Nexis, but any small amount of research would tell you that paid links are a part of their service. Why does this company (and companies that use them) not get penalized? Did the penguin update just go after companies that got links from really seedy, foreign companies with gambling/porn/medication link profiles? I keep reading on this forum and other places that paid links are bad, but it looks to me like there are fundamental differences in the penalties for paid links purchased from one company vs another. Is that the case or am I missing something? Thanks, Ruben
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
What are some of the worst links that you have come across?
I'm talking the least relevant and incredibly spammy. We've all done site audits and stumbled across some ridiculous ones. The funnier the better. I'm compiling a list of hilarious links that sites have gotten. Any input would be great!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | KevinBloom0 -
Negative SEO impacting client rankings - How to combat negative linking?
I have a client which have been losing rankings for the key term "sell gold" in Google AU. However, while doing some investigating I realized that we have been receiving links from bad neighborhoods such as porn, bogus .edu sites as well as some pharmaceutical sites. We have identified this as negative SEO and have moved forward to disavow the links in Google. However, I would like to know what other measures can be taken to combat this type of negative SEO linking? Any suggestions would be appreciated!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | dancape0 -
Links via scraped / cloned content
Just been looking at some backlinks on a site - a good proportion of them are via Scraped wikipedia links or sites with similar directories to those found on DMOZ (just they have different names). To be honest, many of these sites look pretty dodgy to me, but if they're doing illegal stuff there's absolutely no way I'll be able to get links removed. Should I just sit and watch the backlinks increase from these questionable sources, or report the sites to Google, or do something else? Advice please.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Link Farms and The Relationship between 2 domain with a 301 Redirect
I have an interesting scenario: Domain A was worked on by a disreputable SEO company off shore. The owner of Domain A came to me for my assistance and evaluation on how the off shore company was doing. I concluded that he should terminate the relationship immediately. One of the bad things they did was register Domain A with a LOT of link farms. I started working on a new site that eventually we decided to go with Domain B (a better, but totally related domain name to Domain A). I added a nice new site and had my client write clean, relevant information for it. We've done all legitimate, above ground by-google's-recommendation SEO for Domain B. I have a series of 301 redirects from Domain A to Domain B. Since April 24th, organic search results have plummeted. I see many incoming links via Webmaster Tools as the massive link farms, but those link farms have Domain A in their databases, not Domain B. My question: is Domain B inheriting the link juice from Domain A insofar as the incoming links are showing up in Webmaster Tools as directly related to Domain A? Should I sever the ties with Domain A altogether? Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | KateZDCA1 -
Is widget linkbaiting a bad idea now that webmasters are getting warnings of unnatural links?
I was reading this article about how many websites are being deindexed because of an unnatural linking profile and it got me thinking about some widgets that I have created. In the example given, a site was totally deindexed and the author believes the reason was because of multiple footer links from themes that they created. I have one site that has a very popular widget that I offer to others to embed into their site. The embed code contains a line that says, "Tool provided by Site Name". Now, it just so happens that my site name contains my main keyword. So, if I have hundreds of websites using this tool and linking back to me using the same anchor text, could Google see this as unnatural and possibly deindex me? I have a few thoughts on what I should do but would love to hear your thoughts: 1. I could use a php script to provide one of several different anchor text options when giving my embed code. 2. I could change the embed code so that the anchor text is simply my domain name, ie www.mywebsitename.com rather than "my website name". Thoughts?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MarieHaynes1 -
Links In Blog Posts: 1 Paragraph VS. Full Article
Hey guys, I've been using an article network to post unique articles (not spun). Been posting 1 paragraph articles with 1 text link. Just wondering what the main difference would be if I were to post a full article with 2 or 3 text links vs 1 paragraph with 1 text link, besides the fact that you get more links and save more time writing only 1 paragraph. Will the full article with 3 backlinks improve keyword ranks more or not by much? Cheers!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | upick-1623910 -
Client Selling Links On One Site Hurt Their Other Site?
Hi, I have a client who is thinking about selling ads on one site they own via something like textlinkads.com. Do you think they run any risk of exposing their other sites to scrutiny, penalties or problems?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | 945010