Complicated Question: Removing Spam Backlinks that were Not Requested
-
I'm new and seeking help with the following scenario:
1. Main site: is a domain.com established authority type site
2. Second site: is a domain.org (has robots.txt to no index) but someone obviously not site owner has done negative seo campaign against the .org domain and built spammy links to it. In fact, that's all that exist on this second domain because it is used for development purposes only right now.) No one would link to this one normally as it is just secondary domain used to protect trademark and for development use.) When searching for it by domain name it does not appear on first page for search results. Checking link profile the only links that show for domain.org are spam links.
Have contacted site/s where spam links were placed (no answer)
Main site domain.com and domain.org have same whois and hosted on the same server as they are owned by same company
Main site domain.com still appears first for its name but has lost some rankings. I am working to fix some technical issues ie: duplicate urls with CMS etc, but would like to find out what to do about the domain.org content that clearly has had someone target it with spammy non requested backlinks.)
domain.com has Google webmaster tools account, no messages about unnatural liking in those reports
1. I'm not sure I should add domain.org to GWT to see if there is an unnatural link penalty applied or if this would further connect the two domains through association.
If I could get some feedback/suggestions on what my options are with regards to making sure that the domain.org domain has a clean profile that would be most appreciated. Also because site owner has would like to begin using domain.org in the future for some unique content, but as it stands right now cannot because domain has been targed by poor backlinks.
Anyone else run into situation where the .org or .net versions were targeted by spammy backlinks even though the domains were not actively used?
What's the safest way to proceed? a) Concerned about possible co-penalty between main site domain.com and domain.org b) how to remove problems issues with domain.org so that owner can use it in future.
Many thanks for your thoughts and help with this one. I appreciate any help or feedback.
-
Ok another tricky situation. First of all, I would like to ask you to create a Google Webmaster Account with a new Gmail id for this Domain.org [since you are worried about the association, though I can assure you there is no such thing as association with a penalize website will incur penalty for other websites ].
_So, you need to create a Google Webmaster Tools account to figure out whether the website has got penalized by Penguin update. If you have received any message in Google Webmaster Tools account regarding link warning, you need to get all the spammy links removed before applying for a reconsideration request. However, if this is an algorithmic penalty, you need to give a try to Disavow Link option. _
-
Focus on the main domain and review the backlinks for that domain. If you identify any questionable links use the google disavow tool to submit information on those links.
Check the .org to ensure that the robots.txt no index is properly in place and none of the pages are getting indexed by Google.
-
I would write to Google explaining statically why you are doing it and how you think those links came about. I know that the system is set up so that if you're innocent like a competitor did that to you you would not be penalized.
The best of luck,
Tom
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
-
Question on Indexing, Hreflang tag, Canonical
Dear All, Have a question. We've a client (pharma), who has a prescription medicine approved only in the US, and has only one global site at .com which is accessed by all their target audience all over the world.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jrohwer
For the rest of the US, we can create a replica of the home page (which actually features that drug), minus the existence of the medicine, and set IP filter so that non-US traffic see the duplicate of the home page. Question is, how best to tackle this semi-duplicate page. Possibly no-index won't do because that will block the site from the non-US geography. Hreflang won't work here possibly, because we are not dealing different languages, we are dealing same language (En) but different Geographies. Canonical might be the best way to go? Wanted to have an insight from the experts. Thanks,
Suparno (for Jeff)1 -
A few important mobile SEO questions
I have a few basic questions about mobile SEO. I'd appreciate if any of you fabulous Mozzers can enlighten me. Our site has a parallel mobile site with the same urls, using an m. domain for mobile and www. for desktop. On mobile pages, we have a rel="canonical" tag pointing to the matching desktop URL and on desktop pages we have a rel="alternate" tag pointing to the matching mobile URL. When someone visits a www. page using a mobile device, we 301 them to the mobile version. Questions: 1. Do I want my mobile pages to be indexed by Google? From Tom's (very helpful) answers here, it seems that I only want Google indexing the full site pages and if the mobile pages are indexed it's actually a duplicate content issue. This is really confusing to me since Google knows that it's not duplicate content based on the canonical tag. But - he makes a good point - what is the value of having the mobile page indexed if the same page on desktop is indexed (I know that Google is indexing both because I see them in search results. When I search on mobile Google serves the mobile page and when I search on desktop Google serves me the desktop page.)? Are these pages competing with each other? Currently, we are doing everything we can do ensure that our mobile pages are crawled (deeply) and indexed, but now I'm not sure what the value of this is? Please share your knowledge. 2. Is a mobile page's ranking affected by social shares of the desktop version of the same page? Currently, when someone uses the share buttons on our mobile site, we share the desktop url (www. - not m.). The reason we do this is that we are afraid that if people are sharing our content with 2 different url's (m.mysite.com/some_post and www.mysite.com/some_post) the share count will not be aggregated for both url's. What I'm wondering is: will this have a negative effect on mobile SEO, since it will seem to Google that our mobile pages have no shares, or is this not a problem, since the desktop pages have a rel="alternate" tag pointing to mobile pages, so Google gives the same ranking to the mobile page as the desktop page (which IS being shared)?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | YairSpolter0 -
Question on Moving Content
I just moved my site from a Wordpress hosted site to Squarespace. We have the same domain, however, the content is now located on a different URL (again, same base domain). I'm unable to easily set up 301 redirects for the old content to be mapped to the new content so I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations for a workaround. Basically, I want to make sure google knows that Product A's page is now located at this new URL. (www.domain.com/11245 > www.domain.com/product-a). Maybe it's something that I don't have to worry about anymore because the old content is gone? I mean, I have a global redirect set up that no matter what you enter after the base domain, it now goes to the homepage but I just want to make sure I'm not missing something here. Really appreciate your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheBatesMillStore1 -
Duplicate Content Question
We are getting ready to release an integration with another product for our app. We would like to add a landing page specifically for this integration. We would also like it to be very similar to our current home page. However, if we do this and use a lot of the same content, will this hurt our SEO due to duplicate content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NathanGilmore0 -
Microsite question
Good morning, I have a client who is a local realtor www.chantre.com and they have several locations in their region. We created individual sites for their locations that are linked from their main site (on the left bottom). I need some advice and guidance... Are the location sites a good consideration as microsites? I know we should include the rel=canonical tag and are in the process of doing so, but any comments on this would be appreciated I know the answer to this one, but the client insists on continually asking about it...would it be better to have the location sites linked from the main site as subdomains? Any other suggestions to either prove or disprove our technique in breaking out the location sites, whether it's a good idea or if we are harming their SEO is appreciated THANKS!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gXeSEO
Darlene0 -
Removed Duplicate Domains, What Should I Expect?
Hi All, So I have been at my current company for 5 months now. I quickly realized that they previously bought multiple domains. The domains do make sense (they are mostly our products, etc). However they did not just redirect to our main website, instead, they were a direct copy of our main website. They had it setup so that when we made changes to our main website, www.mainwebsite.com, that the same exact change went to www.productwebsite.com. Basically we had about 7 of the SAME EXACT websites with a different root domain. So I explained to them the problem with having duplicate content on the web and how we are basically just self cannibalizing our online efforts. This problem is fixed now and I am just wondering if anybody has seen the results before? To tell you the truth we already do pretty well SEO-wise. Just wondering if this will make it even better? I am assuming that this will also take a little while to take effect? Thanks! Pat
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PatBausemer0 -
Remove Landing Pages?
Howdy Guys, I've just been listening to the latest edition of whiteboard Friday regarding the over-optimization penalty. I'm just wondering if we should remove alot of make specifc landing pages... For instance we have a landing pages for our top 20 cars... For instance "bmw keyword" or "audi keyword" What do you guys think? remove them and 301 the pages to the homepage? Thanks, Scott
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ScottBaxterWW0 -
Google Product Feed Newbie Question
Hi, I don't know much of anything about Google Pruduct Feeds. Here is my starting point on thia: 1. Is this really free? We'd be doing it without Google checkout, just landing on our own pages with our own checkout. 2. Where do you upload the file? 3. What determines if you come up or not as a result? Any strategy or tactics involved? 4. We're the manufacturer of a product and late to the product feed game. The description that Google has used for our products is not ours or great. How do we change that product description that Google has for our products? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010