How do I find "bad" backlinks
-
Hi, I have used open site explorer to review our back links, but I don't know how to determine which ones are bad? For example, I think I am getting penalized for links from strictlygifts.com, but not sure. StrictlyGifts is a second site of ours that has a web hosting plan (our main site does not have hosting - long story). We use this site to store things that link to our main site, trophycentral.com. As an example, we have several online catalogs with hundreds of pages that link to products on trophy central. I have a gut feeling that this is hurting us, but I don't know how to confirm it. I can easily remove the links but don't want to if they are helping us.
Can anyone help? Thanks!!!
-
Irving, thanks very much. This gives me something to work on. I have been reducing the bad links and increasing good ones, so that will help. I'll work on the title tag, etc. Thanks again...
-
No you need less instances of keywords, also need to look at the anchor texts on your site and anchor texts and types of links pointing to your site. The combination of these three things being overdone usually results in specific keyword phrases that you were pushing too hard for to get suppressed in the rankings.
you can PM me here at SEOmoz!
remove your links on sites like these, luckily i don't see a ton of incoming links so you may be able to fix this issue a little bit easier.
-
Yes, I lost all rankings for trophies and for awards! Sorry, I am not that technical, so I am not sure what you are suggesting. I thought it is spamming if I included the words too much? Are you suggesting I should add more? Would love to talk to you if possible since I have been trying to figure this out for months and keep getting different answers. My private id is trophycentral2@yahoo.com - i can call you if you can send me you phone number? Or if you have a private email I can send you my phone number if you prefer. Thanks!
-
Why do you have a bunch of links in your menu as nofollow, you are throwing away PR they should be all dofollowed. If you are trying to page rank sculpt then you should look into javascripting those links instead.
Let me guess you lost all rankings for "trophy/trophies" and or "award/awards" related searches? You are keyword spamming, only one instance of "trophy and one instance of "trophies" in your title tag and meta description, lose the keywords meta completely it's useless.
script type="<a class="attribute-value">text/javascript</a>" src="[http://c15009118.r18.cf2.rackcdn.com/mobile-redirection.js](view-source:http://c15009118.r18.cf2.rackcdn.com/mobile-redirection.js)">script><title>Trophies & Award Plaques from Trophy Central. Trophies, Unique Trophies and Awards.title><META NAME="<a class="attribute-value">keywords</a>" content="<a class="attribute-value">trophies, trophies and awards, trophy cases, trophy, award ribbons, plaques, awards, engraved plaques, award medals, crystal trophies, display cases, award pins, sports trophies, corporate awards, trophies and medals, championship trophy, trophies and plaques, sports trophies, engraved trophies, crystal awards,free engraving</a>"> <META NAME="<a class="attribute-value">description</a>" content="<a class="attribute-value">Shop for Trophies, Awards, Trophy Cases, Plaques and Medals. Free Engraving on Trophies. Quick Shipping on Trophies and Awards.</a>">
-
Thanks much. No messages. The issue is on trophycentral, though - we had a huge drop on our home page rankings (but not other pages). strictlygifts seems to be the only links in that are significant in mumber, so my hunch is that there is a problem. My guess is that because all of our blog and catalogs point to the home page (in addition to the product pages), that might me the issue. I can try to nofollow on anything linking to the home page.
-
Thanks, I am a bit nervous about removing them since some might be helping and it takes months for the spidering process, but I guess that is one way to tell for sure! Thanks!
-
they are necessary links pointing to product pages though. nofollowing them is sufficient.
-
The easy answer is: try removing the links and see what happens, if nothing changes, put them back up!
The more pro approach would be to try and understand what makes a spammy link in google's algo eyes. Take a look at this very nice article:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/17-types-of-link-spam-to-avoid
Hope that helps
-
Did Google WMT send strictlygifts.com a email message saying that they detected unnatural links pointing to the site? What makes you think you are penalized, drop in traffic or rankings?
You don't need to remove the links pointing to your main site you just need to nofollow them BTW
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
-
How to uncover GA "Not Provided" organic keywords?
Hello, Google Analytics has a lot of keywords which are tagged as "Not Provided" So how can i uncover what these are? Otherwise how do i know which organic keywords are doing well or not?
Reporting & Analytics | | Riz_Khan0 -
Need help with my "ghost" blog...
...when I fired my original web designer, did they sabotage coding? I have never checked my Alexa/Google Analytics, or any blog ranking until last night. Subsequently, I have spent the last 24 hours googling away, and finally joining MOZ b/c I'm desperate to find out WHY I'm not ranking. I've googled and found many answers to a problem directly opposite of mine: (How to increase traffic with a high ranking), but I already have quite a bit of traffic (via Wordpress Stats), but can not be found on any ranking system. So, fiddled with some NoFollow/NoIndex boxes in Genesis SEO settings thinking maybe when my domain name changed it messed everything up? Most the boxes HAD been checked, so I unchecked them all. Anyhow, basically signed up for the monthly service so i could ask this question on the forum. My site is hellowhitney.com **it's so weird---i have a LOT of organic direct hits coming directly to my blog (for instance a celebrity re-posted a post which gained a lot of traffic from Twitter to the page), but Google nor another ranking is seeing it. IN FACT, it stops any and all ranking data back to FEBRUARY 2016 when I changed my domain name from Myscriptedreality.com to HelloWhitney.com Ignorance is NOT bliss in this case--would appreciate any help! #ForeverGrateful
Reporting & Analytics | | hellowhitney0 -
Someone mentioned us on facebook and brought 10k clicks to homepage.. how do I find the content?
So this morning our website started to go crazy with hits all coming from Facebook, and I am trying to figure out how I can see who was talking about us? All the traffic landed on one page specifically. When I look in analytics it just shows social, and then I can drill down to see they are coming from facebook, but that's it.
Reporting & Analytics | | DemiGR0 -
Google Making all searches secure - "Not provided" data to increase in Analytics
A lot of you might already be aware of the recent Google change at encrypting all search activity except for clicks on ads. Rand did a whiteboard session on this recently. How is everyone planning to adjust their research data to accommodate for this change?
Reporting & Analytics | | SEO5Team0 -
Inurl:login.aspx + "register" "retrieve password" + intext:employment
Someone came to my website with this keyword a few times, I was just wondering if anyone knows what that is? inurl:login.aspx + "register" "retrieve password" + intext:employment
Reporting & Analytics | | Rubix0 -
I have few similar job forms that were created for different positions. SEOMoz says, its "duplicate pages". So how do I resolve it? I want my jobs to be searchable in Search Engines.
Hi There, I have few similar job forms that were created for different positions. SEOMoz says, its "duplicate pages". So how do I resolve it? I want my jobs to be searchable in Search Engines. Thanks !
Reporting & Analytics | | pointstar0 -
When i first add my url to seomoz then i had a general report of all the faults my website had in SEO and suggestions where can i find it now , i cant find it ?!
when i first add my url to seomoz then i had a general report of all the faults my website had in SEO and suggestions where can i find it now , i cant find it ?!
Reporting & Analytics | | fireproductsuk0 -
Can I find results for my SEO rankings over an extended period of time?
I was hoping to put a report together chronicling my SEO performance over the last 2 months and couldn't find a place to see prior information.
Reporting & Analytics | | AppNeta0