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 Stop Google's "Fetch & Render" From Showing Up In Google Analytics
Hi all, Within Google's "Fetch & Render" (found in Google Search Console) is the ability to index certain pages from my website on-demand. Unfortunately, every time I ask Google to index a page, it registers as a bounce in Google Analytics. Also, if it means anything, my website (www.knowtro.com) is a single-page application, functioning similarly to Google. If you guys know of any solution to this problem, please help! I originally thought that Google would know to block its own Fetch & Render crawler from Google Analytics but that doesn't seem to be the case. Thanks, Austin
Reporting & Analytics | | A_Krauss0 -
What is the "UPDATE" indicate in the Google Search Console Query Reports?
We recently noticed an update note in the Google Search Console that happened on April 27th. Does this denote an algorithm update? Any feedback or article would really be helpful. Thanks! gfQ8FG9.jpg
Reporting & Analytics | | RosemaryB0 -
How do I find out where my "direct traffic" came from?
Last weekend we had a significant rise in traffic to our site. Digging in to Google Analytics, most of it has come from the USA, with some from Canada, Australia and a few other countries. It has all gone to the same article on our website. I have also found that it has mostly come from Safari (in app), on an ipad and iphone. Google Analytics has put this down as Direct traffic. My feeling is that it is not. Could it be from a social media app - perhaps someone with many followers has pinned from our site, or something along these lines. Could it actually be organic search traffic and Google misattributing it as Direct? Bounce rate and time on site is fine, so I don't think it's a bot / spam.
Reporting & Analytics | | TheJewelleryEd
Any ideas / places I could go to help me find out would be appreciated, thank you. Joss0 -
Find Pages with 0 traffic
Hi, We are trying to consolidate the amount of landing pages on our site, is there any way to find landing pages with a particular URL substring which have had 0 traffic? The minimum which appears in google analytics is 1 visit.
Reporting & Analytics | | driveawayholidays0 -
Cant find eCommerce in Google Analytics
Ciao from Wetherby UK, Ok ive done this a zilion times but since Google analytics upgraded I cant find how to upgarde the tracking code to ecoomerce tracking. Before i would just tick a box and Boomshanka the code would change. Whats got me worried the tracking codes has not modified to ecoomerce is because it looks like this: Heres the tracking dashboard with no sign of ecomm tracking customisations:
Reporting & Analytics | | Nightwing
http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc53/zymurgy_bucket/wheres-ecom-tracking_zps0ef4b8c6.jpg And i cant see any means to modify it for ecoomerce tracking 😞 Any insights welcome!
Grazie tanto,
David0 -
Google Webmaster. Backlinks
GWMT only shows that there are 3 domains pointing to a site of mine. I'm looking under "Links to site". But this can't be true because the site is pretty old and I know there are hundreds of domains that point to this one. What would explain this discrepancy? And is there some other free tool that will show all the backlinks? I've used Opensite explorer but that tool isn't close to comprehensive as GWMT usually is (based on other sites I've analyzed)
Reporting & Analytics | | priceseo0 -
Google Analytics and backlinking
Let say I have my main site and my secondary site that is optimized for a slightly different set of keywords (nonetheless still relevant to my main site). I have several links from a secondary site to my main site. Secondary site is on a different C-block. Do you ladies and gentlemen think that if I put both websites under the same google analytics account, Google is going to penalize me or remove some of the juice that is flowing from secondary site to the main site because it would detect through GA that both sites belong to the same entity?
Reporting & Analytics | | SirMax0 -
Problem when searching for "link:www.mysite.com" vs "link: www.mysite.com"
Why does a search for "link:www.mysite.com" show no results, but when there is a space before www.mysite.com it shows results? The same happens for "link:www.mysite.com" (nothing shows up), but when I search for "link:www.mysite.com/index.php" it returns results. Is there a problem I am missing? Thanks so much!
Reporting & Analytics | | EmilyP0