Help!!! Am I being Attacked???
-
Hello,
I do not believe so much in spammy links attacks and I definitely do not believe my site is worth attacking.
However, I'm seeing new links pointing to my site that I have no idea where they come from.
I just spotted three articles on a poor crappy article site with exact match keywords point to me. The articles are completely unique (copyscaped them) and they were posted according to the site time stamp during Oct and Nov 2012. (And they Appear in the WMT recently discovered links from more or less the same time).
What to do (besides for disavowing this domain)?
Thanks
-
I actually agree with what Mark Ginsberg said that it might be an SEO firm we hired way in the past (we don't have anyone for over 6 months) and might have pipe lined articles on our behalf.
But yes, main keywords to the exact landing pages
-
are they your main keyword phrase? not sure why someone would go thru the trouble to make them unique if they wanted to sabotage you. have u tried contacting the author?
-
Thanks, what you are saying makes sense.
(even though we haven't been using any SEO firm for many months now). -
Have you outsourced link building / SEO services to anyone? It could be they used a tool or outsourced this work to someone else, and these articles only went live in Oct. and Nov, even though they had technically gone through the pipeline a few months prioer?
It doesn't seem like someone would attack your site in that manner with a few articles on a crappy site - they would use sitewides, thousands of directory submissions, social bookmarks, etc., for much cheaper than having 3 unique articles written and posted with anchor text.
I'm more of the opinion these are remnants of an old link building strategy than of a malicious attack to hurt your site.
Mark
-
Yes these links are the only ones. It is really strange...
-
In those articles the backlinks to your website are the only ones?
If there are also other backlinks maybe the one posting the article put those links to your site without any intention to cause you harm, maybe he just wanted to add other backlinks too, to make the article look more natural.
I'm not a big fan of the Disavow Links Tool. In the official release Google said this tool should be used just in case you receive the Unnatural links warning. My advice is to always think twice before using this tool.
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
-
Does removal of internal redirects(301) help in SEO
I am planning to completely remove 301 redirects manually by replacing such links with actual live pages/links. So there will be no redirects internally in the website. Will this boost our SEO efforts? Auto redirects will be there for incoming links to non-existing pages. Thanks, Satish
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Blog Content In different language not indexed - HELP PLEASE!
I have an ecommerce site in English and a blog that is in Malay language. We have started the blog 3 weeks ago with about 20-30 articles written. Ecommerce is using MAgento CMS and Blog is wordpress. URL Structure: Ecommerce: www.example.com Blog: www.example.com/blog Blog category: www.example.com/blog/category/ However, google is indexing all pages including blog category but not individual post that is in Malay language. What could be the issue here? PLEASE help me!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WayneRooney0 -
Need help understanding "Clone sites"
I just read an article about Panda and it warned against against Clone sites: "Clone sites are a strong panda factor (JM, Mar 10, 2014)" I don't have any clone sites, but there are dozens of sites with imitations of mine. We were the first in the area of interest, and then all these other sites that imitated us popped up. None are exact replicas. But many have spun some of our articles and used them to create their sites; the site structures are not identical though. Google seems to know we are the original site on the topic since we are ranked #1 for most terms. Would these be considered clone sites in their eyes?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bizzer0 -
Does having small ticket items (say under $1) available for customers to find & buy help or hurt our site?
I feel really silly asking this question to begin with, but... as a music store, we have a lot of "smalls" for products, like a guitar pick. We sell picks for $0.50 each, or a single clarinet reed at $0.79. Some believe this is too small, finicky, and cumbersome to have listed for sale on our site. To me, I wholeheartedly disagree with the notiion of excluding "smalls" for a plethera of SEO, customer service, & online SALES reasons... Also we offer USPS shipping to offer low shipping costs on small goods. Can I really be wrong about this? Thanks, Kevin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kevin_McLeish1 -
Alternative Markup Challenge. Can anyone help?
I have a challenge around alternative markup. We currently operate a single domain with geo-targeted folders and alternative markup implemented. We are now now looking to expand this out to non-English content. Current Implementation; All generic English language content hosted on the main domain, with x5 English language content variations (locales) available under a folder structure (.com/en-us/ etc.). Alternative markup is in place for all locales within the HTML, implemented automatically by developers via the CMS. Locale folders geo-targeted via GWT and Bing WT. Planned Launch; Introduction of 5 new non-English locale folders (e.g. /de-de/ etc.), targeted to their respective country and language. Content language will be mixed, with around 1/10 of pages translated and the other 9/10 of pages (business listings) having their body content remain in English, with headers / footers translated. Locale folders will be geo-targeted via GWT and Bing WT. Folder and markup usage TBC. Options; Folders; Implement folder structure /de/, attempting to indicate country but not language (issue; usually a single identifier indicates language, not country?). Implement /de-de/ folder structure to match the English locales and maintain correct country targeting (issue; some content is not in language). Alternative markup; Do not make use of markup at all. Implement CMS based automated markup on all English and non-English content throughout the locale (e.g. /de-de/), but exclude English language versions (e.g. /en-gb/). Attempt manually implementing markup to bridge the English and non-English locales, potentially creating future issues with new content going live and content being removed. A heavy risk. Current approach is webmaster tools targeting, a /de-de/ folder structure and automated implementation of markup. This means English language URLs will have markup and non-English language URLs will have markup, but they will not match up (e.g. English pages will never have markup for non-English language content). If you minds haven't melted, what's your thoughts? Any help is much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HelloAlba0 -
Can someone help me with RegEx?
Hey! I am having a tough time figuring this out, and I have already signed up for my RegEx course. So in the mean time, could you please help me? I have two old URLs: /faq /faq.php The new one is /faqs How can I write a 301 redirect to include faq & faq.php in the same line? I basically want to capture /faq and anything beyond the q including the .php. I thought this would work: Redirect 301 /faq. http://www.blah.com/faqs Using the period to catch everything after the q and redirect it to the /faqs page. Extra credit: And why Redirect 301 vs. RedirectMatch 301? It is an Apache server and mod_ rewrite is on. Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cyberlicious0 -
Redirect help
I work for a company that has a domain that is something like www.neat-stuff.com but most people just use www.neatstuff.com without the dash. The redirect for the homepage works fine. We recently launched a new site and if you use www.neat-stuff.com/category it redirects from the old site to the new site just fine. However if you use www.neatstuff.com/category it does not properly redirect to www.neat-stuff.com/category. How do I fix that?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
Does a 'Certified Domain' help SEO?
I see that GoDaddy offer a 'Certified Domain' option. Does this help SEO at all?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Techboy0