Not sure if I should disavow these links or not
-
I am on the marketing team for CandyGalaxy.com we are an online candy store that specializes in bulk candy for events. Were just about a year and a half old and i'm running into some SEO strategy road blocks lately. When we started the company we used an oversee's seo company. For the first few months results were great then things took a massive dive as google began rolling out updates early and mid last year. After that point we started taking things in house and have been trying to create content and begin content marketing. We launched a blog @ blog.candygalaxy.com and also launched and educational resource at candybuffet101.com -
However the question i'm up against now is what to do with those bad old links? Are they actually hurting us? Or just neutral?
I'm also trying to decided what to do about the links in my footer? We put those there because those are truly our most popular products and we wanted customers to have easy access, but are those links potentially harmful?
I'm questioning these issues because I feel like there is something holding back some of my pages from ranking. For example "blue candy" is a very popular section of our website. We have worked on a lot of content for the blog related to blue candy, made videos, photo shoots ect. We have customer reviews on page and unique category content. According to open site explorer our DA and PA are around the range of most of the sites in the 8-12 serp position. But we have more social activity then all but the top 2-3 spots. However the page almost impossible to find via search. Its not in the first 300 results and surely the page is more relevant then an entry about quilts.. Similar situations like this have led me to think that maybe there is a technical underlying issues that I have not addressed. ? The content is definitely there because if i type in a line from the content directly to google it is the first result. So the site seems indexed properly..
Would love to hear any feedback from similar experiences or ideas.
Thanks!
-
No, don't nofollow internal links, especially for pages you want to rank. That doesn't work well anymore, and will ultimately hurt you.
I see about 190 links in the primary nav. Can those all really be equally important to users and search engines? I'd be really surprised if scrolling through a list of brands hunting for the right one is the best user experience. Don't take my word for it: run some tests and see how people respond to a simplified menus along the top or side. Generally we want to pick a few terms (e.g. brands or candies) to prioritize, and otherwise work on a hierarchy/nav that users intuitively understand.
-
Hi Carson,
Thanks for taking the time to really respond to this! I really appreciate it.
The problem i've run into consistently is that the Nav menu's were not meant for excessive links, but were designed so that customers could legitimately navigate through the site fully from just the first page. But perhaps that goal is to ambitious for 2000 products. We've also implemented a script that is supposed to be taking those links off of the home page and effectively hiding them, but maybe thats no longer working properly....
As far as the "site wide" footer links, those also were initially intended for navigation as well? Would reducing them to no follow be sufficient? Or potentially just fully removing them be better?
I also took that advice on the internal linked and connected those two pages!
Thanks again for your time and insight
-
When it comes to links, the advice you've received is pretty good: it's all about the ratios. If many of your links are spammy with exact-match anchor text, it's possible that they're hurting you. A warning in Google's Webmaster Tools would confirm it, but I think it's fairly likely that you're being affected by Penguin. I see an awfully high number of links with anchor text that is overly-targeted.
I'd start by trying to remove the worst site-wide anchor text links, and then disavow if that doesn't work. At the same time, it will probably help more to think of ways to generate legitimate visibility and interest.
I don't see tons of legitimate links pointing to the site right now. Even if Google is just ignoring the links now and not counting them against you, I wouldn't expect the site to do amazingly well. There are a ton of links on each page, so the link equity you do have is being split many ways.
It's extremely unlikely that you're being penalized for internal links, but it might be best to focus link equity on key pages rather than spreading it so thin. With something like 168 links in the menu, you probably want to downsize. Does Christmas candy really need a link in May? Is there a better way to organize brands? You can't rank for every term - prioritize some pages that you rank moderately well for with high search interest.
And finally, watch out for keyword cannibalization. I don't think this is a huge issue on your site, but you should probably link to http://www.candygalaxy.com/blue-candy/ from within the content on http://www.candygalaxy.com/blue-candy-buffets/ as an example.
-
I wouldn't be worried about links like this, there are so many out there I think Google understands they can't penalize every site that has one of these. Every site on the internet would be hit
Keep an eye on those directory sites. I know in my first hit from Penguin 1.0 I found tons of directory links that were just spammy.
When you click on the "Submit Link" see if you can pay for the links. If you can then get rid of those links asap. Many of these directories are hard to get a hold of someone so I have had to disavow many of these links. I have a link of a text file that I add too of spammy directories I have found and I continue to add to it.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2659865/spammydirectories.txt
Directories while many may be safe, this late in the game of Penguin you are better of without them IMO.
Only a handful are safe:
Go to webmaster tools and find all those directories...
-
We are basing this on what research and real life example here? Has he been hit with a warning of any sorts? Was the website's rankings being dropped in any relation to this? Also, doing anything out of the ordinary when things are currently working perfectly is a straight path to problems in any aspect in life, but from what I know from personal experience so it is with optimization as well.
Here's a checklist I go through when these matters come in hand:
1. When did the links get indexed by Google?
2. How much time has passed?
3. Was the site hit by any of the recent algorithm updates?
4. Did my website drop severely in rankings?
5. Am I doing the best to keep healthy and authoritative links creation in check?If you haven't been hit by anything, your rankings are there, your healthy link building is there, unique content being created and natural links pointing to the site itself, why would you waste time and money on something you clearly did not do, do not control and hasn't affected you yet? His example may be somewhat different, but basically fixing something that ain't broke is really not the go to way here.
If and when his website does get hit by a penalty, do something. Make the list of links, anchor texts, create a contact list for the administrators of that website, keep a disavow tool list in check, but use it when you need to do so. Thanks!
-
I wouldn't agree that you don't need to worry about bad links built 18 months ago. Google are always refining their algorithm so you shouldn't just hope that your links won't be seen and penalised.
-
Hello! It means that spammy link that just links to your site without anchor text and it's a nofollow links does not value the same as something with straight keyword name anchor text in the link itself. So page you have shown us here is probably devalued with Google it doesn't pose any real value or threat to your site, however you wanna put it. How are your anchor texts spread out through the link profile?
-
Here is an example of one of the links
-
Hi thanks for your insight. What do you mean by "link profile introduction" I didn't mean to leave relevant information out of the question?
Thanks!
-
Hi Jonathan,
Lets deal with the disavow-ing first. I'd do a backlink analysis of the website and find ALL the links that look irrelevant and spammy and try and get them taken down first, if that fails then use the disavow tool but only if you are 100% sure they are doing you harm. It's a tricky thing the disavow tool but Google does urge you to try and get them removed before using it.
In terms of the website and the products in the footer...Why not create a section in the main body of the website such as "Customer Favourites" or "Most Popular". The reason for this is because, I'm not sure if users would scroll to the footer whereas if it is in the main body of the website, your customers are more likely to see it.
-
Hello! Honestly you shouldn't worry about any bad links created two years ago. If they were hurting your website, it would of been seen a year or so ago, not now. One simple aspect of driving more traffic (but not directly) would be social media profiles created specifically for that phrase and thus allowing a lot more people to visit your website. Talking offhand about what's the cause of your issues without the link profile introduction is really unprofessional and thus if you want a more straightforward answer, some insights on the number of links, link profile looks and such would be useful. Thanks!
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
-
Are We Doing Link Building Right? Do Certain Links Actually Matter?
I've been thinking about this as I go through my daily link building activities for clients. Do we really know as much as we hope/think we do about how Google values inbound links, which links actually matter, and how much these link signals play into rankings? For example, does Google REALLY value the fact that a business is paying to sponsor a local sports team, or to join a local chamber? For local businesses, link building is rather difficult because they don't necessarily have the resources or ability to implement ongoing Content Marketing initiatives to earn links naturally. How can we be sure that the things we recommend actually make a difference? I had my family real estate business featured in almost a dozen articles as expert sources, with links from authoritative sites like Realtor.com and others. Does Google distinguish between a profile link on a site like Realtor.com vs. being featured as an expert source on home page news? Just second guessing a lot of this today. Anyone can to share thoughts and insights?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RickyShockley0 -
Internal links to preferential pages
Hi all, I have question about internal linking and canonical tags. I'm working on an ecommerce website which has migrated platform (shopify to magento) and the website design has been updated to a whole new look. Due to the switch to magento, the developers have managed to change the internal linking structure to product pages. The old set up was that category pages (on urls domain.com/collections/brand-name) for each brand would link to products via the following url format: domain.com/products/product-name . This product url was the preferential version that duplicate product pages generated by shopify would have their canonical tags pointing to. This set up was working fine. Now what's happened is that the category pages have been changed to link to products via dynamically generated urls based on the user journey. So products are now linked to via the following urls: domain.com/collection/brand-name/product-name . These new product pages have canonical tags pointing back to the original preferential urls (domain.com/products/product-name). But this means that the preferential URLs for products are now NOT linked to anywhere on the website apart from within canonical tags and within the website's sitemap. I'm correct in thinking that this definitely isn't a good thing, right? I've actually noticed Google starting to index the non-preferential versions of the product pages in addition to the preferential versions, so it looks like Google perhaps is ignoring the canonical tags as there are so many internal links pointing to non-preferential pages, and no on-site links to the actual preferential pages? I've recommended to the developers that they change this back to how it was, where the preferential product pages (domain.com/products/product-name) were linked to from collection pages. I just would like clarification from the Moz community that this is the right call to make? Since the migration to the new website & platform we've seen a decrease in search traffic, despite all redirects being set up. So I feel that technical issues like this can't be doing the website any favours at all. If anyone could help out and let me know if what I suggested is correct then that would be excellent. Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Guy_OTS0 -
Link from Google.com
Hi guys I've just seen a website get a link from Google's Webmaster Snippet testing tool. Basically, they've linked to a results page for their own website test. Here's an example of what this would look like for a result on my website. http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.impression.co.uk There's a meta nofollow, but I just wondered what everyone's take is on Trust, etc, passing down? (Don't worry, I'm not encouraging people to go out spamming links to results pages!) Looking forward to some interesting responses!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tomcraig860 -
Internal links to blog posts
I am linking manually to blog posts in my site from my Home page. Our site isn't set up with an auto "Recent Posts" that shows on Home. Should I use the exact blog post title as the anchor text or do I need to create something that is not an exact match to the title of the post?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gfiedel0 -
Alternative links in the search results.
Hello, This is a short question Please look at this SERP screenshot: http://imgur.com/1EMen Who do they get the other links under their results. Cornel
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cornel_Ilea0 -
Natural Link Profile, low and high value links, really?
I cant really get my head around this one. I've read a few times when building links make sure you pick up so low value links as well. So here is an example (and lets say each link takes half hour to get): I got 5 hours of link building and this is what I have managed to get with the time. 1. 10 high value links all with PA/DA 50-60+ 2. 5 high value links with PA/DA 50-60+ AND another 5 low value links with PA/DA 10-. Surely #1 beats #2 hands down?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | activitysuper0 -
What is the optimal link profile?
I am doing a variety of SEO link building techniques. I am doing: guest blog posts article submissions directories bookmarks web2.0 properties link acquisition I don't expect much from the article submissions, web 2.0, and directories, so I am using these methods for the long tail and less competitive keywords. Is this a good idea? When we talk about a link profile, is it per page or for the whole site? Does it matter if you have a more diverse link profile for a single page or does it have to be diverse for the whole site? Appreciate any informed comments!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | inhouseseo0 -
Link anchor text: only useful for pages linked to directly or distributed across site?
As a SEO I understand that link anchor text for the focus keyword on the page linked to is very important, but I have a question which I can not find the answer to in any books or blogs, namely: does inbound anchor text 'carry over' to other pages in your site, like linkjuice? For instance, if I have a homepage focusing on keyword X and a subpage (with internal links to it) focusing on keyword Y. Does is then help to link to the homepage with keyword Y anchor texts? Will this keyword thematically 'flow through' the internal link structure and help the subpage's ranking? In a broader sense: will a diverse link anchor text profile to your homepage help all other pages in your domain rank thematically? Or is link anchor text just useful for the direct page that is linked to? All views and experiences are welcome! Kind regards, Joost van Vught
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JoostvanVught0