What tools/techniques you use to check if a domain has been penalized?
-
If we think to buy expired or otherwise dropped domains, what tools or techniques you would recommend to check if there has bad SEO history?
We could of course, check with Google itself if the site is indexed and ranks, but I am asking if there is a particular tool out there that would provide more information if a website had been shady.
Thanks so much, guys!
Lily
-
Thanks Lily.
Redirecting old sites is unlikely to give you a rankings boost, especially if they have changed hands and have expired / dropped. You really need to buy them before they expire and don't change two many details.
Think about seomoz.com to moz.com - all the link juice have been transfered, and so it should, its just a rebrand, same servers, so owners, etc. But if they brought so ramdon site and redirect do they deserve the link juice? No, and google doesn't think so either.
-
That's a great explanation, Julian! Thanks for adding up.
Yes, the main idea is to redirect them at some point, that's why I want to be 100% sure they won't harm the rankings.
Lily
-
What are you trying to achieve by buying dropped domains? Are you planning to redirect them to your own sites for link juice? If you do that be very careful, there are lot better ways to get link juice.
To check a domain I would:
- search on google for the website name, e.g. "seomoz" does it rank? (doesnt too much if it doesnt the keyword might be competitive)
- search for the url, e.g. seomoz.com if it doesnt rank number 1 for this i would walk away
- does it have sitelinks under the domain name, if yes thats a good sign
- grab some text from the site and search for it (ensure you are using a clear browser, e.g. no cookie history, so personalised search doesn't kick in), if its a couple of sentences it should rank for that
- grab a few meta titles and search for them, if they dont rank for the complete title there could be a problem
- does the site have page rank - a red flag if it doesnt
- ask the site owner for the last years analytics traffic, the overall traffic graph would be fine
- look at its moz rank, does it seem to match how it ranks, e.g. if very high moz rank but not ranking for the site name there could be a problem
that should do it.
-
-
I was looking more for how to spot shady link profile. A tool for that. Anyway, I guess there isn't such tool. Thanks, guys!
-
Yes, they are for email spam blacklist.
-
These appear to be tools to check if the site has been black listed for email spam. While it's good to check for when buying a domain, it won't tell you if Google has penalised the site.
-
Here are a couple:
If you also want to check if email was blacklisted:
-
Is there a site on the domain at the moment, or has there been one recently?
If there is you could see how well indexed it is (site: command), see if it ranks for it's own brand terms, and even moderately competitive terms.
You can also run the site through opensiteexplorer and see how dodgy the external link profile is.
-
That was a great idea for checking on traffic behavior compared to the algorithm updates! Thanks, David.
However I am asking if I do not have access to Analytics and GWT. If the domain is expiring and I consider buying it. Any ideas for that scenario?
Lily
-
One of the most obvious ways is to compare organic search traffic to the dates new algorithms go live. Checkout the Google Algorithm Change History page. There is even a chrome plugin called Chartelligence that overlays the algorithm change dates over your traffic data.
Also checkout webmaster tools for messages for unnatural link warnings from Googs themselves.
Hope that helps!
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 followed links from these high authority domains any good?
Hi Mozzers, I have a link building question, in 2 parts. I am in the UK. We have a large local directory network over here which involves some high authority national news domains. Basically, you get a citation for free but if you go "featured" as well as the benefit of being returned top for keyword searches in the directories, buried under a tab on your page are deep links to your website, and they are followed. What are the risks/benefits of this? Are followed links from other high authority domains like Visual.ly and Behance worth it? They are easy to get and I've always believed an easy link usually isn't a good link. Thanks in advance!
Link Building | | Silkstream0 -
Will this Blog Tool hurt our SEO
Hi, We have come across this tool that we are considering using for some of our blog posts. We will still continue posting our own post blogs weekly, we will just use this if we come across anything interesting. Our concern is it will produce duplicate content from other sites. We are very new to blogging. https://home.passle.net/ Will this hurt our SEO? Will it improve it? Or will it make no difference? All thoughts welcomed please. Thanks Andrew
Link Building | | Studio330 -
Google webmaster tools Who links the most updates?
Has anyone ever seen in the section in GWT "Who links the most" actually update. I have sites listed in there that had me on a blogroll so I had 93,000 links to me and they removed those links months ago but GWT still shows that number of links. Does anyone else actually see those numbers go down as links are removed?
Link Building | | cbielich0 -
Is there a tool I can use to check backlink profiles against each other
Hi, Does anyone know of a tool where I can compare 2 (or more) backlink profiles to check common linking domains. It is one of those things that I know I have seen somewhere before but cant remember for the life of me where! Thanks
Link Building | | rickv1010 -
Does Google use link CTR as a factor?
Been wondering for a while if Google might be using CTR of links pointing your site? Anyone run any tests or have any clues?
Link Building | | Crunchii0 -
Competitive Domain Analysis Observation
Hi Folks I have been doing some analysis via SEOMOZ tools of www.anglianhome.co.uk which shows that in their linking root domains they have links from apple.com wordpress.com bravenet.com Are these genuine links or have Anglian managed to spam/black hat the process some how because I cant find any reference to their home improvement firm website on any of these major global websites? But it is obviously working because for searches here in the UK it appears prominently on many competitive search phrases.
Link Building | | idv1 -
Has Anyone Used Zemanta ?
I read a post some time back on zemanta and thought its a great idea to build links and it has a great outreach strategy The two things you need are alot of quality images and the budget for the monthly cost. I do plan to try it in the future and wanted to know if anyone has given it a try here ? Cheers, Vishal
Link Building | | vishalkhialani0