How to Handle Sketchy Inbound Links to Forum Profile Pages
-
Hey Everyone, we recently discovered that one of our craft-related websites has a bunch of spam profiles with very sketchy backlink profiles. I just discovered this by looking at the Top Pages report in OpenSiteExplorer.org for our site, and noticed that a good chunk of our top pages are viagra/levitra/etc. type forum profile pages with loads of backlinks from sketchy websites (porn sites, sketchy link farms, etc.). So, some spambot has been building profiles on our site and then building backlinks to those profiles.
Now, my question is...we can delete all these profiles, but how should we handle all of these sketchy inbound links? If all of the spam forum profile pages produce true 404 Error pages (when we delete them), will that evaporate the link equity? Or, could we still get penalized by Google? Do we need to use the Link Disavow tool?
Also note that these forum profile pages have all been set to "noindex,nofollow" months ago. Not sure how that affects things.
This is going to be a time waster for me, but I want to ensure that we don't get penalized. Thanks for your advice!
-
If you read my post you will see I said noindex,nofollow not follow, if you would like to remove them then that will do the same job. A>B>C take out B and problem solved either way
-
Chris, the spam links are coming from multiple domains to multiple spam-created forum profile pages on our site's forum. We are deleting the profiles and agree that this is probably all we need to do...but we can always use a tool like Link Detox or Link Risk to further assess our link profile if we get penalized by Penguin for some reason.
Alan, the spam-created forum profile pages are already set to noindex,follow (as are all forum profile pages). They previously weren't (decided by someone before my time), but I had our Developers change that setting 6 months ago for reasons like this. I just didn't discover all of this spam until now. Anyways, the concern with keeping the pages live but set to noindex,follow is that the link juice coming from the spam-sites to the spam profile pages on our site could be passed through to all the other pages linked from the nav menu/sidebar/footer. I believe this is how link equity flows through pages set to "noindex,follow." If the pages are deleted, then I believe the link equity evaporates (which supports why SEOs do "link reclamation" by fixing broken links).
If anyone has any further clarification...I'm all ears!
Thanks again, guys. -Dan
-
If I understand you, you have spam links pointing to profile pages, from there you link to your site.
then noindex,nofollow or removing the intermediate page will solve the issue.
-
Interesting question. It seems to me that hundreds or even thousands of spammy links from one domain pointing to 404 URLs on another domain isn't the the kind of situation Google would be penalizing the receiving domain for. I think you're in a far better situation than those who have such a back link profile pointing to their homepage because they don't have the option of deleting the page being linked to.
I would say that you don't need to disavow those links--just delete the profiles.
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
-
Nofollow for reciprocal links?
Hi, We have reciprocal links with our business partners. Their websites have been listed on our website with "nofollow" links and they link to our website with "nofollow" or "dofollow" links. Is this wrong having reciprocal links? And if they are our partners, "nofollow" or "dofollow" is better? I don't think there will be anymore link juice loss with dofollow links from our website?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Site Search external hosted pages - Penguin
Hi All, On the site www.myworkwear.co.uk we have a an externally hosted site search that also creates separately hosted pages of popular searches which rank in Google and create traffic. An example of this is listed below: Google Search: blue work trousers (appears on front page of Google) Site Champion Page: http://workwear.myworkwear.co.uk/workwear/Navy%20Blue%20Work%20Trousers Nearest Category page: http://www.myworkwear.co.uk/category/Mens-Work-Trousers-936.htm Could this be a penalisation or duplication factor? Could these be interpreted as a dodgy link factor? Thanks in advance for your help. Kind Regards, Andy Southall
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MarzVentures0 -
Hiding content or links in responsive design
Hi, I found a lot of information about responsive design and SEO, mostly theories no real experiment and I'd like to find a clear answer if someone tested that. Google says:
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | NurunMTL
Sites that use responsive web design, i.e. sites that serve all devices on the same set of URLs, with each URL serving the same HTML to all devices and using just CSS to change how the page is rendered on the device
https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/details For usability reasons sometimes you need to hide content or links completely (not accessible at all by the visitor) on your page for small resolutions (mobile) using CSS ("visibility:hidden" or "display:none") Is this counted as hidden content and could penalize your site or not? What do you guys do when you create responsive design websites? Thanks! GaB0 -
Seo back linking proposal review
Hi guys, below is a proposal i received from someone on freelancer.com for some seo building. Is this really all it takes? Obviously done overtime but basically is this it aside from the usual basics onsite keywords, urls, artciles, content etc. This is a the proposal for $250 (some are cheaper but almost the same details as below). This is one of the top seo people on freelancers.com and they all have good reviews. Is this basically it? Shell out $100 bucks or more a month to someone who will just post stuff all over the internet. It just seems all very simple, what is $100 bucks a month to stay at #1. Is there any real questions i should ask to make sure i am not just throwing my money away? I would like to recommend the following services for attaining better search results for the website. 1)Press Release Submissions
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | topclass
2)Social bookmarking submissions
3)Drip Feed Article Links - 100 Article submissions everyday for 25 days
4)Article directory submissions
5)Link directory submissions
6)Blog Post Submissions(All Blogs have PR1 to PR6)
7)Wiki Page Submissions(.EDU and .GOV Sites Included) PR of the directories, social bookmarking websites, Blogs, wiki pages and Article directories are from PR0 to PR8.
Most of them are in the range of PR1 to PR4. If you are interested in the above services then these are the details about those services. 1)Press release Submissions - We will write 3 press release and submit them to 25 press release websites.
Submitting press release gets the news to Google news, Yahoo news etc..
Please note we even submit to Paid press release websites like PRBuzz, SBWire, pressdoc etc.. 2)Social Bookmarking submissions - I will also submit your website to 150 social bookmarking websites.
Here are the example of social bookmarking websites.
www.digg.com
www.furl.net
After we finish submitting to social bookmarking websites we will then create rss feeds with approved link URL's and ping them so that links get indexed. 3)Drip Feed Article submissions - We will be writing one article.
Everyday we will submitting the article to 100 different websites.
We will be submitting for 25 days.
100 submissions x 25 days = 2500 submissions.
In each article submissions we can use 2 links to the website. 4)Article directory submissions - We will write 5 articles.
Each article will be around 500 words.
Then we will submit them to 300 different article directories. That means 5 articles x 300 article directories = 1500 article submissions.
In each article we can use 2 links to the website.
1500 x 2 Links.
I have experience in submitting articles to article directories.
Till now i have submitted more than 1000 articles to article directories.
I will also create separate accounts with article directories wherever possible. 5)Link directory submissions - I have a list of 1300 directories.
I will submit your website to these directories.
I have experience in submitting to link directories.
Till now i have submitted more than 2500 websites.
All the submission work is done manually.
All these directories provide one way links. 6)Blog Post Submissions(700 PR1 to PR6 Blogs) - We will write 1 article.
we spin and post to 700 PR1 to PR5 blogs.
We can spin the article, title of article and links
You will be given a confirmation when complete, and a code to search backlinks in the search engines.
They are hosted on 650 different C Class IPs! 7)Wiki Page Submissions - Get 200+ wiki site contextual backlinks (3 per posted article) from a range of PR 0 to 8 wiki sites including over 30 US .EDU and US .GOV sites.
I will also ping Them.0 -
Being penalized for unnatural links, determining the issue, and fixing the problem. What to do?
Hi all, A client has been penalised, having received the message in Google Webmasters last week, along with two more yesterday. It seems the penalty is for something specific: “As a result, for this specific incident we are taking very targeted action on the unnatural links instead of your site as a whole“. This is the first time I've had to deal with this so I'll be a bit layman about it The penalty, firstly, seems to be for the old domain, from which there is a re-direct to the current one. This redirect has been in place since Feb 2012 (no link building has been done for the old domain since then). In Webmasters, I have the old and new domains set up separately and the messages are only coming for the old (but affecting the new, obviously). I need to determine if it’s the old or new URL I’m being hit for, or would that even matter? Some questionable links I can see in WM: There is an affiliate for whom WM is showing 154,000 links (all followed) from their individual products listings to the client’s site (as a related product) but they’re linking to the new domain if that matters. Could this affiliate be an issue? There is also Updowner, which has added 2000+ links unbeknownst to me but apparently they are discounted by Google. I see a ton of recent directory submissions - right up until last week - that I am not responsible for. Could that be intentional spam targeting? I did also use a 3<sup>rd</sup> party link building company for Feb, March and April who ‘manually’ submitted the new domain to directories and social bookmarking sites. Could this be issue? For what kind of time-scale are penalties usually imposed - how far back (or how recently) are they penalising for? Ranking were going really well until this happened last Thursday. Will directories with non-followed links effect us negatively - one such one has over 2000 links. What is the most conclusive way to determine which are the poor, penalty-incurring links pointing to us? I know I now have to contact all the dodgy directories the site is now listed on to get links removed, but any and all advice on how to rectify this, along with determining what had gone wrong, will be most appreciated. Cheers, David
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Martin_S0 -
Google Results Pages. after the bomb
So, ever since Google "went nuclear" a few weeks ago I have seen major fluctuations in search engine results pages. Basically what I am seeing is a settling down and RE-inclusion of some of my web properties. Basically I had a client affected by the hack job initially, but about a week later I not only saw my original ranking restored but a litany of other long tails appeared. I wasn't using any shady link techniques but did have considerable article distribution that MAY have connected me inadvertently to some of the "bad neighborhoods." The website itself is a great site with original relevant content, so if it is possible, Google definitely recognized some error in their destructive ranking adjustment and is making good on it for those sites that did not deserve the penalty. Alternatively, it could just be random Google reordering and I got lucky. What are your experiences with the updates?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TheGrid0 -
Penguin Update and Infographic Link Bait
Is it still ok to use infographics for link bait now that the penguin update has rolled out? Are there any techniques that should be avoided when promoting an infographic? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | eddiejsd1 -
How to improve on page Optimization ?
How to Optimize our website in terms of onpage optimisation, how relavent the onpage should be to that of the search engine. will onpage optimisatrion will help us to rank better in organic search results.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AkshayaPatra0