Affiliate Website Slapping
-
Hi There
I recently launched a very large website - rich in good quality content, nice design and good onsite SEO.
The website is a 100 + pages and gives the user informative content.
In terms of SEO and linking building - a few guest posts, PR's and directories have been submitted.
All links have been relevant and quality. No spam links used at all and the number of links submitted has been very low. Only a handful..
We have seen a significant drop in rankings and I am scratching my head as to why.
My worry is that Google has slapped us for having an affiliate link on the website.
Each page - except the homepage has one advert on them. The advert includes an affiliate link.
Does anyone have any recent experience of affiliate websites been slapped?
Can anyone help???
Much Appreciated
-
Advertisements can definitely reduce the quality of your website in Google's eyes, however, if your site as a whole is informative, 100+ pages and optimized as you described, I might take a quick look at over optimization of link anchor text or the site for competitive keywords. Definitely check WMT for any warnings from G as well and, be aware, that the Hummingbird algorithm just rolled out.
Also, are the affiliate links set to rel=no follow?
-
There are some theories that pages with affiliate links suffer in rankings, but I haven't seen anything conclusive. It happens that many of those sites are also poor quality.
Depending on the press releases and directories you chose, those could be your issue. Sometime in July Google stated they are going to crack down on links earned from press releases:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en
"Links with optimized anchor text in articles or press releases distributed on other sites."
Many directories are seen as spam by search engines because it isn't naturally obtained. In that same page linked above, it states "Low-quality directory or bookmark site links".
An article about links from press releases from searchengineland:
It is hard to say for certain without seeing the site, the press releases, or the directory links but that might provide some insight. It also could depend on how recent your launch was, rankings can be volatile for new sites.
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 Increase US traffic for other GEO based website
Can you help me to understand why my traffic from the US is not increasing for landing pages/product pages whereas for our blog it has grown 2X to 3X past 2 quarters? I am afraid that I don't get any right answer for this. Could you or someone help me to discover the answer? Also, what should I do to rank in the US for a particular KW, we rank on 2 positions for KW "Hackathon" in India but for the US the no is 56. I don't understand what to do and the best possible way to rank in the US.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Rajnish_HE0 -
How to re-rank an established website with new content
I can't help but feel this is a somewhat untapped resource with a distinct lack of information.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ChimplyWebGroup
There is a massive amount of information around on how to rank a new website, or techniques in order to increase SEO effectiveness, but to rank a whole new set of pages or indeed to 're-build' a site that may have suffered an algorithmic penalty is a harder nut to crack in terms of information and resources. To start I'll provide my situation; SuperTED is an entertainment directory SEO project.
It seems likely we may have suffered an algorithmic penalty at some point around Penguin 2.0 (May 22nd) as traffic dropped steadily since then, but wasn't too aggressive really. Then to coincide with the newest Panda 27 (According to Moz) in late September this year we decided it was time to re-assess tactics to keep in line with Google's guidelines over the two years. We've slowly built a natural link-profile over this time but it's likely thin content was also an issue. So beginning of September up to end of October we took these steps; Contacted webmasters (and unfortunately there was some 'paid' link-building before I arrived) to remove links 'Disavowed' the rest of the unnatural links that we couldn't have removed manually. Worked on pagespeed as per Google guidelines until we received high-scores in the majority of 'speed testing' tools (e.g WebPageTest) Redesigned the entire site with speed, simplicity and accessibility in mind. Htaccessed 'fancy' URLs to remove file extensions and simplify the link structure. Completely removed two or three pages that were quite clearly just trying to 'trick' Google. Think a large page of links that simply said 'Entertainers in London', 'Entertainers in Scotland', etc. 404'ed, asked for URL removal via WMT, thinking of 410'ing? Added new content and pages that seem to follow Google's guidelines as far as I can tell, e.g;
Main Category Page Sub-category Pages Started to build new links to our now 'content-driven' pages naturally by asking our members to link to us via their personal profiles. We offered a reward system internally for this so we've seen a fairly good turnout. Many other 'possible' ranking factors; such as adding Schema data, optimising for mobile devices as best we can, added a blog and began to blog original content, utilise and expand our social media reach, custom 404 pages, removed duplicate content, utilised Moz and much more. It's been a fairly exhaustive process but we were happy to do so to be within Google guidelines. Unfortunately, some of those link-wheel pages mentioned previously were the only pages driving organic traffic, so once we were rid of these traffic has dropped to not even 10% of what it was previously. Equally with the changes (htaccess) to the link structure and the creation of brand new pages, we've lost many of the pages that previously held Page Authority.
We've 301'ed those pages that have been 'replaced' with much better content and a different URL structure - http://www.superted.com/profiles.php/bands-musicians/wedding-bands to simply http://www.superted.com/profiles.php/wedding-bands, for example. Therefore, with the loss of the 'spammy' pages and the creation of brand new 'content-driven' pages, we've probably lost up to 75% of the old website, including those that were driving any traffic at all (even with potential thin-content algorithmic penalties). Because of the loss of entire pages, the changes of URLs and the rest discussed above, it's likely the site looks very new and probably very updated in a short period of time. What I need to work out is a campaign to drive traffic to the 'new' site.
We're naturally building links through our own customerbase, so they will likely be seen as quality, natural link-building.
Perhaps the sudden occurrence of a large amount of 404's and 'lost' pages are affecting us?
Perhaps we're yet to really be indexed properly, but it has been almost a month since most of the changes are made and we'd often be re-indexed 3 or 4 times a week previous to the changes.
Our events page is the only one without the new design left to update, could this be affecting us? It potentially may look like two sites in one.
Perhaps we need to wait until the next Google 'link' update to feel the benefits of our link audit.
Perhaps simply getting rid of many of the 'spammy' links has done us no favours - I should point out we've never been issued with a manual penalty. Was I perhaps too hasty in following the rules? Would appreciate some professional opinion or from anyone who may have experience with a similar process before. It does seem fairly odd that following guidelines and general white-hat SEO advice could cripple a domain, especially one with age (10 years+ the domain has been established) and relatively good domain authority within the industry. Many, many thanks in advance. Ryan.0 -
Website starts ranking on Google then always drops - Targeted for Australia but most traffic from U.S - Bounce Rate at 94.49% - HELP!
Hi everyone, Thank you for your time. During the past 8 months I have been working on this website which is a .com.au . I have fully optimised the website which is targeting Brisbane in Australia and I have setup everything (Sitemaps, Geo location on WMT, Fetched as Google etc..) However the website just does not want to rank at all. I know that the previous SEO company were not too good but since then I have disavowed all unnatural links, we have moved the hosting to a new company and the website content has been updated. Only recently the Website has started ranking for it's brand name (not even in top of Google) and whenever a keyword starts ranking above the Top 50 of Google it suddenly drops again. The other issues is that even if I have setup the website to target Australia the majority of traffic comes from the U.S. Last month out of the 127 Session - 85 from United States - 29 from Australia - 3 Brazil - 2 India - 2 Italy - 1 Canada etc... Because of this the website has a Bounce rate of 95%. If you would have any advice, tips or recommendations that I could do to try and fix this it would be much appreciated. I suppose we can consider this as some kind of penalisation - potentially due to the past work and issues that occurred before the business became our client but I am not sure what more I can do to stop the wrong traffic and improve the rankings. Thanks for your help. Lyam
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AlphaDigital20 -
Suggest me a best plan for linking building chart for small static website.
Hi Everyone, Can any one suggest me a clear idea for off page link building chart i.e) Our page is a 24 page website we like to plan for off page activity like bookmarking, classifieds, directory bla bla bla. So how many links we are supposed to post and in how much day time gap example: 15 Links in bookmarking, 10 links in classified, weekly one article submission, after one week the same cycle goes on.....
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | dineshmap0 -
Can i 301 redirect a website that does not have manual penalty - but definetly affected by google
ok, i have a website (website A) which has been running since 2008, done very nicely in search results, until january of this year... it dropped siginificantly, losing about two thirds of visitors etc... then in may basically lost the rest... i was pulling my hair out for months trying to figure out why, i "think" it was something to do with links and anchor text, i got rid of old SEO company, got a new SEO company, they have done link analysis, trying to remove lots of links, have dissavowed about 500 domains... put in a reconsideration request... got a reply saying there is no manual penalty... so new seo company says all they can do is carry on removing links, and wait for penguin to update and hopefully that will fix it... this will take as along as it takes penguin to update again... obviously i can not wait indefinetely, so they have advised i start a new website (website B)... which is a complete duplicate of website A. Now as we do not know whats wrong with website A - (we think its links - and will get them removed) my seo company said we cant do a 301 redirect, as we will just cause what ever is wrong to pass over to website B... so we need to create a blank page for every single page at website A, saying we have moved and put a NO FOLLOW link to the new page on website B.... Personally i think the above will look terrible, and not be a very user friendly experience - but my seo company says it is the only way to do it... before i do it, i just wanted to check with some experts here, if this is right? please advise if 301 redirects are NOT correct way to do this. thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | isntworkdull
James0 -
Can you disavow a spamy link that is not pointing to your website?
We have submitted several really spammy websites to the Google spam team. We noticed they take a very long time to react to submissions. Do you know if it is possible to disavow a link that is not pointing to your website but rather to a very spammy website? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Carla_Dawson0 -
How can do I report a multiple set of duplicated websites design to manipulate SERPs?
Ok, so within one of my client's sectors it has become clear that someone is trying to manipulate the SERPs by registering tons of domains that are all keyword targeted. All of the websites are simply duplications of one another and are merely setup to dominate the SERP listings - which, at the moment, it is beginning to do. None of the sites have any real authority (in some cases 1 PA and DA) and yet they're ranking above much more established websites. The only back links they have are from dodgy-looking forum ones. It's all a bit crazy and it shouldn't be happening. Anyway, all of the domains have been registered by the same person and within a two-month time period of each other. What do you guys think is the best step to take to report these particular websites to Google?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Webrevolve0 -
What happens when content on your website (and blog) is an exact match to multiple sites?
In general, I understand that having duplicate content on your website is a bad thing. But I see a lot of small businesses (specifically dentists in this example) who hire the same company to provide content to their site. They end up with the EXACT same content as other dentists. Here is a good example: http://www.hodnettortho.com/blog/2013/02/valentine’s-day-and-your-teeth-2/ http://www.braces2000.com/blog/2013/02/valentine’s-day-and-your-teeth-2/ http://www.gentledentalak.com/blog/2013/02/valentine’s-day-and-your-teeth/ If you google the title of that blog article you find tons of the same article all over the place. So, overall, doesn't this make the content on these blogs irrelevant? Does this hurt the SEO on these sites at all? What is the value of having completely unique content on your site/blog vs having duplicate content like this?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MorganPorter0