Still Battling On With Link Profile Audit
-
I'm getting there, I can see the light!
I have covered one complete audit of the link profile and I am now going back over it looking at the links I had 'question marked' - I should have this completed by the end of this week and I will then focus on using DISAVOW for the links that I am really struggling with, the foreign sites that are in Chinese or Russian, the sites that have absolutely no 'contact us' information and have been privately registered (in WhoIs)
I have come across this domain which links to our site about 8 times and although I cannot find any contact info I can't quite make my mind up, to be honest I would rather get rid of it BUT I'm trying to avoid taking the easy option of disavowing where I can;
Fo anyone who has gone through what I am currently going through, please help me just this once and tell me 'should it stay or should it go'?!
Many thanks!
Andy
-
Askives is one of those sites that appears on the backlink profile of almost every site I audit. I put it in a category I call "not seo made" and just ignore it. A good number of those Chinese and Russian sites are the same too. You'll find a bunch that look like this. They often have "alexa" in the url:
I don't disavow those or try to remove them. Google is most interested in the links that are self made in an attempt to boost rankings.
Now, there are some Russian sites that I come across in link profiles that just have random spun text and anchor texted links. For those, attempt to contact and if you can't find contact information, share that in your Google Docs spreadsheet so that the webspam team can see that you tried and then disavow it.
Good luck!
-
How does anyone know what will be spammy in 1 to 3 years? With that logic you might as well disavow all links.
-
Remember to think towards the future when reviewing your links. A link might pass for Google right now, but is it something they'll consider spammy 6 months, 1 year, or 3 years down the line? If yes, get rid of it now and save yourself the extra work.
-
Not that they're likely to hurt you--or help you, for that matter--but if enough people disavow worthless sites like these, maybe we won't have to spend time wondering about them as we go through our link audits because they'll have been wiped off the map.
-
Just had a look at http://www.askives.com/ and it looks like a non-spammy, genuine site (albeit auto populated or similar). I'd leave the links there. They look genuine enough.
-
Add it to your disavow list and rock the Casbah : )
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
-
Penguin: Is there a "safe threshold" for commercial links?
Hello everyone, Here I am with a question about Penguin. I am asking to all Penguin experts on these forums to help me understand if there is a "safe" threshold of unnatural links under which we can have peace of mind. I really have no idea about that, I am not an expert on Penguin nor an expert of unnatural back link profiles. I have a website with about 84% natural links and 16% affiliate/commercial links. Should I be concerned about possibly being penalized by an upcoming Penguin update? So far, I have never been hit by any previous Penguin released, but... just in case, you experts, do you know what's the "threshold" of unnatural links that shouldn't be exceeded? Or, in your experience, what's the classic threshold over which Google can penalize a website for unnatural back link profile? Thank you in advance to anyone helping me on this research!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | fablau0 -
Subtle line of asking links for money/service/benefits
Hello here, I am putting down a link building strategy according to the latest "good practices" and Google recommendations, but I find myself often confused. For example, I'd like to implement the technique suggested by Rand on his article below: https://moz.com/blog/headsmacking-tip-1-link-requests-in-order-confirmation-emails But if you look at the comments, a user suggests to "ask for links in exchange of discounts", and everyone there applaud him for the idea (Rand included). But, wait a second... am I the only one realizing that now days Google discourage to ask for links for "money, services, or any other kind of 'offered' benefit"? So.. where to draw the line here? Here are other examples that I am not sure are "safe" in link building: 1. Ask for links in exchange of a free Membership on a site (where usually a Membership is sold for a price) 2. Ask for links in exchange of exposure (isn't this a sort of "link exchange"?) 3. Ask for link in exchange of "anything else you can think of", even if necessarily doesn't involve money (i.e. for a "certified site badge", for a free e-book, or anything else) I'd really like to know your thoughts on this very sensitive issue. Thank you in advance to anyone for helping me to understand.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | fablau1 -
Backlink, how to delete or find who is linking to me?
Hi there guys, Can someone tell me how I go about finding who is linking to my site or how to find backlinks to my site and if it is a spam site or a site I don't know or want linking to me, how to stop them from linking to me and also how to delete their link? Thanks appreciate the time Cheers
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | edward-may0 -
Is it worth getting links from .blogspot.com and .wordpress.com?
Our niche ecommerce site has only one thing going for it: We have numerous opportunities on a weekly basis to get reviews from "mom bloggers". We need links - our domain authority is depressing. My concern is that these "mom bloggers" tend to have blogs that end with .blogspot.com or .wordpress.com. How do I screen for "reviewers" that are worth getting links from and how can I make the most of the community we have available to us?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Wilkerson1 -
People buying links to their profiles on my site
As we have a major Penguin update looming in the background, I am looking for expert advice on how to deal with professionals buying into link programs whether they are doing it deliberately or not. Our site provides detailed profile information on hundreds of 1000's of professionals and some professionals apparently believed that buying into link program will lift their profile in the SERPS. About 10 professionals have paid shady link building companies to buy links to their profiles on our site. The biggest offender bought over 1,500 links to his profile. Aside from adding the known toxic links to our disavow file, what else can we do to avoid any link penalties? I can think of three distinct options and would love to hear feedback especially based on actual experience. Option 1. 404 the existing profile - "http://www.anysite.com/jones_smith" and create a new URL "http://www.anysite.com/jones_smith_1". Option 2. Keep the existing URL and fully rely on the disavow file. Contact the professionals and kindly ask them to stop buying links and to contact their link building companies to remove the links. Any other ideas?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | irvingw0 -
Anybody have useful advice to fix a very bad link profile?
Hello fellow mozzers. I am interested in getting the communities opinion on how to fix an extremely bad link profile, or whether it would be easier to start over on a new domain. This is for an e-commerce site that sells wedding rings. Prior to coming to our agency, the client had been using a different service that was doing some serious black hat linkbuilding on a truly staggering scale. Of the roughly 53,000 links that show up in OSE, 16,500 of them have the anchor text "wedding rings", 1,300 "wedding ring sets", etc. For contrast, there are only two "visit website", and just one domain name anchor text. So it is about the farthest from natural you can get. Anyway, the site traffic was doing great until the end of February, when it took a massive hit and lost over half the day to day traffic volume, and steadily declined until April 24th (Penguin), when it took another huge hit and lost almost 70% of traffic from Google. Note that the traffic from Yahoo/Bing stayed the same. So the question is, is it worth trying to clean up this mess of a backlink profile or would it be smarter to start fresh with a new domain?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CustomCreatives0 -
Still not Recovered from Caffeine
In June of 2010, we lost rankings for four of our best key terms for our website http://tinyurl.com/6e73q52. No other terms were majorly impacted, so our assumption was that is was either due to Caffeine or a filter on those terms. We have worked with several companies using various strategies since then with little or no success. We later found that their linking strategies were less than white hat (I'm being polite) The best advice I was given recently is that we were over-optimized for those four terms (life insurance, life insurance quotes, term life insurance, term life insurance quotes) and we need to balance that out by linking with other terms. I know this will not be a fast process. My problem is I see many of my competitors in this extremely competitive space using black hat (grey at best) techniques and rising quickly to the first page of Google. Some of the SEO companies working with my competitors offered help to us, which I consider ethically questionable. These four terms convert the best, as you would imagine, so it has become very cut-throat in this competitive environment. We want to keep our hats white, as we are interested in longevity, not a quick hit and run (our site has been live and working for 8-plus years, by the way). I have become extremely gun-shy and generally suspicious of working with a new SEO company, so my question (finally) is: I would like some recommendations and success stories you have had with working with SEO companies (white hat only). Thank you for listening to my rant.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | rdreich490 -
Link Building with links in footer of Word Press Themes- Is This BLack Hat??
I See lots of free word press themes with links in footer like Kids Headphones | Colombia Classifieds | Broadway Tickets Is this a valid white hat link building method? What if the theme looked like a particular industry and the links related to the industry would that be better?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | DavidKonigsberg0