Could someone be sabataging my site by bad backlinks?
-
Hello,
As I have said before I am new to SEO and especially new to this type of software. I am trialing MOZ, ahrefs and MajesticSEO. I just used the Site Explorer on ahrefs and it showed me that a bunch of backlinks was created today but I haven't engaged anyone in "SEO" for many months.
Why would this be? See the image for a screenshot.
-
Cheers. Makes sense.
-
Your going to have to disavow tool those links and you might want to take a big chunk of your links out and start over. Like Matt Cutts said use it like a Machete not like a Scalpel.
Yet another bit to read http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-link-spamming-google-for-a-specific-time-period-then-mass-disavow-those-links-179445
-
Thanks Lynn, I contacted an old SEO person and he explained that it was a mistake and that it was done in 2011. I wonder how many other mistakes were made! I have found more than one strange occurrences-- actually I estimate over 100. It's a no-wonder why my site got smashed by Google in May last year.
I will have to go through and cull and disavow them all. -
Hi Carl,
Its hard to say for sure, but those links look to me like the kind of stuff you get with the 200 dollars for 500 back links type services. Keep in mind that any link explorer application is not showing you links that were created today, just links that were first discovered by that application today, so the links could be days, weeks or even months old depending on how often the pages of the site are crawled by the app. As a general rule lower value sites with fewer incoming links are crawled less often, and those look mainly like low value article sites. Also keep in mind that if you had a company doing this kind of work for you at one point, these links are often automated to a degree and could be coming online weeks/months after the initial order was placed.
In view of all that, I would think that chef link might just be a mistake from the same service, somehow your link got attached to a different site/project or something like that. If your link profile is full of those kind of links yes you will probably be having trouble ranking and maybe disavowing as Michael suggests is a good idea (don't expect quick gains though...).
-
Thanks but why are they occurring? What is causing them to appear?
-
If you are getting links like this I would disavow the domains responsible.
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 will it affect my site SEO, if I get backlink from a hign spam score percentage site like 70 % .
**Above how much percentage of spam score should I avoid getting backlinks. **
Link Building | | ShashankDubey10 -
How to Index my backlinks?
I create backlinks at everyfay but backlinks not indexed. So, i want to know how to indexed my backlinks?? If you have any free indexed tool then please suggest me as soon as possible.
Link Building | | renukishor0 -
Partner links - is this bad?
I have been looking at whys to get natural links, another SEO company said that instead of doing Guest Blog Posts there now adding single links to partner pages on websites which have a follow link. To me this sounds like basically a links page rebadged as a partners page. Is this a dangerous practice? or does this carry some weight with the search engines?
Link Building | | Cocoonfxmedia0 -
Which Backlinks to Disavow?
I am a site owner just getting to learn more about managing things myself after outsourcing SEO to a firm a year back (they stopped all activities about 8 months back). The question I have is about disavowing the low quality links. After collecting all the data from many sites on the basis of this helpful posting - (http://moz.com/blog/ultimate-guide-to-google-penalty-removal), I am now left with around 2,800 back-links. I discovered most of the bad ones using ahrefs and majestic (and Google webmaster did not show many of the bad links). In fact, in the very first place, I realized that there was a spam problem when I saw the anchor cloud on ahrefs which showed many unrelated anchors for my site. I have three questions: **First, **Many URL's are actually from websites which have nothing to do with my line of business and I can sure spot them. What I get confused with is this - I can not say that these sites are downright spam. Some of them look to be good sites for example - a coffee machine vendor (with full business details and a fairly decent looking business), a Nike sports shoes mart etc. But they have nothing to do with my business. So my first question is - What is spam really? Would a back link from a high ranking website in the travel industry be considered spam from the point of view of someone who runs a website for medical equipment, specially if the back-link is from an unrelated anchor text like - "3 nights travel package" (which has nothing to do with medical business). I think I should disavow all the low quality back links with an erroneous anchor but Id like some views on this. Second, I see that in the disavow file, one could either upload a whole domain or a specific URL (could somebody please confirm this). I have some sites which have 8-12 (more in some cases) back links to my site. In most cases these sites are either really bad quality or have nothing to do with my business. I am tempted to disavow the entire domain for such sites instead of going by the URL's. Any views? Third, this is what I'd really like some help with. In case I delete the very pages (on my site) to which these back links point, should I still disavow the pointing domain? Finally: I have not created most of these backlinks. In fact, over the last 2-3 months we have started creating links from good sites in my industry. Most of the anchor cloud is good for me on ahrefs but there are these bad ones to which my question relates. I have not got any manual penalty from Google, though my traffic I think took a hit in the first week of October 2013.
Link Building | | sanar0 -
How do I distributing Articles to the correct sites
I'm relatively new to the SEO world, however, I've landed myself a SEO job for a mobility bath, shower and wetroom company.
Link Building | | desktop_nev
I've optimize the pages and added links to directories BUT I would like to start gaining quality links. I've wrote articles, including keyword links, but I would like to know the best strategy to get articles distributed to generic/industry specific sites.
Any help will be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance1 -
Someone not removing a link to our site
Hi Mozzers, We recently worked with an SEO company that bought a few sitewide links without our permission which caused us to get a huge slap by the last panda/penguin update. We managed to remove most of the links except one site (The biggest one).
Link Building | | Ouzan
He simply doesn't reply to our emails etc... What should I do in such case? Thanks.0 -
How to Check if a Sites Backlink Profile is Penguin Friendly?
Post penguin I am of course very wary about which sites I proactively solicit links from. Here is the scenario. Let's say for example I found a blog relevant to my business sector, had good domain authority/moz rank and noticed that they accepted guest posts. Sounds great? Well on the surface it sounds like it would be worth reaching out to the blog owner - but what if that blog had been involved in some really shady link building practices in the past and the reality is that I could end up damaging my own site by association. Can anyone share any useful resources such as articles or tools that will help to understand how to qualify if a sites backlink profile is shady and should be avoided as a link prospect?
Link Building | | Luia0 -
Why is a website with no backlinks beating me?
In Sydney we have an import car dealership and even though it does not show any backlinks to it: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.edwardlees.com.au%2F (make sure to search on Google.com.au for any relevant keywords I mention) However this website is ranking at the top for many competitive keywords, for example: 'japanese imports' It is dominating. Our website has many backlinks: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.sportsautogroup.com.au But no keyword rankings. I understand we need to fix up our on Page SEO, but how does our EdwardLee's rank top with no backlinks?? Or is the tool just missing data?
Link Building | | HeadStud0