I have well over 110 identical backlinks of widely varying quality - is it worth taking the page they're linking to down?
-
The site on which I'm working has been experiencing a month-to-month decline since the Panda and Penguin updates - I didn't get an unnatural links notification, but have clearly fallen off the face of Google with many of the more important rankings. After running a scan on my backlinks, I found over 110 identical backlinks (it looks like the same medical definition and my website is listed in the endnotes as a source - just the URL, not anchor text), some from reputable websites with high pageranks and others that look very 'spammy.'
We've redesigned the architecture of the site, so the actual link itself has a 301 redirect on it, but I'm just wondering exactly how much of a liability is it to have these links out there? I'm guessing it's an all or nothing kind of thing given the identical content on each page - on one hand, I'm pretty frantic to get to the root of the Google penalties and get back in their good graces. On the other hand, I don't want to kill the site completely by going after a set of valuable links.
Has anyone dealt with this before?
-
Hi again,
Sorry for the misunderstanding.
The links being from identical content should not be harmful to you - this sort of citation is fairly common, e.g. when a site has shared a piece of viral content like a video, infographic, tool (calculator etc.) or cited case study that others reproduce and link back to. I'd be far more concerned about the quality of the linking sites.
I think the duplication question will also be even less of an issue if you remove the poor-quality links: identical citations from high-quality sources will pass as normal and not malicious liking activity.
-
Hi Jane,
Thanks for the response.
I'm familiar with the process of asking for link takedowns and for going through the disavowal process - the main thing I'm asking is whether or not having **identical **links is harmful - the pagerank for several of the linking sites is quite high, the backlink itself is an endnote to what looks to be a repeating set of glossaries about a medical procedure... many other backlinks are completely unambiguous about whether or not they should be removed altogether, but I'm looking for a bit of clarification as to whether or not it's ok to have that many identical links in terms of google's hamfisted approach to penalizing.
Thanks
-
Hi John,
This is not an uncommon problem - have you tried contacting any of the spammy sites and requesting the links be taken down? Link take-downs are also very common nowadays and are a good way of both culling undesirable links and gathering "evidence" that you have tried to clean things up if you need to send a reconsideration request to Google.
If the request to take down the link comes from an official company email address, and you follow up within ~10 days to sites you get no response from, link removal requests can be quite successful. Granted, there will be some sites you cannot contact or who don't get back to you (and some will ask for money to take the link down - it's up to you if the price they ask for is worth it). If you are truly dealing with penalties, removing links is a lot more effective than other options.
One other option is to "disavow" the bad links through Webmaster Tools - more information on link disavowal is available here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487?hl=en
We have always found, however, that actually removing the links is most effective, and that disavowal is a good tool for when you can't remove some of the links.
Cheers,
Jane
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 maximize a quality backlink?
Just noticed a huge spike on one of our How To articles and found that a Lifehacker article used our article as a reference and linked back to it. Is there anything I can to to maximize the link juice from this backlink?
Link Building | | mr_w1 -
Homepage Vs. Inner Page Backlink Building?
If I'm trying to rank multiple inner pages, when does strengthening the homepage become more productive than strengthening the inner pages themselves? Is there a strategy to this? For example, maybe you build up a few dozen backlinks to each inner page, and then focus all your efforts on the homepage? Because, from my understanding, strengthening the homepage will go a long way towards helping your inner pages rank. Is that correct?
Link Building | | JABacchetta0 -
2 links going to same domain but different pages
Hi, How is the link juice distributed when you have 2 links in the same article but they go to different pages on the same domain? I know some say if 2 links go to the same page in an article then only the first link passes juice. Would it be better to have 2 articles each having 1 link or 2 articles each having 2 links?
Link Building | | activitysuper0 -
Linking to root domain or index page
While link building, should I link to index page of my website i.e www.mydomainname.com/index.html or should I link to root domain i.e www.mydomainname,com Also I see duplicate title error for index page and root domain in error statistic. How can I get rid of this.
Link Building | | ArtiKalra0 -
Is there a tool that can take all your backlinks and categorise them into categories?
I am looking for a tool that can go through my site (and others) and categorise the backlinks into categories... such as Directory, Blog Comment, Social, Forum etc? To help you understand the backlink mix? Is there this functionality out there?
Link Building | | clayts0 -
Looking to partner with a Quality Link Builder
I have a number of clients, but don't have the time, energy or desire to spend my time building links. I'm looking to partner with someone looking to make some ca$h by helping me accumulate quality links for my clients (at an affordable price). Any referrals would be appreciated. If this type of post is inappropriate or violates any policy, then I would like to change my submission to: "What's the best way to find a partner to assist my link-building efforts?" ....not looking for an SEO firm's sales pitch. Thanks! BR
Link Building | | BVREID0 -
How to Define Quality of External Website During Link Building?
I want to know about process, method or tool which can help me to define quality of external website during link building. We are searching too many questions and topics on Google to resolve daily mind bubbles which land us on different website with different subject. I found that, I was able to drop my website URL over there but confuse about quality of website. I am selling Football and create external link from baby care website. So, will it make sense? My concern is that, Can we create external links from different subject website or specific to subject oriented website? Is there any specific method which help me to understand more about external website and help me to take decision about link building?
Link Building | | CommercePundit0 -
Too many internal links to a particular page?
I have read all the data regarding the number of links per page, but my question has to do with the number of internal links to a particular page. After looking at some of the competition inside Open Site Explorer I can see that the competitor in question has a much smaller number of links going to the desired page then the site I am comparing. The competitor is outranking a page that should be ranking higher due to higher page authority and external root domain links. Internal Links to Page: 9,950 Competitor Page Internal LInks: 208 Is this a situation where the sheer number of internal links is discounted because of page rank distribution throughout the site? Just want to get some clarity here. Thank you for your responses.
Link Building | | jmsobe0