Website rankings plummeted after a negative SEO attack - help!
-
Hello Mozzers
A website of a new client (http://bit.ly/PuVNTp) use to rank very well. It was on the top page for any relevant search terms in its industry in Southern Ontario (Canada). Late last year, the client was the victim of a negative SEO attack. Thousands upon thousands of spammy backlinks were built (suspected to be bought using something like Fiverr). The links came from very questionable sites or just low quality sites.
The backlink growth window was very small (2,000 every 24 hours or so). Since that happened that site has all but disappeared from search results. It is still indexed and the owner has disavowed most of the bad backlinks but the site can't seem to bounce back.
The same happened for another site that they own (http://bit.ly/1tErxpu) except the number backlinks produced was even higher. The sites both suffer from duplicate content issues and at one point (in 2012) were de-indexed due to the very spammy work of a former SEO. They came back in early 2013 and were fine for some time.
Thoughts?
-
Matt, tell you from the experience that your concern is right but you are missing a thing that should really consider!
You are removing and disavowing all the bad links this is exactly what you should be doing (give a try on removing them because this is very important here) and then try to build so high quality links at the same time.
If you see less margin of quality resources available within your niche try to do something that get you press ad authority links from media sites. This will give you some positive points in the eye of Google and get you more chance to recover!!
-
Doesn't take much in this particular industry to rank. The competitors who do consistently well have a small number of backlinks and lower authority levels than the sites listed above. The client does have a few good back links and a nice handful of internal links.
What concerns me is the never bouncing back part. I have advised them of this and further advised them to start fresh but their is an emotional attachment to the brands that they can't let go (understandably so). My fear is that we will put in a great deal of time and resources into something that may be destined to fail now.
Would love to hear stories of others who were in a similar circumstance.
-
Sorry to hear about your website pain.
I am on the other side of the spammy link fence. I paid for an seo in 2011 to work on a site. They used black hat seo methods such as link from places such as Fiverr, yet they used digital point forums for links.
Then Here it is 2012. and Google hates me.
2013 I am a member of Moz. The best move I have made for sure.
I have done what you have and updated a disavow txt file.
I have heard many different strategies. Some say you will never recover from a non manual penalty. Some say clean up bad backlinks then replace them with good quality natural links. Then I have had some say clean up backlinks, create new ones, and then wait till the next update.
I have started with zero citations to now I have 200 or so. I do not have a bunch of backlinks, about 230, yet I am trying to gather high quality links.
So I think if you once ranked with bad backlinks, you must replace them with good quality backlinks. Other sites are ranking, so maybe use the explorer tool to see what the competition sites are using for backlinks, and see if there are any opportunities.
Best of wishes
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
-
High ranking nationally but not locally via google
A website I am working on is ranked very well in all tracked keywords at a national level, but not from a local standpoint via google. I find it weird that the site is on the first page if you search from many other states/towns/locations but not locally. Looked on Google Search Console and couldn't see any link to why this is happening. Figured we would clear out the htaccess for any redirect issues and hope it fixes it. Suggestions please? Never seen google do this. It is strange.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SeobyKP1 -
On Page #2 of Bing But Nowhere on Google. Please Help !
Hi, community. I have a problem with the ranking of my blog and I hope anyone could help me to solve this problem. I have been trying to rank my blog post for a keyword for almost 6 months but still getting no success. My URL is: this blog post
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Airsionquin
Target keyword: best laptops for college The interesting fact is that the post has been on page #2 of BING but nowhere on google. It was on page #3 of google for about one month, but it's been 1-2 weeks gone(not ranked anymore but it's still well indexed). The post has been replaced by another post of my blog(let's say post A) which doesn't have any link. The Post A is ranking on page #4 right now.
The weird thing is my post which ranks for this keyword frequently changes. One day the Post A was on page#4 then after a few days it changed to the post B. Yesterday I searched on google for a keyword "number one on bing but nowhere on google" and then I
come across to read this article on MOZ community and one of the people here said that it was over optimization issue. I think my post has been suffering for an over optimization penalty algorithm. Just for your information, I have been building backlinks to this URL for the last 5 months(it's 1+ year old). It has backlinks only about 1,5k from 200 domains(according to ahref). I have used the exact match anchor only under +/- 2%. The rest is branded, naked URL and generic anchors.
So, in this case, I thought that I haven't done any over anchor optimization.
I have checked the keyword density and I found it was "safe". One important thing I can remember before the post has gone is I add a backlink from lifehack.org(guest post) with exact match anchor.
I suspect this is really the cause because 2-3 days after doing that then the post is gone(dropped) and replaced by another post of my blog(as I've mentioned before). But it's very strange because the amount of the anchor keyword(including the long tail) is only about 10(from 200 domains) or only 5% which mean it should be safe. I'm so Sorry. It's a long story 🙂 So, What is actually happening to my post? and How to fix this problem... Please..please help me... Any hep is appreciated. By the way, Sorry for my poor english.. 🙂0 -
Effect of same country server hosting on SEO
Hello all, my question is if my website targets a country abc and I have server in the same country abc compared to suppose I shift my server to country xyz can it effect SEO and ranking of my website ?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | adnan11010 -
E-Commerce Cart Migration SEO Advice
Hi all, First time post here. We operate a small ecommerce store and plan on moving cart, most likely from Interspire to Magento or possibly Prestashop. We want to be sure not to damage our current search rankings when making this move and ideally improve our rankings at the same time by utilizing the new cart’s <acronym title="Search Engine Optimization">seo</acronym> functionality as best we can. Stage 1 of the project will see us simply move our current store from one cart to another. For this move we are keeping our existing single domain and intend on moving our current set up without making many, if any changes to content, product descriptions , URL’s etc as we believe this best practice for ensuring our current rankings remain as they are- is such thinking correct? Or should we do otherwise Stage 2 would see us operate a multi lingual, multistore, with 4 domains operating with 1 back end. For the 3 new domains we are looking to set up these storefronts in whichever manner will be most beneficial from an <acronym title="Search Engine Optimization">seo</acronym> perspective We welcome any advice as to what we should consider? What we should and shouldn’t do? and best practices for this project Please advise if any other information is required to best answer our query Thanks for taking the time to read our post, any forthcoming tips and advice will be greatly appreciated
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | StuSol0 -
Best Link Building Strategies in Modern SEO
Hello, In light of all the updates and also in guest blogging being only for nofollow links now, what's some of the best strategies for link building for ecommerce sites? We're in an industry where the content doesn't get linked to very much. Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
A case of negative SEO?
We came across today some very strange forum postings. Essentially they look like some nonsense text followed by a list of "adult" terms. In the middle of the list, completely randomly and strangely our brand terms appear in the list. There are no links to anything. The only thing I can think of is that someone is trying to make our brand terms algorithmically associated with questionable "red flag" terms in the eyes of search engines. I have no idea why else this would be happening. Could this be a case of some kind of Fiverr negative SEO attack? Is there any risk? Doesn't seem like anything we can do about it...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | edu-SEO0 -
Do pingbacks in Wordpress help or harm SEO? Or neither?
Hey everyone, Just wondering, do pingbacks in Wordpress help or harm SEO? Or neither?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jhinchcliffe1 -
Can anyone tell me why this site ranks so well?
Site in question: cellphoneshop.net From what I can tell from their link profile, the links they garner don't appear to be particularly high value but they dominate organic listings for my vertical (cell phone accessories), esp. in the last 2-3 months when Google was supposedly increasing the quality of their search results. Can anyone tell me why in particular this site ranks so well for competitive short and long tail terms?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | eugeneku0