Why do these links violate Google's Quality Guideline?
-
My reconsideration request was declined by Google. Google said that some of the links to my site (www.pianomother.com) are still outside its quality guidelines. We provide piano lessons and sheet music on the site. Three samples are given.
1. http://www.willbeavis.com/links.htm
2. http://vivienzone.blogspot.com/2009/06/learning-how-to-play-piano.html
3. http://interiorpianoservice.com/links/
The first one is obvious because it is a link exchange page. I don't understand why the 2nd and 3rd ones are considered "inorganic links" by Google. The 2nd link is a blog that covers various topics including music, health, computer, etc. The 3rd one is a page of the site that provides piano related services. Other resources related to piano including my website are listed on the page.
Please help.
Thanks.
John
-
Hi John,
As the others have said, there are issues with all three types of links. Number 1 is obvious.
Number 2 comes from a site that appears to blog about absolutely anything, as long as they're paid to do so. The site has posts about buying a car in Philadelphia, passport photos, saving money on gas, business protection... and piano lessons. It's pretty obviously a source of income for the blog owner, with these posts placed in between personal updates.
Number three is from a piano website, but they even list "reciprocal links", which was an outdated link building technique in 2006
I would say that Google is well within its own guidelines to suggest that these links are bad.
-
I'll go over the examples and give you some reasons why these links, in particular, were highlighted.
No. 1:
This one is pretty standard in regard to link exchanges. The page might have been okay-ish when you found it, but it's just a standard link exchange page without any sort of theme. Aside from the exact match anchor text for every link, you'll find exact match anchors for Cuban Cigars and Jennifer Aniston News - among others. Seriously, there's anchor text for 'Mentalist'. Men-tal-ist.
No. 2:
Never mind the date, I seldom trust those, but this is classic blog spam. A whole lot of unrelated topics on everyone's favorite spam site, Blogspot. Again, there's exact match anchor text. Finally, the writing style is pretty consistent with typical blog spam.
No. 3:
More exact match anchor text. I see a theme emerging. A lot of the sites in this page are either gone, or suffered some pretty major penalties a while ago. All in all, the houses may be brown stone - but this is a bad neighborhood.
As a general overview, the site does have a lot of exact match anchor text pointing at it. Another thing is I wouldn't send my credit card information to the site, ever. It doesn't give me the impression that it's a good idea to do so.
From what I can see, the site has been caught in just about every filter and algo update since Panda. You should really consider starting over.
-
For those links I would say that #1 and #3 are link exchanges, which are a no-no now. #2 is a paid advertisement, but it is not a no follow, which makes it a paid link. I think all of them can really be considered paid links, so I would either contact the people and have them removed or disavow them all.
-
Hi John,
A quick check of your backlinks IN OSE shows some other questionnable links like submityoursite.org , freeadddirectory.com, addurlshopping.com, txtlinks.com
Did you submit them for non inclusion as well. Perhaps Google is referring to those links not the relevant ones.
Cheers,
SEO5..
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
-
Do links from subdomains pass the authority and link juice of main domain ?
Hi, There is a subdomain with a root domain's DA 90. I can earn a backlink from that subdomain. This subdomain is fresh with no traffic yet. Do I get the ranking boost and authority from the subdomain? Example: I can earn a do-follow link from **https://what-is-crm.netlify.app/ **but not from https://netlify.app
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | teamtc0 -
Link Getting Deleted for Few Days
If a link gets deleted for few days and re-appears... Will Google treat it as a "new link" or give it the same old link-age.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Akshayshr0 -
Paid Link/Doorway Disavow - disavowing the links between 2 sites in the same company.
Hello, Three of our client's sites are having difficulty because of past doorway/paid link activity, which we're doing the final cleanup on with a disavow. There are links between the sites. Should we disavow all the links between the sites? Thank you.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Do industry partner links violate Google's policies?
We're in the process of The Great _Inquisition_piecing together a reconsideration request. In doing so, we reached out to an agency to filter and flag our backlinks as safe, should be no-followed, or should be removed. The problem is, they flagged several of our earned, industry partner links (like those pointing to us, HireAHelper, from 1-800-Pack-Rat and PODS for example) as either should be no-followed or should be removed. I have a hard time believing Google would penalize such a natural source of earned links, but then again, this is our second attempt at a Reconsideration Request, and I want to cover all my bases. What say you Moz community? No-follow? Remove? Leave alone?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | DanielH0 -
Is bad English detected by Google
Hi, I am based in the UK and in a very competitive market - van leasing - and I am thinking about using an Indian SEO company for my ongoing SEO. They have sent me some sample artilces that they have written for link building and the English is not good. Do you think that google can tell the difference between a well written article and a poorly written article? Will the fact that articles are poorly writtem mean we will lose potential value from the link? Any input would be much appreciated. Regards John J
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Johnnyh0 -
Massive rank drop for 'unnatural links' . Help!
Hi Everyone, I work for a company called Danbro - www.danbro.co.uk Recently a massive penalty lead to a huge drop across all keywords in Google including the brand name. Since we have conducted a massive clean up; (requesting competitors to remove duplicate content, removing some poor quality links etc etc) We still have not seen any improvement whatsoever nor has Google responded. Has anyone ever received a positive response from Google? Since we sent a reconsideration request our ranks actually went worse!! Any advice would be great
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Townpages0 -
Getting Credit for your own inbound links
Good afternoon, I have been comparing competitors with the Open Site Explorer looking at their inbound links. I have noticed that they have been getting credit for their own inbound links within their site. Is there something I am doing wrong as inbound links on my site aren't getting found? Could this have anything to do with Webmaster tools? Thanks in advance, SEO_123
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TWPLC_seo0 -
Too many links with the same Anchor-text?
My first question at SeoMoz: Recently my gambling site has been experimenting a subtle yo-yo effect for our most sought-after keyword. A month ago we legitimately added a PR-6 inbound link with that keyword (tragamonedas) from an institutional site of our own development. We are worried that google might have regarded that move as an illegitimate link acquisition, since those apparent troubles with our keyword appear to have started right after that link was processed. Is it too late to change the anchor text, in case that action might deliver positive results? Also, we might have focused too much on the very same keyword in our link building campaign. Can a constant repetition of the same anchor harm our indexing reputation? Thank you in advance and good SEO luck, Andi.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | castano0