Suspicious external links to site have 302 redirects
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Hi,
I have been asked to look at a site where I suspect some questionable SEO work, particularly link building. The site does seem to be performing very poorly in Google since January 2014, although there are no messages in WMT.
Using WMT, OPenSiteExplorer, Majestic & NetPeak, I have analysed inbound links and found a group of links which although are listed in WMT, etc appear to 302 redirect to a directory in China (therefore the actual linking domain is not visible). It looks like a crude type of link farm, but I cant understand why they would use 302s not 301s.
The domains are not visible due to redirects. Should I request a disavow or ignore?
The linking domains are listed below:
http://www.basalts.cn/
http://www.chinamarbles.com.cn/
http://www.china-slate.com.cn/
http://www.granitecountertop.com.cn/
http://www.granite-exporter.com/
http://www.sandstones.biz/
http://www.stone-2.com/
http://www.stonebuild.cn/
http://www.stonecompany.com.cn/
http://www.stonecontact.cn/
http://www.stonecrate.com/
http://www.stonedesk.com/
http://www.stonedvd.com/
http://www.stonepark.cn/
http://www.stonetool.com.cn/
http://www.stonewebsite.com/Thanks
Steve
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Linda,
OK, thanks. Grateful to have another opinion on it. It seems like this site has suffered, but the rest of links look reasonable. However, the previous SEO done appears to have been link building with complete absence of keyword research and subsequent optimisation of pages, posts, etc.
Regards,
Steve
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As strict as Google can be, I have never heard of them penalizing anyone for something bad they used to do (but didn't get caught at) and have now stopped doing. I think they reserve their penalties for current bad actions. [Which is not to say you were doing something bad--we are talking about your wanting to be sure that it doesn't appear to Google that you tried something bad.]
In general, I think it's best not to disavow unless it is an extreme situation. As Google itself says: "In most cases, Google can assess which links to trust without additional guidance, so most normal or typical sites will not need to use this tool."
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Linda,
Thanks. It appears that the domains are all owned by the same / person entity and could it be that there is any legacy effect of having these links prior to 302?
Regards
Steve
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Since the links are using 302 redirects they are not passing any link juice, so I can't imagine that you'd be penalized for them.
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White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | shauny350 -
Could a sitewide footer EXACT MATCH anchor text link hurt or potentially penalize a site?
I am pretty sure this would hurt rankings yet I just want another's opinion on it. Would a sitewide footer link with exact match keyword anchor text to the page you want to rank for your main keyword hurt you? Basically if it were a link to the homepage, yet you wanted to make the anchor text your main objective keyword, would it hurt to have this in the footer along with the logo link at the top of a page that is just "home" anchor text?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jbster130 -
Best way to handle SEO error, linking from one site to another same IP
We committed an SEO sin and created a site with links back to our primary website. Although it does not matter, the site was not created for that purpose, it is actually "directory" with categorized links to thousands of culinary sites, and ours are some of the links. This occurred back in May 2010. Starting April 2011 we started seeing a large drop in page views. It dropped again in October 2011. At this point our traffic is down over 40% Although we don't know for sure if this has anything to do with it, we know it is best to remove the links. The question is, given its a bad practice what is the best fix? Should we redirect the 2nd domain to the main or just take it down? The 2nd domain does not have much page rank and I really don't think many if any back-links to it. Will it hurt us more to lose the 1600 or so back links? I would think keeping the links is a bad idea. Thanks for your advice!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | foodsleuth0