What to do with these toxic links?
-
Back in July I had posted here that I thought someone was doing negative SEO against us. We monitor our links on a daily basis, and a lot of toxic links came in quickly within a few days. So we were pro-active and ended up disavowing those links soon after we saw them. Shortly after that our ranking start to drop and we lost a good amount of traffic, though I do not know if its really connected since we only disavowed those toxic links and we weren't ranking FROM those links since they were disavowed so quickly.
Now, its happening again. 20 new inbound domains linking to us from complete crap websites with crap content and not done by us. I want to disavow them, but I am thinking that maybe the first time we disavowed the links, it hurt us, and maybe disavowing now will hurt us further? I think Google should be able to filter out this crap but who knows, too much depends on this being handled correctly.
Here are some of the crappy links:
http://optibike.com/?home.php=page/loans/student-loan-without-a-cosigner-2.html
http://designsbynickthegeek.com/?index.php=finance/loans/loan-for-you-3.html
http://www.nuvivaweightloss.com/?index.php=article/loans/300-loan-today.html
http://ecommercesalesmultipliersystem.com/?home.php=board/loans/fast-loan-with-monthly-payments-2.htmlThey are mostly duplicate content across a network of sites. How would you guys handle this?
-
Backlink profile isnt spammy at all actually, and June/July were our best months ever in terms of organic search so I do not think we were hit with payday loan update. We started losing organic traffic in August. Are you sure that penalization requires a manually review?
-
Getting penalized for bad links requires a manual review or an algorithm update. Considering the vertical, I would imagine the backlink profile was pretty spammy to begin with. The payday loan update happened in June.
I think that is more likely your answer.
-
Didnt think about this, but i think you are right. It does look like all these sites have been hacked
-
Didn't mean to imply that links to your site are crap, or that your site is - just that these ones are.
-
I don't know for sure, but it looks like some of those sites you've provided with the crap links on have been hacked. I would try and contact the site owner, because Nick the Geek site doesn't look the same on the homepage as it does on the page you provide. I expect Nick the Geek (and the rest) will probably be only too happy to hear from you given that you are telling them of a problem with their websites.
I guess if I'm wrong and Nick the Geek is also Nick the spammer then you could maybe try the hosting providers?
Best of luck,
Amelia
-
Always disavow to show you are being proactive and have good intentions. If you don't you might get a manual penalty that will wipe your site off the index completely.
The problem here is not really what to do with the links but how to stop them appearing as I would imagine every month there will be more of them appearing on similar sites. You have to find hosting companies of these sites and take it with them, reporting violation, asking to take these sites down, tracing the person/company who built them, threatening to sue...
Good luck
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 -
Should a business requestion nofollow links from businesses it has commercial relationships with?
I am working for a motor homes company that works with a network of dealers. Having just analysed the site I notice that dealers are sending links to the site - lots of them. They are all follow links and are freely given. ADDED: There are upwards of a million new affiliate backlinks and then a load of pretty normal freely given backlinks with dealers who have commission arrangements, etc., with the company on motorhome sales. Now this doesn't feel right to me because even if it isn't purposefully manipulative, it may appear so because of clear commercial relationships between my client company and the dealer businesses. So I will recommend nofollow althought the site will lose a huge number of backlinks as a result. What are your thoughts on this?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Multiple similar links without the penguin?
Hi, I´m working with a site where clients proudly will publish a link to us as sort of a sign/partner symbol for using our services. Potentially we could have thousands or at least hundreds of links pointing to us and we could tailor/provide snippets for the links that clients can use on their site. I´m part of a team that just started working with this site and I realize this is a great opportunity that has not yet been exploited. I´m also a little paranoid that this tactic might be picked up by the penguin or that google sees it as black hat if not done wisely ? But links will only come from respectable business sites although ranging from different genres both really big and small.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Agguk
Today links are mostly leading to our frontpage from our clients but I would like to tailor links so that each client could link to a page that is targeted on the keyword/service they have been using (and awarded diploma for) I think this would serve both the client and our SEO better ? I would really appreciate suggestions and comments on how to approach this best! Here is my plan so far, trying to make good/right use of the opportunity without offending google:
-Most links will be through a logo/sign that shows the award/diploma earned through our service.
I think the "alt" -tag should include both our company brand name and the service/target keyword for the page it´s leading to. -We could also provide a short text describing the earned award and our brand name and this whole text would also lead to the same page on our site.
...I guess using only the targeted keyword as anchor -link within the text would be a bad idea? -Where possible I would also like to customize this short text a little for each client (although that will be hard and only possible to some degree). As we provide "link material" for the client to include on their site, would it be wise to have them use an image that is hosted on our site or send them the image so they can publish that instead? Grateful for any feedback on this! Thanks!0 -
Embedded links/badges
Hi there Just picking up on something Rand said in his blog analysing his predictions for 2014. Rand predicted that Google will publicly acknowledge algorithmic updates targeting...embeddable infographics/badges as manipulative linking practices While this hasn't exactly materialised yet, it has got me thinking. We have a fair few partners linking to us through an embedded badge. This was done to build the brand, but the positives here wouldn't be worth being penalised in search. Does anyone have any further evidence of websites penalised for doing this, or any views on whether removing those badges should be a priority for us? Many thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | HireSpace0 -
Why should I reach out to webmasters before disavowing links?
Almost all the blogs, and Google themselves, tell us to reach out to webmasters and request the offending links be removed before using Google's Disavow tool. None of the blogs, nor Google, suggest why you "must" do this, it's time consuming and many webmasters don't care and don't act. Why is this a "required" thing to do?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RealSelf0 -
When you get a new inbound link do you submit a request to google to reindex the new page pointing at you?
I'm just starting my link building campaign in earnest, and received my first good quality inbound link less than an hour ago. My initial thought was that I should go directly to google, and ask them to reindex the page that linked to me... If I make a habit of that (getting a new link, then submitting that page directly to google), would that signify to google that this might not be a natural link building campaign? The links are from legitimate (non-paid, non-exchange) partners, which google could probably figure out, but I'm interested to know opinions on this. Thanks, -Eric
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ForForce0 -
Still Battling On With Link Profile Audit
I'm getting there, I can see the light! 🙂 I have covered one complete audit of the link profile and I am now going back over it looking at the links I had 'question marked' - I should have this completed by the end of this week and I will then focus on using DISAVOW for the links that I am really struggling with, the foreign sites that are in Chinese or Russian, the sites that have absolutely no 'contact us' information and have been privately registered (in WhoIs) I have come across this domain which links to our site about 8 times and although I cannot find any contact info I can't quite make my mind up, to be honest I would rather get rid of it BUT I'm trying to avoid taking the easy option of disavowing where I can; http://www.askives.com/ Fo anyone who has gone through what I am currently going through, please help me just this once and tell me 'should it stay or should it go'?! 🙂 Many thanks! Andy
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TomKing0 -
Retail Site and Internal Linking Best Practices
I am in the process of recreating my company's website and, in addition to the normal retail pages, we are adding a "learn" section with user manuals, reviews, manufacturer info, etc. etc. It's going to be a lot of content and there will be linking to these "learn" pages from both products and other "learn" pages. I read on a SEOmoz blog post that too much internal linking with optimized anchor text can trigger down-rankings from Google as a penalty. Well, we're talking about having 6-8 links to "learn" pages from product pages and interlinking many times within the "learn" pages like Wikipedia does. And I figured they would all have optimized text because I think that is usually best for the end user (I personally like to know that I am clicking on "A Review of the Samsung XRK1234" rather than just "A Review of Televisions"). What is best practice for this? Is there a suggested limit to the number of links or how many of them should have optimized text for a retail site with thousands of products? Any help is greatly appreciated!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Marketing.SCG0