Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
The use of a ghost site for SEO purposes
-
Hi Guys,
Have just taken on a new client (.co.uk domain) and during our research have identified they also have a .com domain which is a replica of the existing site but all links lead to the .co.uk domain. As a result of this, the .com replica is pushing 5,000,000+ links to the .co.uk site.
After speaking to the client, it appears they were approached by a company who said that they could get the .com site ranking for local search queries and then push all that traffic to .co.uk. From analytics we can see that very little referrer traffic is coming from the .com.
It sounds remarkably dodgy to us - surely the duplicate site is an issue anyway for obvious reasons, these links could also be deemed as being created for SEO gain?
Does anyone have any experience of this as a tactic?
Thanks,
Dan
-
The appropriate solution in this place would be to employ the hreflang tag to related the two geographically separate sites together. However, before you take that step, I would look to make sure the previous SEO company which created the .com did not point any harmful links at the .com domain which would make it inadvisable to connect the two sites together. Use OpenSiteExplorer to look at the backlink profile and use Google Webmaster Tools to authorize the .com site and look for any manual penalty notices. If all looks clear, go ahead forward with the implementation of the hreflang tag.
Good luck and feel free to ask more questions here!
-
Thanks Both,
Pretty much confirms our thoughts here and yes Eddie - it appears to be a smash and grab job.
Dan
-
Certainly sounds dodgy, but suddenly removing all of those backlinks might cause you some SEO issues.
Depending on how Google is currently reading your site it may improve as your site would seem less spammy without them or it may really hurt the site (at least to start with) loosing that many back links would maybe make Google think something is up with your site?
I would take the bullet and remove the duplicate content but warn your clients that it may take a while for the natural benefits to come through. Because if your site isn't penalised yet for having that many dodgy backlinks and duplicate content it soon will be!
-
Certainly seems like the wrong thing to do. A good test is that if you think it may be dodgy it probably is. I certainly wouldn't recommend it as a tactic. There are potentially multiple issues with this....duplicate content as you mentioned but also dilution of real links. Good quality legitimate links could link to the Ghost site and therefore not count for the real site.
I have seen issues where it is a legitimate attempt to have a .com and .co.uk on the same shop and ended up with both versions online due to incompetent development but I didn't have to deal with cleaning it up.
Un-picking that could be messy. A good example of quick fix SEO for a fast buck I suspect.
-
5mil+ links?! Wow!
What's their spam score? I'm surprised they are not blocked or something
To answer your question - what does common sense tells you? The job of google and google bots is pretty much based on common sense. So, duplicate content website, ridiculous amount of links, no referral traffic - all these are obvious signals to run, Forrest, run!
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
-
Should I Report A SEO Agency to Google
Our competitor has employed the services of a spammy SEO agency that sends spammy links to our site. Though our rankings were affected we have taken the necessary steps. It is possible to send evidence to Google so that they can take down the site. I want to take this action so that other sites will not be affected by them again.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Halmblogmusic0 -
Old subdomains - what to do SEO-wise?
Hello, I wanted the community's advice on how to handle old subdomains. We have https://www.yoursite.org. We also have two subdomains directly related to the main website: https://www.archive.yoursite.org and https://www.blog.yoursite.org. As these pages are not actively updated, they are triggering lots and lots of errors in the site crawl (missing meta descriptions, and much much more). We do not have particular intentions of keeping them up-to-date in terms of SEO. What do you guys think is the best option of handling these? I considered de-indexing, but content of these page is still relevant and may be useful - yet it is not up to date and it will never be anymore. Many thanks in advance.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | e.wel0 -
Does ID's in URL is good for SEO? Will SEO Submissions sites allow such urls submissions?
Example url: http://public.beta.travelyaari.com/vrl-travels-13555-online It's our sites beta URL, We are going to implement it for our site. After implementation, it will be live on travelyaari.com like this - "https://www.travelyaari.com/vrl-travels-13555-online". We have added the keywords etc in the URL "VRL Travels". But the problems is, there are multiple VRL travels available, so we made it unique with a unique id in URL - "13555". So that we can exactly get to know which VRL Travels and it is also a solution for url duplication. Also from users / SEO point of view, the url has readable texts/keywords - "vrl travels online". Can some Moz experts suggest me whether it will affect SEO performance in any manner? SEO Submissions sites will accept this URL? Meanwhile, I had tried submitting this URL to Reddit etc. It got accepted.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RobinJA0 -
Moz was unable to crawl your site? Redirect Loop issue
Moz was unable to crawl your site on Jul 25, 2017. I am getting this message for my site: It says "unable to access your homepage due to a redirect loop. https://kuzyklaw.com/ Site is working fine and last crawled on 22nd July. I am not sure why this issue is coming. When I checked the website in Chrome extension it saysThe server has previously indicated this domain should always be accessed via HTTPS (HSTS Protocol). Chrome has cached this internally, and did not connect to any server for this redirect. Chrome reports this redirect as a "307 Internal Redirect" however this probably would have been a "301 Permanent redirect" originally. You can verify this by clearing your browser cache and visiting the original URL again. Not sure if this is actual issue, This is migrated on Https just 5 days ago so may be it will resolved automatically. Not sure, can anybody from Moz team help me with this?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CustomCreatives0 -
Spam sites with low spam score?
Hello! I have a fair few links on some of the old SEO 'Directory' sites. I've got rid of all the obviously spammy ones - however there are a few that remain which have very low spam scores, and decent page authority, yet they are clearly just SEO directories - I can't believe they service any other purpose. Should we now just be getting rid of all links like this, or is it worth keeping if the domain authority is decent and spam score low? Thanks Sam
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | wearehappymedia0 -
Would linking out to a gambling/casino site, harm my site and the other sites it links out to?
I have been emailed asking if I sell links on one of my sites. The person wants to link out to slotsofvegas[dot]com or similar. Should I be concerned about linking out to this and does it reduce the link value to any of the other sites that the site links out to? Thanks, Mark
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Markus1111 -
How do I find out if a competitor is using black hat methods and what can I do about it?
A competitor of mine has appeared out of nowhere with various different websites targetting slightly different keywords but all are in the same industry. They don't have as many links as me, the site structure and code is truly awful (multiple H1's on same page, tables for non-tabular data etc...) yet they outperform mine and many of my other competitors. It's a long story but I know someone who knows the people who run these sites and from what I can gather they are using black hat techniques. But that is all I know and I would like to find out more so I can report them.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | kevin11
