Disappearing Links Black Hat ?
-
I have seen reports of Black hat spamming with dodgy links but we have another issue with a clients site. The site had a small number of solid following links about 60 which had been in place for years and in the past few weeks all but those directly under their control have ceased to link. At the same time a very aggressive competitor has entered their market which is owned by the officers of an SEO company. Could it be that they have somehow disavowed the links to the site to damage it how do we find out? there are now just 10 following links?
-
I'd like to add that there's a lovely Moz Academy video that covers this sort of competitive link analysis.
-
I would recommend taking a look at your historical referral data, to see what sites have sent traffic to this site historically that aren't anymore - that will give you an idea of where the links were that went away. Even if you can't get the old link back, you may be able to form a new relationship with those sites' owners, which could result in future link opportunities.
It sounds like, whatever the cause, the site has had a bunch of inbound links to it disappear. This is frustrating, but without knowing where the specific links were, it's going to be hard to get them back. I would focus on getting some new, high-quality, high-authority links to the site. Since you've got this new aggressive competitor, you could use Open Site Explorer to see where they're getting links from, and see if any of the sites that link to them would be good candidates for link outreach from your team as well.
-
The links are all pretty historic so there is no direct relationship and but we do not have a record of what the links were for this site.
Peter
-
Hi Domain Authority has plumeted and sessions that were running 20% up year on year are now down 50% year on year. There will be other factors but this is indicative.
-
The competitor should have no way to disavow links to your client's site. Even if they had somehow managed to disavow the links, the links themselves would still be in place. Have you checked the linking pages? Do they still exist? Can you tell why the links were removed? Do you have a good enough relationship with the owners of any of the linking sites to be able to reach out to them and see if you can get the links put back, or at least see why they were removed?
-
Have your rankings dropped as well ?
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
-
Are links on sites that require PAD files good or bad for SEO?
I want to list our product on a number of sites that require PAD files such as Software Informer and Softpedia. Is this a good idea from an SEO perspective to have links on these pages?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SnapComms0 -
Canonicalize vs Link Juice
I recently wrote (but have not published) a very comprehensive original article for my new website (which has pretty much no domain authority). I've been talking to the publisher of a very high Domain Authority site and they are interested in publishing it. The article will include 2-3 follow backlinks to my website. My question is should I: Repost the article in my own site and then request a "rel=canonical" from the high authority site Not re-post the article on my own site and just collect the link juice from the high authority site Which would be better for my overall SEO? Assume in case 1) that the high authority site would add a rel=canonical if I asked for it.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | wlingke20 -
Dealing with links to your domain that the previous owner set up
Hey everyone, I rebranded my company at the end of last year from a name that was fairly unique but sounded like I cleaned headstones instead of building websites. I opted for a name that I liked, it reflected my heritage - however it also seems to be quite common. Anyway, I registered the domain name as it was available as the previous owner's company had been wound up. It's only been in the last week or two where I've managed to have a website on that domain and I've been tracking it's progress through Moz, Google & Bing Webmaster tools. Both the webmaster tools are reporting back that my site triggers 404 errors for some specific links. However, I don't have or have never used those links before. I think the previous owner might have created the links before he went bust. My question is in two parts. The first part is how do I find out what websites are linking to me with these broken URL's, and the second is will these 404'ing links affect my SEO? Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mickburkesnr0 -
Companies creating spammy links to charge money to delete them?
Hi all, Yesterday I was checking out ahrefs.com and realizing that one of our main competitors was getting new spammy links to its website from junk directories, rusian forums, porn sites etc. I found it to be weird but I thought that maybe they hired a black hat company without knowing it. Today I began finding the same type of spammy links pointing to our site. I'm completely sure we did not create them.I was checking out some of the new directory links and their listings consist of new pages including only our company's website and absolutely no descriptions. I did a little more research and find out that many of those new directories/listings belong to the same company ( seems to be located in Argentina, but I'm not sure). I also remembered paying that company long time ago to delete two links to our website that were included in their directories. I have to tell you, I'm completely out of my mind and I really don't know what to do. The two possibilities I can think about are: 1- A competitor has hired somebody to point spam to our site, to our other competitor, and may be some other competitors in the industry.(because as I tell you before our main competitor in the area is getting new spammy links too) 2- These black hat companies that own directories and other junk websites are pointing spam to us to get paid to remove links. Whether is #1 or #2 is getting out of control and I really don't know how to manage it (except from disvowing links as soon as I find them). I would appreciate suggestions/advise. Thanks. Ana
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | anagentile0 -
Is there a danger linking to and from one website too many times?
Basically my webdeveloper has suggested that instead of using a subfolder to create an English and Korean version of the site I should create two different websites and then link them both together to provide the page in English, or in Korean, which ever the case may be. My immediate reaction is that search engines may perceive this kind of linking to be manipulative, as you can imagine there will be a lot of links (One for every page). Do you think it is OK to create two webpages and link them together page by page? Or do you think that the site will get penalized by search engines for link farming or link exchanging. Regards, Tom
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CoGri0 -
Unnatural Link Notification - Third Go Round, specific questions
Hi all, I'm posting what is sure to be a common question, but I can't seem to find much information by searching Q&A over the last month so thought I'd throw this out there. There's a lot of 'what do I do??' questions about 'unnatural link notification', but most of them are from first timers. We're pretty far along in the process and it feels like we're going nowhere, so I was hoping to pick the brains of anyone else who's 'been there'. We have a client that we inherited with an unnatural link profile; they were warned shortly after we took them on (around March was the first warning). We compiled an apologetic letter, specifically identified a previous agency who >was< doing bad things, mentioned things would be different from now on, and provided a list of links we were working on to remove based on WMT and OSE and some other sources. This was submitted in early June. Traffic on the main keyword plummeted; ranking went from top 5 to about mid-page 4. We got hit with that same rash of Unnatural Link warnings on July 23 that everyone else did and after looking around I decided not to respond to those. We got a response to the reinclusion request submitted in June above, saying the site was still violating guidelines. This time I went all out, and provided a Google docs spreadsheet of the over 1,500 links we had removed, listed the other links that had no contact info (not even in WHOIS), listed the links we had emailed/contact formed but got no response, everything. So they responded to that recently, simply saying 'site still violates guidelines' with no other details, and I'm not sure what else I can do. The campaign above was quite an investment of resources and time, but I'm not sure how to most efficiently continue. I promised specific questions, so here they are: Are the link removal services (rmoov, removeem, linkdelete, et al) worth investigating? To remove the 1,500 links I mentioned above I had a full time (low paid) person working for a week. Does Google even reconsider after long engagements like this? Most of what I've read has said that inclusion gets cleared up on the first/second request, and we're at bat for the third now. Due to the lack of feedback I don't know if their opinion is "nope, you just missed some" or "you are so blackhat you shouldn't even bother asking anymore". One of the main link holders is this shady guy who runs literally thousands of directories the client appears in thanks to previous SEO agency, and wants $5 per link he removes. Should I mention this to Google, do they even care? Or is it solely our responsibility? Thanks in advance for any advice;
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | icecarats0 -
How Can I Check Competitors Linking Profile?
If I'm looking for weak points in my competitors linking structure, how can I use Open Site Explorer to do that? In other words, I'm not sure how to use Open Site Explorer? Zane
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Springboks0 -
Problems with link spam from spam blogs to competitor sites
A competitor of ours is having a great deal of success with links from spam blogs (such as: publicexperience.com or sexylizard.org) it is proving to be a nightmare. Google does not detect these (the competitor has been doing well now for over a year) and my boss is starting to think if you can’t beat them, join them. Frankly, he is right – we have built some great links but it is nigh on impossible to beat 400+ highly targeted spam links in a niche market. My question is, has anyone had success in getting this sort of stuff brought to the attention of Google and banned (I actually listed them all in a message in webmaster tools and sent them over to Google over a year ago!). This is frustrating, I do not want to join in this kind of rubbish but it is hard to put a convincing argument against it when our competitor has used the technique successfully for over a year without any penalty. Ideas? Thoughts? All help appreciated
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RodneyRiley0