Rankings Dropped After New Backlinks.
-
I have a low-traffic website (under 100 unique visitors per day) and I've encountered a strange issue started yesterday morning. I acquired three back-links, one of these back-links is contextual and the other two are site-wide. The site-wide back-links are from PA 40+ blogs. It looks like the back-links are already indexed by Google.
Despite these new back-links, my rankings across multiple keywords have dropped several positions. I'm new to SEO, but I would assume new back-links would improve my rankings. None of these back-links are low quality links, they are from real established blogs with high domain and page authority values.
Could anyone give me insights into why my rankings may have dropped with new back-links?
-
Hi poke1! If Gaston's replies helped, mind marking one or more as a "Good Answer?" It'll get him some bonus MozPoints, and it's helpful for us.
Otherwise, how can we be of more help?
-
Got it, thank you!
-
The links are new (only 2 or 3 days old) and all of them are DoFollow and all links are from relevant blogs.
In my opinion it's too early to impact that much in rankings.
The site-wide links are branded links (not rich anchor text links), I don't see how branded site-wide links could warrant a penalty.
That's why i've stated that some people believe that it might get you a penalty. It depends. In this case, being branded will cause not harm. You should've said that were branded.
There are many blogs which list their favorite websites on their sidebar, it looks to be common among average bloggers. Should I ask these bloggers to remove the links or should I wait for 2/3 weeks and basically see what happens.
Yeap, let's wait a little longer. And no, in the case that are branded there is harm.
Could it be that Google is just "shuffling" my website around after they noticed new back-links and I am on the downside right now and may rebound? Is this something that happens?
I dont think that this "shuffling" is only related to the backlinks. It may be a reason. There is no garatee that you will remain in the old position, or if you will stay in a different. I'd advise you a little patience. And dont make any major changes so to be able to analyze after.
Best Luck.
GR. -
The links are new (only 2 or 3 days old) and all of them are DoFollow and all links are from relevant blogs.
The site-wide links are branded links (not rich anchor text links), I don't see how branded site-wide links could warrant a penalty.
There are many blogs which list their favorite websites on their sidebar, it looks to be common among average bloggers. Should I ask these bloggers to remove the links or should I wait for 2/3 weeks and basically see what happens.
Could it be that Google is just "shuffling" my website around after they noticed new back-links and I am on the downside right now and may rebound? Is this something that happens?
Thank you for your response.
-
Hi there,
tl;dr; Wait 2 or 3 weeks to make sure that the problem is not caused by the backlinks. I'd worry a lot about those site-wide links.
It's really hard to analyze how much some backlinks have impacted in your SERPs. Even more difficult is to see changes in such short notice. Three things to say here:
- Site-wide links. There are lots of people saying that those asure you to be penalized. My opinion, it depends. You should take special care of your backlink profile It doesn't harm to have some siwte-wide, but it shoudn't be the majority of your links coming from those sources.
- The PA's backlinks. That metric is not thar reliable to ascertain a good/bad impacto in your rankings. There are lots of other analysis to be done. Keep that in mind.
- How did you find out those new backlinks? Dpending on the backlink checker tool, you should check how long have them been there. Also, are them DoFollow?
Remember that rankings may vary for other reasons that yours. It is likely that some of your ranking competitors are gaining strenght or google made some update on the algorithm that is crushing you.
Best of luck.
GR.
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
-
What can be done to regain backlinks dropped (20%) in May 4th Core update?
We have seen two large drops in backlinks (10% drop twice) after the May 4th Google Core update. What can be done to "get them back"? And what is the best way to identify them. We are talking tens of thousands. Any help or insights are greatly appreciated!
Link Building | | PascalvandenBerk0 -
Backlinks from missing sites
While combing though spammy backlinks, I'm finding a lot of supposedly "active" links that lead to 404 errors, pages that contain no html, domains for sale, and sites that all have a uniform design which I can't tell if they're web host default pages, or pages using a spammy third-party link aggregator (or both).
Link Building | | rickmic
For example: http://easyreveal.us/ So, do I disavow missing sites? Lost sites? Is there a drawback to disavowing sites that have been removed? Any help would be appreciated.0 -
New Links in Old Articles
We have recently launched a new website for a brand that always existed in our company, but never had its own website. Now I'm looking to increase it's organic visibility. We had quite a few links coming into our other sites, when in fact they would be more relevant to our new site. The only things is I found a really good one from 2012 - what would be your thoughts on asking the author to change the link? How would Google view? Would I damage the organic visibility of the site it is currently linking to? Thanks, Brian
Link Building | | brianmadden0 -
Pr4 domain backlink from a blog post
I'm about to do a guest blog post on a pr4 domain. Will I be getting an actual pr4 backlink? I'm thinking since it's technically not going to be on the homepage forever since it's just a blog post and also a blog post has it's on page once you click on it I'm not going to get a pr4 backlink. Correct?
Link Building | | fbbcseo0 -
Google Webmaster Link drop
Checking Google Webmaster it looks like my links dropped in half? Yet I have been ranking very well the past 2-3 days? Is there any explanation for this? I have been doing Pr's, Blogs, manual link building, and concentrating on the social side of it as well, facebook, twitter, google+ can that have anything to do with better rankings? or is it still considered a minor part? Thanks!
Link Building | | TP_Marketing0 -
Why have my rankings suddenly plummeted?
My site has been ranking well for the last couple of weeks on it's primary term "glee fansite" and now the rankings literally plummeted 5 days ago and now it is around 22 for "glee fansite" and many of it's other terms have just dropped out completely! Is it likely the rankings will come back if I keep on with my current strategy or will I need to start from scratch? Thanks! HMFwM.png?1 HMFwM.png?1
Link Building | | harrygardiner0 -
New Links added
I have added a number of quality inbound links to my site. How long does it take to see the effects of these links into my seomoz statistics?
Link Building | | molachef1 -
How do you find out what (and when) new websites are linking to your site?
I may be missing the obvious here, but is there any way (a programme or site) of seeing what new links come into your site? Obviously as anyone who works in SEO, I like to see which links we have got with the work we put in contacting webmasters, etc. But is there a better way than just manually looking through ALL the links? Any help will appreciated.
Link Building | | Weerdboil0