How to Handle Sketchy Inbound Links to Forum Profile Pages
-
Hey Everyone, we recently discovered that one of our craft-related websites has a bunch of spam profiles with very sketchy backlink profiles. I just discovered this by looking at the Top Pages report in OpenSiteExplorer.org for our site, and noticed that a good chunk of our top pages are viagra/levitra/etc. type forum profile pages with loads of backlinks from sketchy websites (porn sites, sketchy link farms, etc.). So, some spambot has been building profiles on our site and then building backlinks to those profiles.
Now, my question is...we can delete all these profiles, but how should we handle all of these sketchy inbound links? If all of the spam forum profile pages produce true 404 Error pages (when we delete them), will that evaporate the link equity? Or, could we still get penalized by Google? Do we need to use the Link Disavow tool?
Also note that these forum profile pages have all been set to "noindex,nofollow" months ago. Not sure how that affects things.
This is going to be a time waster for me, but I want to ensure that we don't get penalized. Thanks for your advice!
-
If you read my post you will see I said noindex,nofollow not follow, if you would like to remove them then that will do the same job. A>B>C take out B and problem solved either way
-
Chris, the spam links are coming from multiple domains to multiple spam-created forum profile pages on our site's forum. We are deleting the profiles and agree that this is probably all we need to do...but we can always use a tool like Link Detox or Link Risk to further assess our link profile if we get penalized by Penguin for some reason.
Alan, the spam-created forum profile pages are already set to noindex,follow (as are all forum profile pages). They previously weren't (decided by someone before my time), but I had our Developers change that setting 6 months ago for reasons like this. I just didn't discover all of this spam until now. Anyways, the concern with keeping the pages live but set to noindex,follow is that the link juice coming from the spam-sites to the spam profile pages on our site could be passed through to all the other pages linked from the nav menu/sidebar/footer. I believe this is how link equity flows through pages set to "noindex,follow." If the pages are deleted, then I believe the link equity evaporates (which supports why SEOs do "link reclamation" by fixing broken links).
If anyone has any further clarification...I'm all ears!
Thanks again, guys. -Dan
-
If I understand you, you have spam links pointing to profile pages, from there you link to your site.
then noindex,nofollow or removing the intermediate page will solve the issue.
-
Interesting question. It seems to me that hundreds or even thousands of spammy links from one domain pointing to 404 URLs on another domain isn't the the kind of situation Google would be penalizing the receiving domain for. I think you're in a far better situation than those who have such a back link profile pointing to their homepage because they don't have the option of deleting the page being linked to.
I would say that you don't need to disavow those links--just delete the profiles.
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
-
SEO companies that own linking properties
Hi everyone, I do some SEO work for a personal injury attorney, and due to his profession, he gets cold-called by every digital marketing company under the sun. He recently got called by a company that offers packages that include posting in multiple directories (all on domains they own), creating subdomains for search listings, and PR services like writing and distributing press releases for distribution to multiple media outlets. The content they write will obviously not be local. All this and more for less than $500 a month! I'm curious if any of you have any experience with companies like this and whether you consider them black hat. I realize I'm asking you to speculate on a very broad description of what they offer, but their linking strategies sound risky to me. What experiences have you had with companies like this? Do you know anyone who has ever gotten a penalty using these tactics? Thanks, in advance, for sharing your thoughts.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ptdodge0 -
Can image links help improve my backlinking profile?
I recently spent some time looking at the backlink profile of a leading UK food & clothing retailer and noticed that a high number of their backlinks for very competitive search phrase's consisted entirely of image backlinks. 50% of the links contained no alt text and other 50% contained a mix of just the targeted keyword or a phase containig one mention of the targeted keyword. Has anyone had any experiance of this type of marketing producing any positive effect on SEO or search engine rankings?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BigJonOne0 -
Search Results Showing Additional info/Links
Did I miss something? I was looking at search result listings this morning and noticed that Walmart has additional information at the bottom of their (non-paid (I think)) search results. Please see the attached image and you'll notice links to "Item Description - Product Warranty and Service - Specifications - Gifting Plans" How are they doing this? I just noticed the same on one of our competitors listings so It's not just Walmart and the links are item specific. (I have update the image) Z0yqKtO.jpg
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BWallacejr1 -
Can you disavow a spamy link that is not pointing to your website?
We have submitted several really spammy websites to the Google spam team. We noticed they take a very long time to react to submissions. Do you know if it is possible to disavow a link that is not pointing to your website but rather to a very spammy website? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Carla_Dawson0 -
Anybody have useful advice to fix a very bad link profile?
Hello fellow mozzers. I am interested in getting the communities opinion on how to fix an extremely bad link profile, or whether it would be easier to start over on a new domain. This is for an e-commerce site that sells wedding rings. Prior to coming to our agency, the client had been using a different service that was doing some serious black hat linkbuilding on a truly staggering scale. Of the roughly 53,000 links that show up in OSE, 16,500 of them have the anchor text "wedding rings", 1,300 "wedding ring sets", etc. For contrast, there are only two "visit website", and just one domain name anchor text. So it is about the farthest from natural you can get. Anyway, the site traffic was doing great until the end of February, when it took a massive hit and lost over half the day to day traffic volume, and steadily declined until April 24th (Penguin), when it took another huge hit and lost almost 70% of traffic from Google. Note that the traffic from Yahoo/Bing stayed the same. So the question is, is it worth trying to clean up this mess of a backlink profile or would it be smarter to start fresh with a new domain?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CustomCreatives0 -
What do you think of our new category page?
Hey Mozzers! We have come up with a new layout design for a category page and would love to have your opinion on it, specifically from an S_E_O perspective Here is our current page: http://www.builddirect.com/Laminate-Flooring.aspx Our new page (pending approval): http://www.builddirect.com/testing/laminate-flooring/index.html Just to brief you in on the key differences b/w old and new layout: Left text link menu is removed in new layout
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Syed1
New layout looks funny with JS disabled - long vertical line up of products(Perhaps important keywords/ content in new layout appears way down?)
Lot of 'clunk' has been removed (bits of text, links, images, etc) Thanks for checking this out.0 -
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 -
From page 3 to page 75 on Google. Is my site really so bad?
So, a couple of weeks ago I started my first CPA website, just as an experiment and to see how well I could do out of it. My rankings were getting better every day, and I’ve been producing constant unique content for the site to improve my rankings even more. 2 days ago my rankings went straight to the last page of Google for the keyword “acne scar treatment” but Google has not banned me or given my domain a minus penalty. I’m still ranking number 1 for my domain, and they have not dropped the PR as my keyword is still in the main index. I’m not even sure what has happened? Am I not allowed to have a CPA website in the search results? The best information I could find on this is: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=76465 But I’ve been adding new pages with unique content. My site is www.acne-scar-treatment.co Any advice would be appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | tommythecat1