Ever seen this tactic when trying to get rid of bad backlinks?
-
I'm trying to get rid of a Google penalty, but one of the URLS is particularly bizarre.
Here's the penalized site: http://www.travelexinsurance.com.
One of the external links Google cited as not being natural that links to the penalized site is: http://content.onlineagency.com/index.aspx?site=6599&tide=769006&last=3111516
In the backlink profile of the penalized site, there are about 100 different backlinks pointing to www.travelexinsurance.com from content.onlineagency.com/...
So when I visit http://content.onlineagency.com/index.aspx?site=6599&tide=769006&last=3111516 it actually is displaying content from http://www.starmandstravel.com/787115_6599.htm, which you can see after clicking the "Home" button. That company is a legit travel agency who I assume knows nothing about content.onlineagency.com and is not involved in whatever is going on.
And that's the case for every link from content.onlineagency.com.
So I'm just wondering if someone can help me understand what sort of tactic content.onlineagency.com is using. One of my predecessors I fear used some black hat tactics. I'm wondering if this is a remnant of that effort.
-
They've messed up in general really. They should be blocking robots to what appears to be the CMS for their clients use as there are surely numerous effects on their clients (cannibalization caused by the duplication of pages, for instance). As Mike said they've not taken into account the SEO aspects of the way they've implemented their system.
-
Thanks Alex,
It I assume could also be the "nofollow" issue Mike mentioned.
-
Michael has it right. Online Agency (onlineagency.com) build websites for travel agencies. In the URLs you gave, Patrick, you can see some sort of ID for the site (starmandstravel.com). I guess that this content.onlineagency.com subdomain is the content management system to allow the travel agencies to update their content.
Google may be interpreting lots of similar/related websites on the same infrastructure as an attempt to game its algorithms (they have the same nameservers, although different c blocks but many of the other sites built by that agency also share the same c block [..170.140]).
-
I don't think there is any tactic happening. They simply are building lots of mini websites for their clients and messed up on no following affiliate links. it appears that they have not done any of the basic SEO audit work on their system. Nothing deliberate here IMHO.
-
Thanks for the input. I've never seen something like this before, nor can I really tell why it would benefit content.onlineagency.com, but I figured perhaps this was a normal black hat tactic I had not heard of.
Perhaps if it is a tactic to get travelexinsurance.com more inbound links, it's somehow designed to copy relevant content from someone else that is already pointed at travelexinsurance.com, and then simply create another backlink, piggybacking on the content.
-
That is a strange one.
It seems that content.onlineagency are themselves a travel company (http://content.onlineagency.com/c/74/74684/7466411_74684.htm)
It's strange that they have that page that is clearly copied.
I can't see any connection between the 2 companies, apart from their websites are quite similar in terms of quality.
The only thing that I can think is they are actually competitors and somebody is trying some sort of negative SEO tactics.
But this shouldn't really effect your clients site, just disavow and move on is my advice
-
I must not be explaining it well.
Here's the penalized site: http://www.travelexinsurance.com.
One of the external links Google cited as not being natural that links to the penalized site is: http://content.onlineagency.com/index.aspx?site=6599&tide=769006&last=3111516
In the backlink profile of the penalized site, there are about 100 different backlinks pointing to www.travelexinsurance.com from content.onlineagency.com/...
So when I visit http://content.onlineagency.com/index.aspx?site=6599&tide=769006&last=3111516 it actually is displaying content from http://www.starmandstravel.com/787115_6599.htm, which you can see after clicking the "Home" button. That company is a legit travel agency who I assume knows nothing about content.onlineagency.com and is not involved in all that.
And that's the case for every link from content.onlineagency.com.
So I'm just wondering if someone can help me understand what sort of tactic content.onlineagency.com is using. One of my predecessors I fear used some black hat tactics. I fear this might be a part of that.
Hopefully it makes more sense.
-
So if I understand you correctly, your client who's penalized is www.starmandstravel.com, and you're seeing in their GWT backlinks list a ton of links from content.onlineagency.com/index.aspx?site=6599 and one or both of the other parameters are varying, right?
So then your question is: where are the onlineagency pages linked from?
-
My guess is no. I'm fairly new here, but I'm sure my predecessor would not have.
Or are you asking if these websites who link to use are using canonical URLs? My guess in that case is they wouldn't be either.
-
Are you using canonical URLs?
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
-
Mark up seen as spam - how to solve?
Hi, I have a problem with my structured data. a few week's ago, i received this message in search console:
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | chalet
'the mark on some pages of your website look like techniques that conflict with the Google guidlines for structured markup with spam'
i checked the guidlines and my website ( www.chalet.nl) but couldn't found any issues that are in conflict with the guidlines from google. So i asked a controle request.
the request was unfortunately rejected. my question: how can i decect the wrong mark? Kind regards,
Jeroen0 -
SEO Tactics - All in the Game?
Hey Mozzers Hoping to get some opinions on SEO at a small business level. We're engaged in SEO for a number of clients which are small businesses (small budgets). We stick to strictly white hat techniques - producing decent content (and promoting it) and link building (as much as is possible without dodgy techniques/paying huge sums). For some clients we seem to have hit a ceiling about with rankings anywhere between roughly position #5 - #15 in Google. In the majority of cases - the higher ranking clients don't appear to be engaged in any kind of content marketing - often have much worse designed websites - and not particularly spectacular link profiles (In other words they're not hugely competitive - apart from sometimes on the AdWords front - but that's another story) The only difference seems to be links on agency link farms - you know the kind? Agency buys expired domains with an existing PR - then just builds simple site with multiple blog posts that link back to their clients sites. (Also links that are simply paid for) Obviously these sites serve no purpose other than links - but I guess it's harder for Google to recognize that than with obvious SEO directories etc?... It seems to me that at this level of SEO for small businesses (limited budgets, limited time) the standard approach for SEO is the "expired domains agency link sites" described above - and simply paying bloggers for links. Are the above techniques considered black hat? Or are they more grey-hat? - Are they risky? - Or is this kind of thing all in the game for SEO at the small business level (by that I mean businesses that don't have the budget to employ a full time SEO and have to rely on engaging agencies for low level - low resource SEO campaigns) Look forward to your always wise council...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | wearehappymedia0 -
How to add more quality backlink with moz tools or any good option
How to add more quality backlink with moz tools or any good option
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Poojath0 -
Do some sites get preference over others by Google just because? Grandfathered theory
So I have a theory that Google "grandfathers" in a handful of old websites from every niche and that no matter what the site does, it will always get the authority to rank high for the relevant keywords in the niche. I have a website in the crafts/cards/printables niche. One of my competitors is http://printable-cards.gotfreecards.com/ This site ranks for everything... http://www.semrush.com/info/gotfreecards.com+(by+organic) Yet, when I go to visit their site, I notice duplicate content all over the place (extremely thin content, if anything at all for some pages that rank for highly searched keywords), I see paginated pages that should be getting noindexed, bad URL structure and I see an overall unfriendly user experience. Also, the backlink profile isn't very impressive, as most of the good links are coming from their other site, www.got-free-ecards.com. Can someone tell me why this site is ranking for what it is other than the fact that it's around 5 years old and potentially has some type of preference from Google?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
Build Backlinks on this site? - Advice Please
Hello, I am trying to build some backlinks to my E-Commerce site and was wondering how you all view sites like this: http://www.bookmark4you.com/ If I were to put a listing for my company/site on that site, would that be considered a good backlink or a bad backlink (in terms of Google's guidelines)... There are a bunch of sites like these, online directory or bookmark sites, and i was wondering what the general opinion is on using them for backlinking purposes. Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated. THANKS!!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Prime850 -
Fix Bad Links in Google
I have a client who had some grey hat SEO done in the past. Some of their back links aren't from the best neighborhoods. Google didn't seem to mind until 9/28, when they literally disappeared for all searches except for their domain name. Google still has their site indexed, but it's just not showing up. There are no messages in Webmaster Tools. I know Bing has the tool where you can disavow bad links and ask them to discount them. Google doesn't have such a tool, but what is the strategy when you don't have control over the link sources, such as in blog comments? Could this update have been a delayed Penguin ranking change from the latest Penguin Update on the 18th? http://www.seomoz.org/google-algorithm-change Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Tom
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TomBristol0 -
Will my association's network of sites get penalized for link farming?
Before beginning I found these similar topics here: http://www.seomoz.org/q/multiple-domains-on-same-ip-address-same-niche-but-different-locations http://www.seomoz.org/q/multiple-domains-on-1-ip-address We manage over two dozen dental sites that are individually owned through out the US. All these dentists are in a dental association which we also run and are featured on (http://www.acedentalresource.com/). Part of the dental associations core is sharing information to make them better dentists and to help their patients which in addition to their education, is why they are considered to be some of the best dentists in the world. As such, we build links from what we consider to be valuable content between the sites. Some sites are on different IPs and C-Blocks, some are not. Given the fact that each site is only promoting the dentist at that brick and mortar location but also has "follow" links to other dentists' content in the network we fear that we are in the grey area of link building practices. Questions are: Is there an effective way to utilize the power of the network if quality content is being shared? What risks are we facing given our network? Should each site be on a different IP? Would having some of our sites on different servers make our backlinks more valuable than having all of our sites under the same server? If it is decided that having unique IPs is best practice, would it be obvious that we made the switch? Keep in mind that ALL sites are involved in the association, so naturally they would be linking to each other, and the main resource website mentioned above. Thanks for your input!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | DigitalElevator0 -
How to get rid of black hat links?
I have recently discovered that one of my clients has either been sabotaged or has done this himself. In the case that he didn't do anything, how do you go about getting rid of bad links? There is now over a 1000 bad links linked to his site, do I report them as spam or what is the best way to fix this?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | StrategicEdgePartners0
