How to find artificial or unnatural links in OSE?
-
Hi,
I just got a message from Google Webmaster Tools telling that there are "artificial or unnatural links" pointing to one of my subdomains, and that I should investigate and submit my site for reconsideration.
The subdomain in question has inbound links from 4K linking root domains. We are a certificate authority (we provide SSL certificates) so the majority of those links come from the site seal that customers place on their secure pages.
We sell certificates to a full spectrum site types, from all sizes of ecommerce sites to .edu, .gov, and even adult. That said, our linking root domains have always been a mixed bunch, which tells me that these offending links were recently added.
Here are my questions:
- Is it possible to slice my link reports with some sort of time element, so that I can narrow the search to only the newest inbound links?
- How else might I use OSE to find these "artificial or unnatural links"? Are there any particular attributes I should be looking for in a linking root domain that might suggest it's seen by Google as "artificial or unnatural".
Any help with any aspect of this issue would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Dennis
p.s. I should probably state that I've never bought links or participated in link schemes.
-
Are there any particular attributes I should be looking for in a linking root domain that might suggest it's seen by Google as "artificial or unnatural".
The first item to check would be your site seal. How exactly is the backlink created for the seal? I would presume it is an image link from the seal. Be sure there is nothing which could cause a penalty in your site seal. If you sincerely have not purchased links or performed any shady tactics, a coding issue with the seal is a likely cause of the warning.
A prime commonality to look for in OSE is the anchor text. Adjust the 4 filters at the top of OSE as follows: followed + 301d, only external links, pages on this subdomain, group by domain. Perform the search on the particular subdomain which received the warning. These settings will reduce the list to the links which are most meaningful to you, and in this case the ones which could reasonably cause an issue with Google.
Next, download the CSV file from the OSE link, then sort by the "anchor text" field. If there is any anchor text used repeatedly, investigate the links. There should be a natural variation in the anchor text such as "SSL", "SSL cert", "SSL certs", "SSL certificates", "purchase a SSL certificate", etc. If a high percentage of links all use the exact phrase, it may trigger a flag.
Once you complete your research, take any corrective actions necessary then report back to Google with the results.
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
-
Internal Links issue in webmaster
we implemented our website on the basis of WordPress, then we migrate our website to PHP (YII Framework). after a while, we found out an issue around internal links which they were increasing severely. when we check our landing pages in webmaster (for example Price list), in contains 300 internal links but the reality is that there are no href tags on this page. it seems that webmaster calculate most of our links with the links of a single page and show them to us. is it natural or a mis configuration has been happened? Yh1NzPl
Technical SEO | | jacelyn_wiren0 -
Nofollow links on our site menu
Hi Our site's front page has almost 900 internal links on it (it's an ecommerce site with about 25,000 products). A lot of these are on a pretty involved dropdown menu, which is on every page. I can't really do anything to get this figure down (its outside my remit), but one thing the developers have done is make all the menu links nofollow on the mobile version of the menu (site is responsive) - otherwise there would be even more links! My question is as to whether doing this for the mobile menu is a good idea, in terms of SEO?
Technical SEO | | abisti21 -
Huge Drop in External Links
Hello, My total external links dropped from 900 to zero on a site that I've had running for about 10 years. What could possibly cause this? Thanks, Joe
Technical SEO | | Joe20130 -
So many internal links to the same page
Hey guyz,
Technical SEO | | atakala
I'm working with a client that has a page which has many internal links to the same page .
Let me illustrate it.
So as you can see I have a page which is called in the image "page" :D.
As you can see, the **page **has many links to the solutions.htmls' anchor links which mean they are basically the same page ( solutions.html)
Is it going to be a problem for us to do that ?
And is there anyway to handle this problem?
Thank you for you patience. And sorry for my bad english 😄 4deRc1W.png0 -
When you send disavow link in google webmaster?
I am just wondering if you disavow a link from google webmaster to a certain website. Does that hurt the other websites ranking at all? Thanks
Technical SEO | | EVERWORLD.ENTERTAIMENT0 -
404's in WMT are old pages and referrer links no longer linking to them.
Within the last 6 days, Google Webmaster Tools has shown a jump in 404's - around 7000. The 404 pages are from our old browse from an old platform, we no longer use them or link to them. I don't know how Google is finding these pages, when I check the referrer links, they are either 404's themselves or the page exists but the link to the 404 in question is not on the page or in the source code. The sitemap is also often referenced as a referrer but these links are definitely not in our sitemap and haven't been for some time. So it looks to me like the referrer data is outdated. Is that possible? But somehow these pages are still being found, any ideas on how I can diagnose the problem and find out how google is finding them?
Technical SEO | | rock220 -
How to get rid of back links?
I would like to clear all of the links linking to us to start over fresh? Our site has become non existent on Google with no messages or warning from them through webmaster tools. From tools on here and other sources it indicates that we should be ranked ahead of our competitors or atleast comparable. We are not found under the keywords that we use to be...."parts washers" "part washer" industrial cleaning systems etc.. our site is www.vortexpartswashers.com. Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | mhart0 -
Cn I use SEOMOZ to find "Bad Links"
We were hit by the Penguin update and I am told it make be because of "Bad Links", but no one can seem to tell me how to find them. We never buy links, and in fact the only links I know about are those from paid affiliates through shareasale - and these affiliates are paid based on performance, not links. 1. Does anyone know how to figure out what links are bad? 2. Once I know, how do I get them to stop linking to my site? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | trophycentraltrophiesandawards0