Can your site be penalised by backlinks?
-
Hi,
I just wanted to get some clarification on whether Google would penalize your site if you had many links coming from a questionable site.
We've been struggling with rankings for years even though we have one of the oldest sites in the industry with a good link profile and the site is well optimized.
I was looking through webmaster tools and noticed that one website links to us over 100,000 times, all to the home page. The site is www.vietnamfuntravel.com. When I looked at the site it seems that they operate a massive links exchange, I'm not sure what the history is and why they link to us so much though.
Is there any chance that this could impact us negatively? if it is then what would be the best way to deal with the situation? I could ask them to take the links down but can't guarantee they would do it quickly (if at all). Would blocking their domain from our htaccess file have the desired effect?
-
Worthwhile having a watch of this http://www.seomoz.org/blog/preventing-linkbased-penalties-whiteboard-friday
-
although backlinks can, its more onpage stuff that Google hates. Otherwise everyone would be attacking their competitors
-
This is a sensitive subject, there is a chance but you really need to look at it on a case/case bases. You would have to contact google webspam team and start an investigation. To be more of a judge I would really need to take a look at your keywords/competition as it is really case/case and your competitors could just have better quality links/content.
Oh & blocking them from your .htaccess will have no effect whatsoever on the links! If your niche is competitive it could negatively effect your ranking, so just be sure before you ask them to remove the links.
-
There is always a chance that this could cause you harm so I would proceed with caution and do what you can to remove it. On the one hand it could cause you problems, on the other, it might not. Then there is somewhere in between where it might have just a small impact.
Truth is, where best practice is concerned, that is not a healthy link so I would consider getting it removed.
Regards,
Andy
-
Hi maximise,
The url you gave is wrong, beware there is your site's url. Anyway, the vietnamfuntravel website won't give any juice, it looks really suspicious and link exchange is in the menu !
I don't think these backlinks could impact negatively your site, but I would recommend to remove them anyway. They don't give you much, and this would sanitize your backlink profile.
-
Yes, there is a very good chance that this is negatively affecting you.
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
-
Backlink audit - anyone know of a good tool for manually checking backlinks?
Hi all, I'm looking at how to handle backlinks on a site, and am seeking a tool into which I can manually paste backlinks - is there a good backlink audit tool that offers this functionality? Please let me know! Thanks in advance, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Bad Backlink?
Hi I found this site whilst looking through WMT backlinks to our site: http://www.buildingarena.co.uk/companies/key-industrial-equipment Is this type of iFrame of our site a bad signal to Google? It's not something we've done, so I'd like to know before getting it removed. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Lost trafic with Backlink
Hi Moz experts, We lost drastic trafic from two links of our partner. Do you know what could be the reason ? It is not the main source of trafic, we talk about 2% but our partner is really interest to see the add-value of this link to our website. Thank you in advance for your consta 1. Do you know if the partner need to update his sitemap when you send it the links ? 2. Do you know if the lastest update ( Between octobre 2014 to august 2014) of Google algirthm has an impact ? 3. We update our new website on november. However, we lost trafic in october and in august? So, do you think I need to take action on my side ? What your recommandation Moz experts ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | johncurlee0 -
Can I use the same set of social media accounts on two sites?
I have a client who's company name / main site name is not his name. All his social accounts connected to his site are in his name. The site is verified with Google Places, etc. Now he asked for me to create a site for him in his own name with some similar info and a lot of new info. The million dollar question is do I use the same social media accounts on the new site? Facebook, twitter, youtube, etc? Will that hurt the organic rankings of the main site? I've seen this similar situation before. You may have someone who works at a large corporation who is mentioned on the main site has their own personal profile site just about them. Where they can go more in depth about things they are doing. If the other set of social account where in the company name it would be a no brainer to create new social accounts in his name. The issue is the main companies social accounts are already in his name.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | markpine3600 -
Backlinking 3 sites from same domain and backlinking main site too
Hello, we have 4 sites, in which 1 is a main site and rest 3 are niche sites All these 3 sites have dofollow links to main site from home page We got a high quality backlink - through which all 3 niche sites have got it from that domain Is it worth to add backlink from that domain to main site too, despite the fact the 3 sites already have recvd it and they all link to main site many thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Modi0 -
What happened to my site?
This is my website: http://goo.gl/Brekn It was related to health niche. I am good with the serp for the last couple of hours. I am in top for the keywords: cure for piles, hemorrhoids treatment, natural hemorrhoid treatment. My main keyword is hemorrhoids treatment. And has recently added this page, http://goo.gl/SXNtX This page has some dupe content, as content writer was busy i have copied the content from other sources. Does this have any effect? I have not added this page onto homepage as i dont like google to index it until my copywriter writes the content. Dont know what happened, in the last few hours i lost my serp to no where. Can anyone tell me what happened to my site. Did i done anything wrong? In the last week i have added a link to my ebooks related site. Does this affected my serps? Or did the Google recent change http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/01/page-layout-algorithm-improvement.html Has any effect on my site? Awaiting for your replies...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Dex324344320 -
One platform, multiple niche sites: Worth $60/mo so each site has different class C?
Howdy all, The short of it is that I currently run a very niche business directory/review website and am in the process of expanding the system to support running multiple sites out of the same database/codebase. In a normal setup I'd just run all the sites off of the same server with all of them sharing a single IP address, but thanks to the wonders of the cloud, it would be fairly simple for me to run each site on it's own server at a cost of about $60/mo/site giving each site a unique IP on a unique c-block (in many cases a unique a-block even.) The ultimate goal here is to leverage the authority I've built up for the one site I currently run to help grow the next site I launch, and repeat the process. The question is: Is the SEO-value that the sites can pass to each other worth the extra cost and management overhead? I've gotten conflicting answers on this topic from multiple people I consider pretty smart so I'd love to know what other people say.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | qurve0 -
Scapers and Other Sites Outranking
Post panda, there is definitely more talk about scrapers or other (more authoritative) sites outranking the original content creators in the SERPS. The most common way this problem is addressed (from what I've seen) is by rewriting the content and try your hardest to be the first one to be indexed or just ignoring it from an on page standpoint and do more link dev. Does anyone have any advice on the best way to address? Should site owners be looking deeper into their analytics and diagnostics before doing the rewrites?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Troyville0