Too many links... OOPS
-
So I made a big mistake. I know it was dumb. I took a chance and got screwed. I've been researching one of my competitions back links and found that about 7000 of their 12000 links came from one site. Upon further investigation that site is a page rank 7 and the link looked bought. My competitions page rank is 6 which I thought was largely because of this one link. I e-mailed the linking sites webmaster and they bought the link pretty cheap. So I thought... Hey!? Why not!
About two weeks later, today, google webmaster tools finally found the link and my links went from 100 to 7100. Now that I really think about it, I know it was a stupid move. I just figured if they got away with it, I could.
I'm a white hat seo'er from now on. I've learned my lesson. Wake up today and find that all 400 keywords I am attempting to rank for, which 60% used to be in the top 3, are now not in the top 100. Luckily I am still indexed in Google though, I'm just not ranking for anything significant.
Now I e-mailed the linking sites webmaster and had him remove the links. He was pretty quick about putting them up, so I figure they'll be down today. Is it just a matter of Google realizing that they're gone until I'm back in the SERPS? Or am I screwed for good? This is a little scary, I depend on Google for my entire livelihood. Yeah, I know not something I should be gambling with then.
I only spent $125 on the links, but every month of traffic is worth about $3k to me. Ouch. If I lose a few months I'm at least looking at a $10k hit. Please give me some good news
-
Scary stuff, Brian.
I know that sinking feeling. Just got bombed myself. Whether by Panda, because of user experience or a little too over optimized anchor text, I am not sure yet. Two weeks and my ranking have yet to come back.
Clean up the site, remove the bad links and cross your fingers for a speedy return is about all you can do.
Good luck with it.
-
Google algo detects when you got a sudden urge of links to your site and it raises the "SPAM" flag, normally , like in your case, the algo sent the site to the SandBox.
Whats weird when this happens is that sometimes you drop for a few days than suddenly your site is back to the top and ranking higher than before.
Other times you just sit there in sandbox forever.
So I think you did the right move, the problem is that it can take quite sometime now to get your site back to where it was before.
Just as a side note, some people argue that if you keep building the links at the same rate for sometime you can come out of the sandbox with all the links, maybe this pattern makes the algo think that your site got viral or something (wich happens quite often I imagine) but to be honest i think its more a shot in the dark.
-
Yeah I've spent the last couple of hours looking for info on this problem. Almost everyone is saying "too many links can't hurt". There's just no other explanation for what happened this morning. I was doing perfectly fine in the SERPS then right when Google recognizes all my new links, I fall back to nothing immediately.
-
Where are all of those people who say... "Links can't hurt you."?
-
Remove the bad links, make sure they are all gone, then file a reconsideration request explaining why you were penalized and what you have done about it. You should be fine after that, might take about a month or so. You can request reconsideration in your webmaster tools account by going here:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/reconsideration
Good luck!
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 to do with these toxic links?
Back in July I had posted here that I thought someone was doing negative SEO against us. We monitor our links on a daily basis, and a lot of toxic links came in quickly within a few days. So we were pro-active and ended up disavowing those links soon after we saw them. Shortly after that our ranking start to drop and we lost a good amount of traffic, though I do not know if its really connected since we only disavowed those toxic links and we weren't ranking FROM those links since they were disavowed so quickly. Now, its happening again. 20 new inbound domains linking to us from complete crap websites with crap content and not done by us. I want to disavow them, but I am thinking that maybe the first time we disavowed the links, it hurt us, and maybe disavowing now will hurt us further? I think Google should be able to filter out this crap but who knows, too much depends on this being handled correctly. Here are some of the crappy links: http://optibike.com/?home.php=page/loans/student-loan-without-a-cosigner-2.html
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | DemiGR
http://designsbynickthegeek.com/?index.php=finance/loans/loan-for-you-3.html
http://www.nuvivaweightloss.com/?index.php=article/loans/300-loan-today.html
http://ecommercesalesmultipliersystem.com/?home.php=board/loans/fast-loan-with-monthly-payments-2.html They are mostly duplicate content across a network of sites. How would you guys handle this?0 -
Do Wikipedia links add value?
Do Wikipedia pages/links add any value to your website and SEO? We are not an advertiser or seller of products, whereas we help people with planning so say I add an external link from an established page relevant to our service, will we get penalised by Wikipedia? Or is it worth setting up a page about our company, similar to say - the BBC with an external link? Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Jaybeamer0 -
Competition Link Metrics Analysis - Do you have any suggestions ?
My sub-pages are ranking well, but Homepage isn't ranking well for the keywords I'd like it to. It used to in the past. My site - njhypnotherapy.com used to rank (#2-5) 1st page in google for many keywords. In Sep/Oct I noticed my homepage ranking drop dramatically for the main keywords. Well, I made some foolish decisions and I'm trying to clean up the mess. Low quality links, duplicate content...etc I rewrote most of the content, removed unnecessary pages, removed as many low quality links, and used disavow for the rest. It's been a 2 Weeks now. I noticed a lot of improvements in my sub-pages. From #50 to #20. Not Bad. My homepage still isn't ranking. Any suggestions to improve? Btw, I've included my link metrics below if it helps 🙂 Thank You metricks.png
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | njhypnotherapy0 -
Getting a link from an internal page with PR 2 of a domain with PR 5 is how much effective?
My website got a link from an internal page with PR rank of 2 but the domain has the PR rank 5. For example - A domain www.example.com with PR rank 5 and internal page www.example.com/extra/1 PR rank 2. I got a link from the internal page, will I benefit from main domain Page rank 5? Thanks, Sameer
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | KaylaKerr0 -
How to Explain The Danger of Link Networks
A client of mine has been approached by a company that sets up one-off private link networks like this: Main site: http://www.klausparking.com/ Network sites: http://www.carparkingtechnology.com/
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | waynekolenchuk
http://www.carparkingsystem.com/
http://www.victoriaparking.net/
http://www.reginaparking.com/
http://www.torontoparking.net/
http://www.multicarparkingsystem.com/
http://www.carparkingsolutions.com/ The company doing this actually promotes this as a patent-pending feature they call "silos". How do I explain the real danger to my client?1 -
External links without unnatural without my control
What should I do with links that Google considers link unnatural, but I have no control over them?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | soulmktpro0 -
Does anyone know of a good link building case study? A B2B focus would be a plus
Looking for a solid analysis of a white-hat campaign that showed tangible results (if one exists).
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RiseSEO0 -
The Link in Profile Page is it good BackLink or not?
Well, i see that we need 200mozpoints to be able to put our Website Link (DOFOLLOW) into our profile in SEOMOZ.. the way i know it, it would be a good BackLink for my site. Here is the questions, please do answer from top to bottom, because if you have answered "NOT GOOD" for the first question, then the rest of the question will definitely be "NOT GOOD" too Every single back link source i used below (for question #2 and #3), comes from a good domain (it is an extremely wellknown website in Indonesia) 1. Is the DOFOLLOW link from my SEOMOZ Profile Page , a good back link? 2. is the DOFOLLOW from http://www.indonesiaindonesia.com/m4g1c14n a good back link 3. is the DOFOLLOW from http://www.kaskus.us/member.php?u=10407 (click the Contact Info), a good back link? okay, only if you answered the first 3 questions with "It is a good backlink, and it will definitely help your SEO Standing for your site", then i ask you my real question.. i was planning to use the service from http://www.monsterbacklinks.com , and i asked them to show me what kind of "High Quality Backlink" they will be giving me, here is their reply, 10 examples of profile they use to backlink to one of their client Domain PR 4--http://www.sanramon.org/user/12548
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | IKT
Domain PR 5--http://extratasty.com/profile/42069/paulc4312
Domain PR 5--http://www.bug.co.uk/forums/members/paulc4312.html
Domain PR 5--http://www.offspring.com/forums/member.php?u=84973
Domain PR 5--http://www.massify.com/profiles/paulcpaul
Domain PR 6--http://www.gamezone.com/member/159751/
Domain PR
5--http://www.indyarocks.com/profile/profile_vview_main.php?uid=6155724
Domain PR 6--http://classic.mapmywalk.com/user_profile?u=866130762956343886
Domain PR 5--http://www.netbookreviews.com/forum/members/paulc4312.html
Domain PR 5--http://www.thepoint.com/users/paul-c-2/profile
Domain PR 5--http://forums.cagepotato.com/members/paulc4312.html In my eyes, all of those links are as good as the one link coming from SEOMOZ Profile, hell in fact i have already purchased from them the 750 High Quality BackLink package (cost 197$), but my PayPal is being lock down just now, because i login to my account from both my cellphone and pc (they think my account is hacked)... so will i increase my SEO Standing if i used their service? if they are, i will finalized my purchase tomorrow (after i settled the problem with paypal) Their FAQ Page is also very convincing .. such these 2 questions Will I get penalized for paying you to do my backlinks? There is no way you will get penalized for paying us to do your backlinks. It is possible to get penalized for paying people to put links on their sites but that's not what you're buying from us. When purchasing from us you are paying us to place thousands of free backlinks. There is absolutely no way Google can penalize you for this. Will Google ban/sandbox me for getting so many backlinks? We have never had any problems with getting sanboxed or banned by google. None of our customers have had any problems either. If our methods of placing backlinks were to get a site penalized or banned then we would be sending thousands of links towards our competitors sites. But since our methods work great for increasing search engine rankings, we would never use our backlinking on our competitors because that will damage our rankings and boost theirs. Please enlighten me 🙂0