Client participated in Link farm.
-
Our client participated in link exchange activity between 2008-2009. The service they used was http://link2me.com/
Its an obvious link farm scheme and their drop in traffic/rankings correlates to panda release early this year.
The site does have tons of unique content, their are no technical SEO issues. They DO have great inbound links from some very authoritative sites (ie: peta.org)
They do not rank even for unique strings taken directly from their content. Rankings for some very n long tail terms are virtually non existant.
So the question were trying to figure out is, did the domain get hit with a penalty bc of past link farm participation, if so how can we correct?
-- killing the account with link2me has already been done
Could the domain NOT be penalized, and since all those external links were penalized did our site lose authority?
-
Thanks for the clarification Keri.
Always helps.
-
A quick clarification. The private questions are private, and always stay that way. SEOmoz Associates that answer the questions are under NDA and we don't share the details of those questions. Period.
Public questions and responses are now viewable and indexed right away (there had been a two week waiting period for the responses to be public, but that has changed), though only Pro members can ask and answer questions.
I hope this helps! Do feel free to ask this question in private with more details if you would like. You can create a new question and leave this one here for additional community input if you would like.
-
Lee,
With a client like this where you are reticent to share the domain, the answers will be a bit less authoritative. But, if you think you were hit with a penalty, you should go through each page to insure no further issues exists ( I would check those long tail KW pages to see if there is duplicate content, and that there is no hidden code, etc.) If you have tons of useless links in the footer I would take them out, etc.
Once that is all done and SEO is tight, submit to Google for reconsideration. But, be sure you have a clean site: It would be painful to submit and then get shot down.
If it is a big issue and you need to be circumspect due to the site being a client site, I would use a private question to SEOmoz for assist. This way you can choose if it is kept private or is seen two weeks later. If you have used your private question, you get another one each month.
Hope this helps,
-
Dear Lee,
According to the link farm I can't really agree with you that they became useless and doesn't drive any result. Of course you need to know which link farms to use and how to use. Following this we can't exclude the presence of any penalties on the domain name which effect on growth of the particular keywords. Usual it takes from 6 month to 2 years for penalties to be removed in some case you need to contact with Google Support regarding this.
About domain authority, you can measure it only if you remember which number it has before changes (according for ex. to SEOmoz bar) and which number is now.
Also I need to say that if you are using link farms still you should do really stupid things there to get a penalty from Google. My feelings that it might be some problems with on-page optimization or the keyword competitions are high and links which you got for them are not enough. Try to measure competition and develop a strategy and be tolerant because after adjustments you can't see immediate effect.
Thanks,
Russel
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
-
New link explorer
I was checking this new tool which is really cool by the way and was wondering if I can outrank big guys with just content. I have a Domain authority of 28 with a spam score of 28 % Can I outrank with amazing content a site that hase a domain authority of 50 and a spam score of 1 % ? Should I ask for all my bad links to be removed so that my spam score goes down or doesn't it matter anymore those days and what matters is good content, link just don't count anymore ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics1 -
Google WMT/search console showing thousands of links in "Internal Links"
Hi, One of our blog-post has been interlinked with thousands of internal links as per search console; but lists only 2 links it got connected from. How come so many links it got connected internally? I don't see any. Thanks, Satish
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Base href + relative link href for canonical link
I have a site that in the head section we specify a base href being the domain with a trailing slash and a canonical link href being the relative link to the domain. <base <="" span="">href="http://www.domain.com/" /> href="link-to-page.html" rel="canonical" /> I know that Google recommends using an absolute path as a canonical link but is specifying a base href with a relative canonical link the same thing or is it still seen as duplicate content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Nobody16116990439410 -
Where do I start with cleaning up our link profile?
We have just taken the steps to start building links to www.towelsrus.co.uk, I am concerned about the state of external links to the site created by previous companies, i.e are they OK, or doing us harm, could I get more out f whats already in place or should we focus purely on getting new links? We also have about 25 pages that have 302 errors and contain external links to the site. What should i do with these. try and get them re-directed to our site with appropriate anchor text or simply put a 301 re-direct in place? In essence where I start, We want to build and increase traffic in particular for towels, bathrobes, dressing gowns and bolster our position as our positions are fluctuating a little but steadier than they have been. Any help appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Towelsrus0 -
Toxic Links; Their Existence and Their Impact..
We are constantly being asked about the existence of “toxic Links” and that they are damaging the sites of our clients. Apparently, this definition is being pushed down the throats of clients by other “Seo experts” trying to hijack our business. At this point in time, clients can easily be swayed as a reflex reaction to a drop in rankings. These so called “Seo experts” are clearly scaremongering for their own gain but I would be grateful for your opinion about whether automated, spun content from Seolinkvine and the like, where the English may not be perfect (I assume this is what is meant by “toxic Links”) can actually damage a client’s site. Is it not more constructive to concentrate resources on dilution of keywords from the anchor text rather than waste time on links that may no longer be as powerful, or do they actually have a negative effect?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Dexter-2455780 -
Linking Back
Hello, I have a blog www.digitaldiscovery.eu and I have been working the link building. Now I have a few links pointing into my blog and in Google Webmaster and in Open Site Explorer I can see the URL of those websites. In scale from 1 to 10 how usefull is to have a blogroll in my blog pointing back to those high PR links? How usefull is this in link-building strategy? Tks in advance! PP
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PedroM0 -
Google is not Indicating any Links to my site
We built a new store on another ccTLD and linked to it from some of our other domains in a few locations. I am noticing that with the Google operator command "links:" we are seeing nothing linking to our site anywhere. Some things to clarify: These are not no-follow links These pages linking to our new domain are indexed The pages being linked to on our new domain are indexed This is not a flash site or heavy in JavaScript The links existed the day the site was launched so when the new pages were crawled they existed. "Site:" command in Google shows me that my new site is indexed. What could potentially be causing this? I am trying to get these newer ccTLD's to begin ranking and I understand that I need to get links going to these pages since they are fairly new (2.5 months) so I can outrank the .com in the SE's in those locales. (Like Google.co.uk)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DRSearchEngOpt0 -
Value of Newspaper Comment Links
Although most newspaper comment sections are a no-follow zone, I have noticed that some comments I have posted with links end up being followed. The comments are participatory and the links relevant and even add to the conversation. My theory is that some comments are monitored and if the editors are looking to encourage discussion and don't feel like your spamming, why not take the no follow off. I do plan on doing some testing with poor, spammy comments on the same papers but am encouraged and would like to know what other people have found.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | phogan0