Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Removed Site-wide links
-
Hi there,
I have recently removed quite a lot of site-wide links leaving the only link on homepage's of some websites, since doing this I have seen a dramatic drop on my keywords, going from position 2-3 to nowhere.
Has anyone else experienced anything like this, should I expect to see a return on these keywords?
Thanks
-
Hi Geoff.
1. These are not websites I own, I had asked the webmaster to remove these site-wide links which they did.
2. They are not hosted on the same server.
3. The anchor text was keyword specific.
4. As a preventative measure, however it looks like this has back-fired.
5. Not to my knowledge, check PR and all is still the same.
6. Yes, they do have other links pointing to it, however in terms of percentage very little, as these were site-wide which was going into the thousands.
Some keywords have disappeared that were not in the site-wide links, which is a concern, maybe there is something else going on?
Shall I get the webmaster to re-instate these site-wide links?
-
Hi Anthony,
As a preventative measure, however it looks like it's backfired. The site-wide links were not on spammy websites, there were high PR, lots of social interaction etc.
Would you ask to get these back on site-wide?
-
There are so many questions here really before it's clear what the cause could be, some of these include:-
- Are these from other sites you own? One would presume so if you access to remove the links?
- If so, are these sites hosted on the same server as the domain they were pointing to?
- Did the sitewide links contain keywords as the anchor text or were they branded?
- Why did you choose to remove the sitewide links in the first place?
- Did any of the other websites containing these sitewide links suffer recently as a result of algorithm updates or decline in rankings.
- The page(s) that the sitewide links were pointing to, does this have other existing links still pointing to it? What % were they were reduced by after the removal of the sitewide links? And of those existing, are they a mix of nofollow/dofollow?
Often, the removal of mass of backlinks will cause a drop as you've experienced. Normally because it's a major shift in the link profile and doesn't look 'natural', providing there was legitimate reasons and there are no other issues that can be raised against the domain in question, often, ranking positions are pretty much reinstated again.
Incidentally, how we often get round this scenario is to keep the sitewide link in place but write a script to only make the link on the homepage followed - and all the others add the nofollow link relationship.
-
Are you doing this as a preventative measure or had you already seen a significant drop in rankings before making this decision?
I would only remove them if they are on spammy sites. Then, focus on getting some more good, branded links to even out your backlink profile.
-
Hi Geoff,
I am removing site-wide links externally.
-
Are you removing sitewide links on other domains pointing to your website or are you referring to sitewide internal linkage within your own site?
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
-
Breaking up a site into multiple sites
Hi, I am working on plan to divide up mid-number DA website into multiple sites. So the current site's content will be divided up among these new sites. We can't share anything going forward because each site will be independent. The current homepage will change to just link out to the new sites and have minimal content. I am thinking the websites will take a hit in rankings but I don't know how much and how long the drop will last. I know if you redirect an entire domain to a new domain the impact is negligible but in this case I'm only redirecting parts of a site to a new domain. Say we rank #1 for "blue widget" on the current site. That page is going to be redirected to new site and new domain. How much of a drop can we expect? How hard will it be to rank for other new keywords say "purple widget" that we don't have now? How much link juice can i expect to pass from current website to new websites? Thank you in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | timdavis0 -
Splitting One Site Into Two Sites Best Practices Needed
Okay, working with a large site that, for business reasons beyond organic search, wants to split an existing site in two. So, the old domain name stays and a new one is born with some of the content from the old site, along with some new content of its own. The general idea, for more than just search reasons, is that it makes both the old site and new sites more purely about their respective subject matter. The existing content on the old site that is becoming part of the new site will be 301'd to the new site's domain. So, the old site will have a lot of 301s and links to the new site. No links coming back from the new site to the old site anticipated at this time. Would like any and all insights into any potential pitfalls and best practices for this to come off as well as it can under the circumstances. For instance, should all those links from the old site to the new site be nofollowed, kind of like a non-editorial link to an affiliate or advertiser? Is there weirdness for Google in 301ing to a new domain from some, but not all, content of the old site. Would you individually submit requests to remove from index for the hundreds and hundreds of old site pages moving to the new site or just figure that the 301 will eventually take care of that? Is there substantial organic search risk of any kind to the old site, beyond the obvious of just not having those pages to produce any more? Anything else? Any ideas about how long the new site can expect to wander the wilderness of no organic search traffic? The old site has a 45 domain authority. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Ecommerce Site homepage , Is it okay to have Links as H2 Tags as that is relevant to the page ?
Hi All, I have a Rental site and I am bit confused with how best do my H Tags on my homepage I know the H1 is the most important, Then H2 Tags and so on.. and that these tags should really be titles for content. However, I have a few categories (links) on my homepage so I am wondering if I could put these as H2 Tags given that it is relevant to the page . H3 Tags will my News and Guides etc , H4 Tags will the whats on the footer. I am attached a made up screenshot of what I propose for my homepage if someone could please give it a quick look , it would be very much appreciated. I have looked at what some competitors do a lot of them don't seem to have h2's etc but I know it's an important factor for rankings etc. Many thanks Pete dJSFQwI
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
Wrong titles in site links
Hello fellow marketers, I have found this weird thing with our website in the organic results. The sitelinks in the SERP shows wrong written text. As in grammatically incorrect text. My question is where does Google get the text from? It is not the page title as we can see it. kKsFv0X.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | auke18101 -
When removing a product page from an ecommerce site?
What is the best practice for removing a product page from an Ecommerce site? If a 301 is not available and the page is already crawled by the search engine A. block it out in the robot.txt B. let it 404
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bryan_Loconto0 -
Outbound link to PDF vs outbound link to page
If you're trying to create a site which is an information hub, obviously linking out to authoritative sites is a good idea. However, does linking to a PDF have the same effect? e.g Linking to Google's SEO starter guide PDF, as opposed to linking to a google article on SEO. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | underscorelive0 -
How to properly link network of microsites and main sites?
Law firm has a main brand site (lawfirmname.com) with lots of content focusing on personal injury related areas of law. They also do other unrelated areas of law such as bankruptcy and divorce. They have a separate website for bankruptcy and a separate one for divorce. These websites have good quality content, a backlinking campaign, and are fairly large websites, with landing pages for different cities. They also have created local microsites in the areas of bankruptcy and divorce that target specific smaller cities that the main bankruptcy site and divorce site do not target well. These microsites have a good deal of original content and the content is mostly specific to the city the website is about, and virtually no backlinks. There are about 15 microsites for cities in bankruptcy and 10 in divorce and they rank pretty well for these city specific local searches. None of these sites are linked at all, and all 28 of the sites are under the same hosting account (all are subdomains of root domain of hosting account). Question, should I link these sites together at all and if so how? I considered making a simple and general page on the lawfirmname.com personal injury site for bankruptcy and divorce (lawfirmname.com/bankruptcy and lawfirmname.com/divorce) and then saying on the page something to the effect of "for more information on bankruptcy go to our main bankruptcy site at ....." and putting the link to the main bankruptcy site. Same for divorce. This way users can go to lawfirmname.com site and find Other Practice Areas, go to bankruptcy page, and link to main bankruptcy site. Is this the best way to link to these two main sites for bankruptcy and divorce or should I be linking upward? Secondly, should I link the city specific microsites to any of the other sites or leave them completely separate? Thirdly, should all of these sites be hosted on the same account or is this something that should be changed? I was considering not linking the city specific sites at all, but if I did this I didn't know if I should create different hosting accounts for them (which could be expensive). The sites work well in themselves without being linked, but wanted to try to network them in some way if possible without getting penalized or causing any issues with the search engines. Any help would be appreciated on how to network and host all of these websites.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | broca777110 -
Transfer link juice from old to new site
Hi seomozzers, The design team is building a new website for one of our clients. My role is to make sure all the link juice is kept. My first question is, should I just make 301s or is there another technique to preserve all the link juice from the old to new site that I should be focusing on? Second Question is that ok to transfer link juice using dev urls like www.dev2.example.com (new site) or 182.3456.2333? or should I wait the creation of real urls to do link juice transfer? Thank you 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0