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
-
Moving to a new site while keeping old site live
For reasons I won't get into here, I need to move most of my site to a new domain (DOMAIN B) while keeping every single current detail on the old domain (DOMAIN A) as it is. Meaning, there will be 2 live websites that have mostly the same content, but I want the content to appear to search engines as though it now belongs to DOMAIN B. Weird situation. I know. I've run around in circles trying to figure out the best course of action. What do you think is the best way of going about this? Do I simply point DOMAIN A's canonical tags to the copied content on DOMAIN B and call it good? Should I ask sites that link to DOMAIN A to change their links to DOMAIN B, or start fresh and cut my losses? Should I still file a change of address with GWT, even though I'm not going to 301 redirect anything?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kdaniels0 -
URL Value: Menu Links vs Body Content Links
Hi All, I'm a little confused. I have read a number of articles from authority sites that give mixed signals over the importance of menu links vs body content links. It is suggested that whilst all menu links spread link juice equally, Google does not see them as favourably. Inserting a link within the body will add more link juice value to the desired page. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks Mark
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mark_Ch0 -
Disavow first (and link removal outreach second) as tactic?
I need to remove/disavow hundreds of domains due to an algorithmic penalty. Has anyone disavowed first and done the outreach thing second as a tactic? The reason why I was considering this was as follows: Most of the websites are from spammy websites and unlikely to have monitored accounts/available contact details. My business is incredibly seasonal, only being easily profitable for half of the year. The season starts from next month so the window of opportunity to get it done is small. If there's a Penguin update before I get it done, then it could be very bad news. Any thoughts would be much appreciated. (Incidentally, if you are interested in, I also posted here about it: http://moz.com/community/q/honest-thoughts-needed-about-link-building-removal)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Coraltoes770 -
Using both dofollow & nofollow links within the same blog site (but different post).
Hi all, I have been actively pursuing bloggers for my site in order to build page rank. My website sells women undergarments that are more on the exotic end. I noticed a large amount of prospective bloggers demand product samples. As already confirm, bloggers that are given "free" samples should use a rel=no follow attribute in their links. Unfortunately this does not build my page rank or transfer links juice. My question is this: is it advisable for them to also blog additional posts and include dofollow links? The idea is for the blogger to use a nofollow when posting about the sample and a regular link for a secondary post at a later time. What are you thoughts concerning this matter?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 90miLLA0 -
Merging Sites: Will redirecting the old homepage to an internal page on the new site cause issues?
I've ended up with two sites which have similar content (but not duplicate) and target similar keywords, rather than trying to maintain two sites I would like to merge the sites together. The old site is more of a traditional niche site and targets a particular set of keywords on its homepage, the new site is more of an authority site with a magazine type homepage and targets the same set of keywords from an internal page. My question is: Should I redirect the old site's homepage to the relevant internal page on the new website...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lara_dar
...or should I redirect the old site's homepage to the new site's homepage? (the old site's homepage backlinks are a mixture of partial match keyword anchor text, naked URLs and branded anchor text) I am in two minds (a & b!) (a) Redirecting to the internal page would be great for ranking as there are some decent backlinks and the content is similar (b) But usually when you do a 301 redirect the homepage usually directs to the new homepage and some of the old site's links are related to the domain rather than the keyword (e.g. http://www.site.com) and some people will be looking for the site's homepage. What do you think? Your help is much appreciated (and hope this makes sense...!)0 -
Redirecting one site to another for link juice
I have two sites with same theme - buying cars. I am going remove one of the sites from being crawled permenantly (ie junkthecars.com) and point domian via 301, to another similar theme site (sellthecars.com). The purpose is to simply pass the SEO link juice from one site to the other as we retire junkthecars.com.... Is a forwarding of the domain OK and the best way for the search engines to increase the rank of sellthecars.com (we hate to wast the link work done on Junkthecars.com)? What dangers should I look for that could hurt sellthecars.com if we do the redirect at a simple TLD?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bestone0 -
Do 404 Pages from Broken Links Still Pass Link Equity?
Hi everyone, I've searched the Q&A section, and also Google, for about the past hour and couldn't find a clear answer on this. When inbound links point to a page that no longer exists, thus producing a 404 Error Page, is link equity/domain authority lost? We are migrating a large eCommerce website and have hundreds of pages with little to no traffic that have legacy 301 redirects pointing to their URLs. I'm trying to decide how necessary it is to keep these redirects. I'm not concerned about the page authority of the pages with little traffic...I'm concerned about overall domain authority of the site since that certainly plays a role in how the site ranks overall in Google (especially pages with no links pointing to them...perfect example is Amazon...thousands of pages with no external links that rank #1 in Google for their product name). Anyone have a clear answer? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | M_D_Golden_Peak0 -
Site wide footer links vs. single link for websites we design
I’ve been running a web design business for the past 5 years, 90% or more of the websites we build have a “web design by” link in the footer which links back to us using just our brand name or the full “web design by brand name” anchor text. I’m fully aware that site-wide footer links arent doing me much good in terms of SEO, but what Im curious to know is could they be hurting me? More specifically I’m wondering if I should do anything about the existing links or change my ways for all new projects, currently we’re still rolling them out with the site-wide footer links. I know that all other things being equal (1 link from 10 domains > 10 links from 1 domain) but is (1 link from 10 domains > 100 links from 10 domains)? I’ve got a lot of branded anchor text, which balances out my exact match and partial match keyword anchors from other link building nicely. Another thing to consider is that we host many of our clients which means there are quite a few on the same server with a shared IP. Should I? 1.) Go back into as many of the sites as I can and remove the link from all pages except the home page or a decent PA sub page- keeping a single link from the domain. 2.) Leave all the old stuff alone but start using the single link method on new sites. 3.) Scratch the site credit and just insert an exact-match anchor link in the body of the home page and hide with with CSS like my top competitor seems to be doing quite successfully. (kidding of course.... but my competitor really is doing this.)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nbeske0