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?
-
To give a good reply to your question, I need to know your level of understanding.
Are you familiar with what Google is targeting with the Penguin update?
If your "SEO experts" understand the Penguin update and you don't and proceeding blindly then your clients will be better off if they steal your business.
They might not be fear mongering.
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
-
Internal Linking
Hi I've been looking over my pages and it says for this page for example http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/1-6kw-halogen-heater I have too many links, I think it was about 178. These links are from the menu and bottom of the page - how much of an issue is this for internal linking structure? I wouldn't want to remove the menus or change them too much. Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Is a link inside a video player considered an inbound link from the domain the player is embedded in?
Good afternoon...We just added a link to our homepage inside the menu of our video player. In the link below, if you click on the menu icon in the bottom right corner of the video player, you'll see a "Powered by WellcomeMat" link at the bottom of the menu. http://www.wellcomemat.com/video/kt216e25172416n/-Rancho-Santa-Fe/Ca/92067/16596-Via-Lago-Azul/1234567890/ My question for the community is would that link be considered an inbound link from any site that has the video player embedded? So hypothetically, the video player is embedded into www.abcd.com. If a user would click on that link and go to our homepage, would search engines recognize that as an inbound link from abcd.com, even though it sits within our video player? And most of the time, the player sits within an iframe. So that's why I'm not 100% sure. Thanks for reading and for your help! It's much appreciated!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | brian7201 -
Social Links through Link Shortners. Does it count?
We use link shortner services like Bitly, Goo.gl, etc. Does the post used while making use of such link shortner services counts as a social signal. Or should we post the complete website url pointing to each page while posting on social sites. Secondly, should we write a new description while posting on Social sites or just copy paste a few lines of original posts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | welcomecure0 -
Questions About Link Detox
Greetings: In April of 2014 an SEO firm ran a link removal campaign (identified spammy links and uploaded a disavow). The overall campaign was ineffective and MOZ domain rank has fallen to 24 from about 30 in the last year and traffic is 20% lower. I purchased a basic package for Link Detox and ran a report today (see enclosed) to see if toxic links could be contributing to our mediocre rankings. As a novice I have a few questions for you regarding this the use of Link Detox: -We scored a domain wide detox risk of 1,723. The site has referring root domains with 7113 links to our site. 121 links were classified as high audit priority. 56 as medium audit priority. 221 links were previously disavowed and we uploaded a spreadsheet containing the names of the previously disavowed links. We had LinkDetox include an analysis of no-follow links as they recommend this. Is our score really bad? If we remove the questionable links should we see some benefit in ranking? -Some of the links we disavowed last year are still linking to our site. Is it worthwhile to include those links again in our new disavow file? -Prior to filing a disavow we will request that Webmaster remove offending links. LinkDetox offers a package called Superhero for $469.00 that automates the process. Does this package effectively help with the entire process of writing and tracking the removal requests? Do you know of any other good alternatives? -A feature called "Boost" is included in the LinkDetox Super Hero package. It is suppose to expedite Google's processing of the disavow file. I was told by the staff at Link Detox that with Boost Google will process the disavow within a week. Do you have any idea if this claim is valid??? It would be great if it were true. -We never experienced any manual penalty from Google. Will uploading a disavow help us under the circumstances? Thanks for your feedback, I really appreciate it!!! Alan p2S6H7l
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
Links from new sites with no link juice
Hi Guys, Do backlinks from a bunch of new sites pass any value to our site? I've heard a lot from some "SEO experts" say that it is an effective link building strategy to build a bunch of new sites and link them to our main site. I highly doubt that... To me, a new site is a new site, which means it won't have any backlinks in the beginning (most likely), so a backlink from this site won't pass too much link juice. Right? In my humble opinion this is not a good strategy any more...if you build new sites for the sake of getting links. This is just wrong. But, if you do have some unique content and you want to share with others on that particular topic, then you can definitely create a blog and write content and start getting links. And over time, the domain authority will increase, then a backlink from this site will become more valuable? I am not a SEO expert myself, so I am eager to hear your thoughts. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | witmartmarketing0 -
Link from archived article.
A strong news site has an "archived.domainname" folder, where they have older articles listed. I can get a link on a page where there is a 4 year old article, which will be in this archived sub-domain. My questions: Will Google view a link from a 4 year old article as less valuable. Will Google notice the article is 4 years old and find it odd why the page all of a sudden has a link to my site, and thus devalue such link the sub-domain "archived" does that tell Google it is old and a link will be less valuable thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | knielsen0 -
Internal links in blog posts?
What's the best strategy for internal links in a blog post? Example, if I write a blog should I always place a link to the main site at the bottom when I place my signature and contact info? Should I just put links in the content? Or should I do both?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bronxpad0 -
Multiple anchor text links
Hi. I wanted to ask about having multiple text links to an internal page from the same page. So I have a section title on my home page which will vary with each article. It may say "Healthiest Cat Foods" as the title then offer a snippet and finally offer a "continue reading..." anchor text. The title is a great link to the article while the "continue reading..." is another link to the same article. I like the to keep the title link because it is perfect anchor text. I like to keep the "continue reading..." because it seems helpful for users. I have read that search engines will only count the first link to an article which is fine as I only want the first one to count anyway. What I am wondering is do I lose any page rank because I added the second link? Does that second link hurt me in any way?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NikkiGaul0