Fix Bad Links in Google
-
I have a client who had some grey hat SEO done in the past. Some of their back links aren't from the best neighborhoods.
Google didn't seem to mind until 9/28, when they literally disappeared for all searches except for their domain name. Google still has their site indexed, but it's just not showing up.
There are no messages in Webmaster Tools.
I know Bing has the tool where you can disavow bad links and ask them to discount them. Google doesn't have such a tool, but what is the strategy when you don't have control over the link sources, such as in blog comments?
Could this update have been a delayed Penguin ranking change from the latest Penguin Update on the 18th?
http://www.seomoz.org/google-algorithm-change
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Tom
-
That is an excellent point and I hope it is a Panda update rather than a Penguin. Fixing content on the website will be exponentially easier than trying to track and remove links.
It very much looks like a Penguin penalty, though, and I didn't think Panda acted like this.
Here's an example search:
That is the exact phrase on one of the inner pages. It looks like this domain "http://ip-72-167-48-40.ip.secureserver.net/" is now ranking above their actual domain, which you can see if you click the link to see the "entries that they omitted"
I've never seen a domain like that, but I assume it's the result of something GoDaddy is doing on their hosting end.
Anyway, it's very curious. Any other thoughts would be more than welcomed.
-
I don't have an answer for all of your questions, but this Panda update may be the cause of the rankings drop:
http://searchengineland.com/google-panda-update-20-released-2-4-of-english-queries-impacted-135291
It's more likely to have affected a site based on content than links, however. Unless you're working with an Exact Match Domain, I'd guess this is the most likely cause of any significant ranking drops from the date you mentioned.
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
-
Why homepage is not getting cached by Google ?
It has been more than 2-3 months that I didn't notice that our website homepage is not getting cached by Google ?? i don't know why?? help me please, thanks in advance. Regards,
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | spellblaster
Spel why.PNG0 -
Google profile
I have a google profile https://plus.google.com/u/0/106631271958142100588/ wich is assigned to the url www.propdental.es but i also write a lot of content for to others url My question is if should i create another profile to the others urls witch are also mine but not associated between them. Or can i use the same profile without the risk of losing ranking on the weakest url, as they all compete for similiar keywords Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | maestrosonrisas0 -
Is this website being punished by Google?
Hi, I just took over the SEO for a friend of mine's website. Is this website being punished by Google? It has a strong link score, the homepage needs work as far as Key wording goes but it does not appear in Google's top 100 for any keyword. I am not sure that the last SEO company did some harm. Can anyone give me some tips on getting my friend back into the mix? www.wallybuysell.com
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CKerr0 -
My website disapeared from google rankings, please help?
Our website url is http://www.phoria.com Around January 16th we disappeared from google for the keyword 'kratom' We were on page 3 for the longest time. We have no critical messages in webmaster tools however I did notice most of our links seem to be website directory links.We still rank for a couple terms like buy kratom on page 6.I think a google update occurred around this time so I've read however if we had a variety of links that went against google guidelines wouldn't we have received a message stating so in Webmaster Tools?This month has been very confusing to say the least. Any help would be appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | gregdotcom0 -
How to idesntify "inorganic" links
I am intending to remove spammy link of my website http://cellspyexpert.com/ which has been ranking well but I noticed a sudden drop in its ranking. I took a lot of care while building links, I tried to get links from relevant high authority websites with high page rank. I used profiling and guest blogging method only and never participated in any link scheme but received following message in google webmaster tools " Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links to http://www.cellspyexpert.com/" I got this message on 19<sup>th</sup> Sep and ranking dropped on 6<sup>th</sup> Oct 1- Is this EMD issue?? I am pretty sure it is not because of EMD (Exact match domain) as I have been using phrase match, brand name+phrase and other anchor texts. I used exact match also but only 2%. 2- If it is bad quality, inorganic link issue?? Then I am intending to remove inorganic links so that I could send reconsideration request but facing problem in detecting inorganic links. Please advise!!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | shaz_lhr0 -
Big Brands Still Paying For Links!
We have been spending a lot of time creating unique and relevant content that is helpful to users in order to garner natural links. However, I still see large companies getting paid links to their site. They still rank despite the paid links - many higher that before thanks to the increased brand/domain authority bias by Google. I have seen a number of blogs with posts that have dofollow links to sites like Amazon and Dirtdevil. Are small businesses just getting buried or am I being too cynical?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | inhouseseo0 -
Google Penguin w/ Meta Keywords
It's getting really hard filtering through the Penguin articles flying around right now so excuse me if this has been addressed: I know that Google no longer uses the meta keywords as indicators (VERY old news). But I'm just wondering if they are starting to look at them as a bigger spam indicator since Penguin is looking at over-optimization. If yes, has anyone read good article indicating so? The reason I ask is because I have two websites, one is authoritative and the other… not so much. Recently my authoritative website has taken a dip in rankings, a significant dip. The non-authoritative one has increased in rankings… by a lot. Now, the authoritative website pages that use meta-keywords seem to be the ones that are having issues… so it really has me wondering. Both websites compete with each other and are fairly similar in their offerings. I should also mention that the meta-keywords were implemented a long time ago… before I took over the account. Also important to note, I never purchase links and never practice any spammy techniques. I am as white hat as it gets which has me really puzzled as to why one site dropped drastically.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BeTheBoss0 -
Are there any "legitimate" paid links in Google's eyes?
The news about paid link campaigns is so frequent, that I have to ask the question....does Google allow any paid links? Aside from SEO, paid links can have visibility value. Much like an exit sign on the highway, the paid link says "Get off here"
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | bcmull0