Penalised due to links?
-
Hi,
Is there a way to tell if a site has been penalised for it's links?
Our site dropped last Friday, and we would like to rule out links, as we plan to move the site to our main site and re-direct the links, unless Google would punish the new url due to this.
Our old site does not show any warnings for the link, and neither does our Google WM account, the only thing we have to go by is a big drop in SERP.
Many thanks.
Quime.
-
Only on Google, Yahoo and Bing are not effected, no updates were made in particular, especially not to every site, but it happened on the 5th around the time of a Google update. also all 4 lost sites were 3 keyword EMD's with dashes, which we are thinking might have been the cause after doing some research on recent updates? The site not effected was not an EMD and was an authoritative original version.
-
What search engines did they drop in?
Did you make any updates to the site at the time of the drop?
-
Hi there are a few things which are strange that make me unsure of the reasons for the drop regarding the links
Firstly it happened to all our 'foreign' language URLS at the same time. All were on a different URLs with different IPs but shared the same coding and template, however we thought this was fairly normal for many websites who have different language versions.
Secondly we did not receive any warnings from Google on webmasters.
Thirdly the drop happened to all our key words, there is nothing even close to 50 on the SERPS now, but the sites are all still indexed.
The original English website has been left untouched.
-
Unless you received a link spam notifications in your Google Webmasters tool i would highly suggest NOT submitting a reconsideration request. Do your homework first.
- Did the drop in rankings happen across all search engines or just Google?
- Are the pages completely removed from the indexes or just ranking out of the top 50?
- You mentioned you recently implemented a redirect. What is the new URL? How did you implement it?
- If you have your site added to a campaign in the pro tool. Navigate to Link Analysis > History. Is there any weird trends in your DA or your external link count? Any huge increases?
- Also check OSE. Enter your domain and click the "anchor text" tab. Then filter by "all pages on this root domain. Any with extremely high volume? Are you branded terms lower than non-branded?
Run through those five steps and you will have a LOT better idea of what is going on with your link profile instead of simply submitting a request that will take a long while to hear back from.
Cheers - Kyle
-
The easy way to find out is by submitting a reconsideration request. The more difficult way is to audit your backlink profile and see if you built any shady links that violate their TOS. The EMD update might have caused your traffic to drop because I notice that you have an exact match domain.
Look into your analytics and see if you can identify the specific words that dropped in traffic.
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
-
Broken canonical link errors
Hello, Several tools I'm using are returning errors due to "broken canonical links". However, I'm not too sure why is that. Eg.
Technical SEO | | GhillC
Page URL: domain.com/page.html?xxxx
Canonical link URL: domain.com/page.html
Returns an error. Any idea why? Am I doing it wrong? Thanks,
G1 -
No follow links from ban sites
Hello boys and girls. I'm auditing my link profile and came across links pointing to my sites, from a ban site (site: domain.com gives back no result).yet the links are no follow. should i try to remove them all? i know no follow should be enough, yet my links are set in a bad neighborhood. what would you recommend??
Technical SEO | | Tit0 -
Links in a Flash document
How do I tell if a link in a Flash document is follow or nofollow? Or doesn't it matter? (I just found out that my company placed an advertorial in a Flash publication and I want to make sure it doesn't wind up as a paid, followed link.) Thank you!
Technical SEO | | Linda-Vassily0 -
Should I consider webmaster tools links and linked pages ratio to remove unnatural links?
I don't know this is a suitable place for post this question. Anyway I have done it. According to the Google webmaster tools, Links to your site page. My blog has considerable amount of links, from linked pages (from certain domain names). For an instance please refer following screenshot. When I am removing unnatural links, should I consider these, links from linked pages ratio? Almost all of these sites are social bookmarking sites. When I publish a new bookmark on those sites, they automatically add a homepage link. As a result of that, I got a huge number of home page links from linked pages. What is your recommendation? Thanks! webmaster.png web_master_tools.png
Technical SEO | | Godad0 -
OUTGOING LINK ISSUES
NO LINK TO HOME MY WEBSIDE PROFITIOK.COM FOR EXAMPLE YOU SEE THE PAGE I HAVE CHANGE TWO DAYS BACK PREVIOUS
Technical SEO | | Luckykhullar
ABOUT US - Profitok.com 2 DAYS BACK I CHANGED THE TITLE title>Commodity tips | Mcx TIPS | Mcx Daily Tips |Mcx Good tips Provider BUT WHEN I CHECKING IT IS NOT UPDATED THIS TITLE DEAR SIR CAN Y GIVE ME THE CORRECT ANSWER0 -
OSE - still showing me links are there when they are not?
Has anyone else had the issue for a couple of months now where ose is showing links that are live when they are not. I am doing seo for a big e-commerce website so it is important i can find out what the anchor text distribution is for the domain. How is this possible when ose shows me links which are not live? There's been 2 or 3 updates and still showing expired links in our back-link profile. This is very frustrating and has led me to see if anyone else can recommend an alternative which is more up to date? And yes before seomoz reply, i know you only update a certain percentage of the web.
Technical SEO | | pauledwards0 -
What is link juice - and how do I utilise it?
Apologies for the very basic question - I am trying to determine exactly what link juice is. Every article I seem to find assumes that you already know what link juice is. From what I can tell it is how your internal links push around from your homepage and how they flow through your site. I don't understand how to optimize this and how to improve it throughout my site - or what the opportunities are. I'll attach an image of my site link numbers compared to a few rivals (names removed) to illustrate the difference - not vs the first column but certainly the other two. Can someone shed some light on Link Juice for me and point me in the right direction? Thanks. Oy2c5.png
Technical SEO | | Benj250 -
What Are The Page Linking Options?
Okay, so I'm working with a site that has pretty good domain authority, but the interior pages are not well linked or optimized. So, it ranks for some terms, but everything goes to the home page. So, I'd like to increase the authority of the interior pages. The client is not wild about spreading targeted juice via something like a footer. They also don't like a "Popular Searches" style link list. The objection is that it's not attractive. They currently use cute euphemisms as the linking text, so like "cool stuff" instead of "sheepskin seat covers." In that made up example, they'd like to rank for the latter, but insist on using the former. What about a slide show with alt text/links? Would that increase the authority of those pages in a term-targeted kinda way? Are there other options? Does it matter how prominent those links are, like footers not as good as something higher up the page? They currently use a pull-down kind of thing that still results in some pages having no authority. Do bots use that equally well? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | 945010