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
-
Internal Linking issue
So i am working with a review company and I am having a hard time with something. We have created a category which lists and categorizes every one of our properties. For example a specific property in the category "restaurant" would be as seen below: /restaurant/mcdonalds /restaurant/panda-express And so on and so on. What I am noticing however is that our more obscure properties are not being linked to by any page. If I were to visit the page myurl.com/restaurant I would see 100+ pages of properties, however it seems like only the properties on the first few pages are being counted as having links. So far the only way I have been able to work around this issue is by creating a page and hiding it in our footer called "all restaurants". This page lists and links to every one of our properties. However it isn't exactly user friendly and I would prefer scrapers not to be able to scrape all properties at once! Anyway, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | HashtagHustler0 -
We have 302 redirect links on our forum that point to individual posts. Should we add a rel="nofollow" to these links?
Moz is showing us that we have a HUGE amount of 302 redirects. These are coming from our community forum. Forum URL: https://www.foodbloggerpro.com/community/ Example thread URL: https://www.foodbloggerpro.com/community/viewthread/322/ Example URL that points to a specific reply: https://www.foodbloggerpro.com/community/viewreply/1582/ The above link 302 redirects to this URL: https://www.foodbloggerpro.com/community/viewthread/322/#1582 My two questions would be: Do you think we should we add rel=nofollow to the specific reply URLs? If possible, should we make those redirects 301 vs. 302? Screencast attached. nofollow_302.mp4
Technical SEO | | Bjork1 -
Site-wide Links
Hey y'all, I know this question has been asked many times before but I wanted to see what your stance was on this particular case. The organisation I work for is a group of 12 companies - each with its own website. On some of the sites we have a link to the other sites within the group on every single page of that site. Our organic search traffic has dropped a bit but not significantly and we haven't received any manual penalties from Google. It's also worth mentioning that the referral traffic for these sites from the other sites I control is quite good and the bounce rate is extremely low. If you were in my shoes would you remove the links, put a nofollow tag on the links or leave the links as they are? Thanks guys 🙂
Technical SEO | | AAttias0 -
Are sitewide links bad for SEO?
I have 11 real estate sites and have had links from one to another for about 7 years but someone just suggested me to take them all out because I might get penalized or affected by penguin. My main site was affected on July of 2012 and organic visits have dropped 43%...I've been working on many aspects of my SEO but it's been difficult to come back. Any suggestions are very welcome, thanks 🙂
Technical SEO | | mbulox0 -
Outbound Links
I have a page on upstrap-pro.com that provides weights of cameras and lenses. The user/buyer of my on-slip camera straps needs to know the weight his camera and lens to determine the proper pad size... large to small. We have put together a long list of the most popular customer cameras. The way it was done (by my daughter) was to also provide a via a link to dpreview.com which is an excellent site for camera information including specifications etc. My personal feeling about this is mixed. I can do it by having it open dpreview.com in a new tab but then the user/customer could still get distracted and go down the rabbit hole. On the other hand dpreview is such a good site that if they are new to photography and don't know about it, they should. I don't get a dime from dpreview. If fact I doubt they would ever link back to me because they do not write about camera straps. I hear mixed things about outbound links. In this file there are quite a few outbound links to dpreview to keep it consistent. I could do a nofollow on all of them but I read that this is the easy way out. Google is jump ball and I have no clue what Cutts and his merry men are going to decide is cool or not cool. I'd like some thoughts or options... Thanks... A small part of the file below. Canon EF 14mm f/2.8L II USM Wideangle prime lens Canon EF 22.8 oz 645 g Canon EF 14mm f/2.8L USM
Technical SEO | | Asteg0 -
Can Google read onClick links?
Can Google read and pass link juice in a link like this? <a <span="">href</a><a <span="">="#Link123" onClick="window.open('http://www.mycompany.com/example','Link123')">src="../../img/example.gif"/></a> Thanks!
Technical SEO | | jorgediaz0 -
External Linking & Your sites Link juice
Hey guys, quick question. Does a page lose link juice when it gives link juice? If I link to an outside site, do I lose that same amount of link juice or is it just applied to there site and not removed from mine? I understand that linking to a competitor can in turn help him and hurt me (if he then is seen as more relevant than me to google) but does it have a direct relation to hurting/removing my page link juice? Hope this all makes sense. Thanks
Technical SEO | | SheffieldMarketing0 -
How do you find bad links to your site?
My website has around 900 incoming links and I have a Google 50 penalty that is sitewide. I have been doing research and from what I can see is that the 50 penalty is usually associated with scetchy links. The penalty started last year. I had about 40 related domains to my main site and each had a simple one page site with a link to the main site. (I know I screwed up) I cleaned up all of those links by removing them. The single page site still exist, but they have no links and several of them still rank very well. I also had an outside SEO person that bought a few links. I came clean with Google and told them everything. I gave them all of my sites and that the SEO person had bought links. I gave them full disclosure and removed everything. I have one site that I can't get the link removed from. I have contacted them numerous times to remove the link and I get no response. I am curious if anyone has had a simular experience and how they corrected the situation. Another issue is that my site is "thin" because its an ecommerce affiliate site and full of affiliate links. I work in the costume market. I'm also afraid that I have other bad links pointing to my site. Dooes anyone know of a tool to identify bad links that Google may be penalizing me for at this time. Here is Google's latest denial of my reconsideration request. Dear site owner or webmaster of XXXXXXXXX.com. We received a request from a site owner to reconsider XXXXXXXX.com for compliance with Google's Webmaster Guidelines. We've reviewed your site and we believe that some or all of your pages still violate our quality guidelines. In order to preserve the quality of our search engine, pages from XXXXXXXXXX.com may not appear or may not rank as highly in Google's search results, or may otherwise be considered to be less trustworthy than sites which follow the quality guidelines. If you wish to be reconsidered again, please correct or remove all pages that are outside our quality guidelines. When such changes have been made, please visit https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/reconsideration?hl=en and resubmit your site for reconsideration. If you have additional questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support. Sincerely, Google Search Quality
Technical SEO | | tadden0