Are these links bad for my results?
-
In the past we have requested links on multiple directories. Since we have seen a mayor drop (60% in traffic) in results around the pinquin update 24-26th of April. Our results have been slowly getting lower and lower in Google.
Is it possible to tell if these links are in fact doing my site harm? Before the 26th of April it was easy to see that the results where benefiting from the submission to those directories.
We did not have any messages in webmaster tools and reconsideration says "no manual spam action taken". What would be the best strategy to turn this around and go up again?
A selection of the requested links can be found below.
<colgroup><col width="266"></colgroup>
| www.thesquat.org |
| www.directmylink.com |
| www.thegreatdirectory.org |
| www.submission4u.com |
| www.urlmoz.com |
| www.basoti.org |
| www.iwebdirectory.co.uk |
| www.freeinternetwebdirectory.com |
| addsite-submitfree.com |
| opendirectorys.com |
| www.xennobb.com |
| mdwerks.com |
| www.directoryfire.com |
| www.rssbuffet.com |To give a good view on the problem: The requested links anchors are mostly not in the native language of the directories.
Thanks!
-
No problem
Let me know if you need any further questions answering.
Andy
-
Thanks for your help Andy! i will look into it.
-
Google+ can help with identifying who you are as an organisation and owner of content on your site. Might not help with this particular problem, but worth doing all the same.
If you are 100% sure that it is Penguin, then I would start with manually contacting some of the sites where you have questionable links and ask for them to be removed. If this doesn't work, or if links wont be removed, then it might be that you should look at using the Disavow tool and just get rid of anything that might be causing you problems.
After you do that, if can take a number of weeks for Google to get round to spidering all those sites to see you are no longer there.
Another blog post of mine on the Disavow tool with video from Matt Cutts and links to help pages on Google as well.
Andy
-
No, unfortunately we are still unable to point out what exactly the problem is. We think it must have been penguin because of the date and the amount of keywords it affected.
No we dont have Google+ yet. Does it makes a lot of difference in this case?
We did try to improve all the different aspects of the site. We added a better canonical structure, reduced the amount of keywords and links on a page and rewrote a lot of text to make it more user friendly instead of google friendly.
Unfortunately we did not noticed a turnover in results and getting somehow desperate on what to try next. If we look at our direct competitors (who do better in results) i can not see why they are not affected.
Thanks for the link to your article. I will surely go and read it.
-
Unless you get a warning from Google in WMT, don't worry about trying to Disavow them - just don't try and create any more
If you are after a little inspiration on what to do, I wrote a bit of a link-building 101 that could give you some ideas?
Do you have Google+ setup and Authorship on your site? have you identified what it is that caused you to get hit? Panda / Penguin / Page Quality, etc.
Andy
-
Thanks for your reply Andy! I know the listed directories are not doing any good for my results.
The question still remains if it would be worth the trouble to let them all removed. In our niche we now have contacted blogs and more sensible directories to get us listed and we see that as a continuous process. I have to mention that before the update in April we did experienced a climbing line wish is all gone now.
We are now 6 months away from pinquin and still we having low results. That is the reason why i'm searching for other possible solutions.
Thanks again!
-
Just looking at the names of some of those directories, I can tell you they are worthless - The Great Directory? i Web Directory?
I would be searching for sites that will benefit from what you have to offer and contact them - steer clear of directories of this kind. However, find a directory that is dedicated to your niche, and that is acceptable.
Andy
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
-
Tiered back links
Playing catch up with latest SEO techniques and wanted to ask the community what opinion is with generated tiered back links. For example, in one month having - 50 tier one links, 250 tier two links and 1000 tier three links generated within articles forums, social networks, guestbooks etc. In my view this is blackhat, my question is - is this still acceptable? or will it be damaging my domain? Thank you.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | w4rdy0 -
Should I disavow links to a dead sub domain?
I'm analyzing a client's website today and I found that they have over 300 spammy sites linking to a subdomain of their main site. So for example, say their site is clientsite.com, well they have hundreds of links pointing to deadsite.clientsite.com. That subdomain was used at one time as a staging site, and is no longer active. Are those hundreds of spammy sites hurting or potentially hurting my client's SEO? Or is it a non-issue because the links point to a dead subdomain? We believe that that staging sub domain site was hacked at one time, and thats where all those spammy links came from. Should I disavow them?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | rubennunez0 -
Should I disavow this Link?
I am trying to clean up my link profile to get rid of a partial penalty and am not sure to do with one of the links to my site http://www.seoco.co.uk The link is 100% organic and has come from a foreign language site that published an infographic that I did: http://www.clasesdeperiodismo.com/2012/12/23/la-evolucion-de-las-redes-sociales-este-ano-en-una-infografia/ The thing is that in the link to my homepage they have used the anchor text SEO as opposed to my company name. I have already sent them an email and asked them to change the anchor text but they haven't responded so I am guessing they probably wouldn't respond to a removal request either. Should I disavow it?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Eavesy0 -
New un-natural links to my website that i didnt create.. and lots of them!
Hi There In the last few months my search organic traffic has gone down and i am looking into links to my website through webmaster tools. It looks like there is some sort of automated robot that is building new links to my website at a rate of 5 per week! All are spammy, directory links. It looks like this has been going on for a few months now. I have no idea how to find and stop this. But i have a feeling this might explain why my traffic is down. ALSO non of these links are in MOZ Open site explorer or Majestic SEO.. they are just showing as just discovered in webmaster tools. I am assuming that means its pretty accurate ?! ALL help is appreciated! Thanks! Paula
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Pixelstorm0 -
One good domain generating to much links what to do
I think penguin had no effect yet on spain. propdental.com remain the same.And propdental.es still growing.No penguin 2.0 effect. I think it will need a few more days to see if there is impact on spain.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | maestrosonrisas
Althought i have a question regarding coagnitive SEO, (is regarding a link to propdental.es from unidirectorio.com) i think is a good web, but as generated me an very big amount of links)i have this on link from unidirectorio.com that has generated 2400 links to www.propdental.es with this ancor text "clinica dental con dentistas especialistas en implantes dentales ortodoncia invisalign y carillas" Links is comes from this page http://undirectorio.com/Salud/dentistas/ and then generates 2400I can not remove this link. I seemed a good directory with just 3 pages linking out and good page rank on my specific field.I ask google to dont take that link into account, although i am not sure if i did it well.**Can someone tell me how to say to google to dont take in account the links from a domain?**google still shows this link on webmaster tools, i am afraid it ends up been bad. I seems a good directory is not an exact ancor text although containt all work i want to rank.What would be your advice? Do i have any way to make sure that google does not have the links recieved from that domain into account0 -
Methods for getting links to my site indexed?
What are the best practices for getting links to my site indexed in search engines. We have been creating content and acquiring backlinks for the last few months. They are not being found in the back link checkers or in the Open Site Explorer. What are the tricks of the trade for imporiving the time and indexing of these links? I have read about some RSS methods using wordpress sites but that seems a little shady and i am sure google is looking for that now. Look forward to your advice.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | devonkrusich0 -
Somebody hacked many sites and put links to my sites in hidden div
I had 300 good natural links to my site from different sites and site ranked great for my keywords. Somebody (I suppose my competitor) has hacked other sites 2 days ago (checked Google cache) and now Yahoo Site Explorer shows 600 backlinks. I've checked new links - they all are in the same hidden div block - top:-100px; position:absolute;. I'm afraid that Google may penalize my site for these links. I'm contacting webmasters of these sites and their hosting so they remove these links. Is it possible to give Google a notice that these links are not mine so it could just skip them not penalizing me? Is it safe to make "Spam report" regarding links to my own site?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | zarades0 -
Do backlinks with good anchor text from bad sites help?
Hi, In the Netherlands, the SEO competition for terms like loans is very competitive. I see a website in this industry that seems to be doing very well based on links with good anchor text from sites that seem quite worthless to me, such as: http://www.online-colleges-helper.com/ and http://www.alohapath.com/ My question is: is it worth pursuing this type of links? I assume these must be paid links, or am I wrong? I'd really rather not go down this route but I don't want to be outranked by someone who is using these types of links... Many thanks in advance for any type of insight! Annemieke
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AnnemiekevH0