Link directories question
-
Looking over a clients site and they have a bunch of link directory links that seem very skeptical to me, but the mozrank and authority seem to be ok on the home page.
One directory is addlinkzfree and they have the same template and layout as a few other directories this client has. Link page has no juice whatsover, but home page has PA 54, MR 5.04 and root domain is DA 45.
At first glance this would appear to be respectable numbers right? But the title of the directory and multitude of links lead me to think its nothing but a link farm.
Should I advise the client to run and try to remove links from these type sites even though home page has decent scores? Im of the mindset that anything diredctory with links, free, partners etc in title need be avoided.
Would appreciate any backup on this or am I just being paranoid?
-
Do you know what, I knew that was going to be your response
The amount of times I have heard of "reputable" SEO companies doing the same old things is truly horrifying. If they are like the others I have heard of, the likelihood is that they have probably made it quite easy for you to disavow the links by adding approx 20+ links across various pages from each domain? Therefore, when and if you disavow, just disavow the whole domain and that's all of them done.
This is of course you are left with no choice but to disavow.
Best of luck Anthony!
Matt
-
Thanks Matt,
The seo agency came into play post penguin / panda. Flags and bells are going off in my head like a four alarm fire in reviewing their monthly reports.All links are using main keyword phrase and linking to home page. There is no variety in phrase or landing page, and I suspect thats why the client is not ranking well and got a seo agency involved.
Said agency claims to do white hat practices but I just cant find any, as stated above.
Before I post my findings Id like to make sure my approach and suspicions are valid and backed up by others in this fine community.
-
Hi Anthony,
It sounds as though your client may have used an "SEO Agency" before... But perhaps not a very good one.
It's always quite hard to tell if backlinks are harming a site or not. Has your client had any drop in rankings / traffic since Google Panda first came onto the scene around 18 months ago? Or with any subsequent update on Panda since? A quick way to work this out is by comparing traffic in analytics to SEOmoz's Google algorith change calendar here - http://www.seomoz.org/google-algorithm-change. If there's no noticeable drop in rankings/traffic, then the site has either; always been negatively affected by these links, or hasn't yet been negatively affected by these links, or won't be negatively affected by these links. This now makes your task a little harder!
Instead of running around and removing links, you can disavow links (see SEOmoz blog post here - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/googles-disavow-tool-take-a-deep-breath). Take Dr Pete's advice though, only disavow if you're sure you have been negatively affected by backlinks.
Hope that helps.
Matt
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
-
SEO companies that own linking properties
Hi everyone, I do some SEO work for a personal injury attorney, and due to his profession, he gets cold-called by every digital marketing company under the sun. He recently got called by a company that offers packages that include posting in multiple directories (all on domains they own), creating subdomains for search listings, and PR services like writing and distributing press releases for distribution to multiple media outlets. The content they write will obviously not be local. All this and more for less than $500 a month! I'm curious if any of you have any experience with companies like this and whether you consider them black hat. I realize I'm asking you to speculate on a very broad description of what they offer, but their linking strategies sound risky to me. What experiences have you had with companies like this? Do you know anyone who has ever gotten a penalty using these tactics? Thanks, in advance, for sharing your thoughts.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ptdodge0 -
Deep Link Ratio
Hi there, What ratio links should be to a homepage compared to deep links? I'm aware there probably isn't a fixed ratio, and it may depend on niche, but i've heard Penguin is on the look out for people that link to heavily to content deep in their sites (product pages etc.) Any thoughts?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jennie.evans0 -
Should You Link Back from Client's Website?
We had a discussion in the office today, about if it can help or hurt you to link back to your site from one that you optimize, host, or manage. A few ideas that were mentioned: HURT:
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | David-Kley
1. The website is not directly related to your niche, therefore Google will treat it as a link exchange or spammy link.
2. Links back to you are often not surrounded by related text about your services, and looks out of place to users and Search Engines. HELP:
1. On good (higher PR, reputable domain) domains, a link back can add authority, even if the site is not directly related to your services.
2. Allows high ranking sites to show users who the provider is, potentially creating a new client, and a followed incoming link on anchor text you can choose. So, what do you think? Test results would be appreciated, as we are trying to get real data. Benefits and cons if you have an opinion.2 -
Bid Directories - Recipe for success or disaster?
Hi There SEO Elite, One of my competitors has recently gone from page 3 to well above me on page 1 on our moderately high competitive keyword. Their site has 20 pages and ours is a combined e-commerce / niche information site with 1000 pages+ of which 40 are purely informational written by us,300 PDF brochures and 550+products with mostly hand written descriptions. On looking at the competitor's links in Open Site explorer, they had huge numbers of inbound links from bid directories with many using anchor text of the keyword, and usually $2 bids. Many of the bid directories are 'linked' as they all have an almost identical template and menu etc. But these are all giving the top PA and DAs on their report. Their DA, PA and LRD is also marginally less than ours? Our total links is 26,000 theirs is 100? Shouldn't penguin be burying them for these low quality paid links? Or is it just not been gotten around to yet? They seem to be sailing high on $500 worth of Bid Directory links. To follow or stay away?.....that is the question Also, other competitors have Yahoo directory listings. These are $300. Is Yahoo directory entry worth it for our SEO with Google being 80-85% of my inbound search traffic? Thanks for your advice
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BM70 -
Link farming and related websites
In my niche I have about 17 sites I have created. They all provide unique content, html, and all have a variety of uses that differ from each other mostly, some repetition but not really. All these sites are related to the same niche. I do link to each other in my sites. I don't go crazy and link every site to every other site or span links on footers. I somewhere in the content link here to there. Not even consistent, just linking to related pages from others. I was wondering if this is something I need to be careful about or could I get hit with link farming?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | cbielich0 -
What to do when majority of results have shady links?
So I am doing my back link research for the hosting industry and I am running across two different types of link schemes that make it hard to compete with straight white hat techniques. I am determined to keep our efforts white hat to retain long term value, but at the same time I am constantly tempted to slowly add links in the more grey ways. So here are some of the common practices I see a lot of (e.g. 8 of the top 10 sites for top terms use these). Link Buying/Article Links - You know this one well, their link profile has a 10:1 ratio of keyword links compared to brand name links, and the majority of those keyword links are on nonsensical blogs, or on related "tech" sites but obviously labeled as paid links. - I don't like this much, and have even reported some of these. "Hosted by" - So the majority of hosting companies out there have pre-built collections of templates for wordpress, joomla, and other CMS systems, and they have taken the extra step of putting "Server Hosting by XXXXXX" in the footer of those templates. This leads to thousands of small sites being hosted with the keyword backlinks. While I understand this, at the same time I would hope they wouldn't get credit for links all coming back from IPs that they own. While they aren't creating these sites they know the majority of users won't change the template (or know how to). Lastly there are some "Link to us and get discounts" programs going on with customers as well. So, seeing the linking setup this way, would you try to report each instance you see to Google? If so do you think they would really change anything considering how rampant it is among the results? Lets hear some opinions! In the mean time I am going to go work on my awesome content, press releases, and cross-company promotional campaigns ;).
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SL_SEM0 -
Link Building with links in footer of Word Press Themes- Is This BLack Hat??
I See lots of free word press themes with links in footer like Kids Headphones | Colombia Classifieds | Broadway Tickets Is this a valid white hat link building method? What if the theme looked like a particular industry and the links related to the industry would that be better?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | DavidKonigsberg0