Our stage site got crawled and we got an unnatural inbound links warning. What now?
-
live site: www.mybarnwoodframes.com
stage site: www.methodseo.net
We recently finished a redesign of our site to improve our navigation. Our developer insisted on hosting the stage site on her own server with a separate domain while she worked on it. However, somebody left the site turned on one day and Google crawled the entire thing. Now we have 4,320 pages of 100% identical duplicate content with this other site. We were upset but didn't think that it would have any serious repercussions until we got two orders from customers from the stage site one day. Turns out that the second site was ranking pretty decently for a duplicate site with 0 links, the worst was yet to come however.
During the 3 months of the redesign our rankings on our live site dropped and we suffered a 60% drop in organic search traffic. On May 22, 2013 day of the Penguin 2.0 release we received an unnatural inbound links warning. Google webmaster tools shows 4,320 of our 8,000 links coming from the stage site domain to our live site, we figure that was the cause of the warning.
We finished the redesign around May 14th and we took down the stage site, but it is still showing up in the search results and the 4,320 links are still showing up in our webmaster tools.
1. Are we correct to assume that it was the stage site that caused the unnatural links warning?
2. Do you think that it was the stage site that caused the drop in traffic? After doing a link audit I can't find any large amount of horrendously bad links coming to the site.
3. Now that the stage site has been taken down, how do we get it out of Google's indexes? Will it be taken out over time or do we need to do something on our end for it to be delisted?
4. Once it's delisted the links coming from it should go away, in the meantime however, should we disavow all of the links from the stage site? Do we need to file a reconsideration request or should we just be patient and let them go away naturally?
5. Do you think that our rankings will ever recover?
-
Hi,
Indeed the stage site is still out there .. http://screencast.com/t/ZbmvsYE7njYv
Again, that's easy to fix - if you want to - as you just need to verify the site in Web master tools and then use the removal tool.
For the main site - your visibility is low now -> http://screencast.com/t/PQzdxTih
Can you identify in this graph when the stage site was pushed into the index ? (in order to see if that was the reason for any drops in visibility / rankings)
Anyway - the main site was not very stabile even before .. the link profile is not strong enough to set it on a stabile course.
-
I edited the post and included links to both the live site and the stage site. Wondered if you have any more feedback after seeing taking a look at the backlinks to the site?
-
Hi,
1. Are we correct to assume that it was the stage site that caused the unnatural links warning?
** I don't think this is the case. However - if you post the url someone here can have a look.
2. Do you think that it was the stage site that caused the drop in traffic? After doing a link audit I can't find any large amount of horrendously bad links coming to the site.
** It can be the case - but if the test site will be removed and that was the case for the drop then you should get back on track very fast.
3. Now that the stage site has been taken down, how do we get it out of Google's indexes? Will it be taken out over time or do we need to do something on our end for it to be delisted?
** Verify the stage site in Google Web master Tools and then use site removal tool there and you will get the site out in one single move. (if tjis is really what you want).
4. Once it's delisted the links coming from it should go away, in the meantime however, should we disavow all of the links from the stage site? Do we need to file a reconsideration request or should we just be patient and let them go away naturally?
** You can disovow but is better to remove them
- see #3.
You should send a reconsideration request after you remove the stage site and explain. If you will get a response that you are still in violation of the guidelines and they still see un natural links that means the stage site was not the reason
5. Do you think that our rankings will ever recover?
** Hard to tell without seeing the domain name. If the stage site was the issue and you solve it (remove it) then yes - although I doubt that - at least based on the information available so far.
Hope it helps.
Cheers.
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
-
Test site got indexed in Google - What's the best way of getting the pages removed from the SERP's?
Hi Mozzers, I'd like your feedback on the following: the test/development domain where our sitebuilder works on got indexed, despite all warnings and advice. The content on these pages is in active use by our new site. Thus to prevent duplicate content penalties we have put a noindex in our robots.txt. However off course the pages are currently visible in the SERP's. What's the best way of dealing with this? I did not find related questions although I think this is a mistake that is often made. Perhaps the answer will also be relevant for others beside me. Thank you in advance, greetings, Folko
Technical SEO | | Yarden_Uitvaartorganisatie0 -
Pages Linking to Sites that Return 404 Error
We have just a few 404 errors on our site. Is there any way to figure out which pages are linking to the pages that create 404 errors? I would rather fix the links than create new 301 redirects. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | jsillay0 -
How Often is Site Crawled
Good morning- I saw some errors in my first crawl and immediately removed the pages from my website. I then re-created my XML sitemap and uploaded to Google. The question I have is will the site be crawled to recognize the changes in the next day or so? The pages were just placed on the site as test pages and never removed. The initial crawl that notified me it was done found the errors and were removed. Thanks for your help. Peter
Technical SEO | | VT_Pete0 -
If you are organizing the site structure for an ecommerce site, how would you do it?
Should you use not use slashes and use all dashes or use just a few slashes and the rest with dashes? For example, domain.com/category/brand/product-color-etc OR domain.com/anythinghere-color-dimensions-etc Which structure would you rather go for and why?
Technical SEO | | Zookeeper0 -
Best practice for eCommerce site migration, should I 301 redirect or match URLs on new site
Hi Guys, I have been struggling with this one for quite some time. I am no SEO expert like many of you, rather just a small business owner trying to do the right thing, so forgive me if I say something that makes no sense 🙂 I am moving our eCommerce store from one platform to another, in the process the store is getting a massive face lift. The part I am struggling with is whether I should keep my existing URL structure in place or use 301 redirects to create a cleaner looking URLs. Currently the URLs are a little long and I would love to move to a /category/product_name type format. Of course the goal is not to lose ranking in the process, I rank pretty well for several competitive phrases and do not want to create a negative impact. How would you guys handle this? Thanks, Dinesh
Technical SEO | | MyFairyTaleBooks0 -
Webmaster Tools Links To Your Site
I logged onto webmaster tools today for my site and the section 'Links to Your Site' is showing no data. Also if I search using link:babskibaby.com it only shows 1 link. My site had been showing 500+ links previously. Does anyone know why this is?
Technical SEO | | babski0 -
301 redirects tanked our site on google - what now?
We had several hundred old pages on the site with duplicate content and new pages with fresh info on the same topics. So I redirected the old pages to the new pages. Next day, plop, we're dumped off google for almost every keyword. Dang I thought they didn't want duplicate content and old funky pages. What did I do wrong and what can I do to fix it? Thanks so much for anyone who can share their expertise. Jean
Technical SEO | | JeanYates0 -
Should I create mini-sites with keyword rich domain names pointing to my main site?
Hi, I'm new to seomoz (and seo in general) and loving it so far. My main domain name is more of a brandname than a search engine friendly list of keywords. I rank well for some keywords I optimized for, and less so for the more competitive keywords. I was wondering if making one page minisites hosted on keyword rich domain names could help in this respect? What I want to do is just have a single page with a few paragraphs of content and links to the main site. I am not looking for links to boost the main site, just for the minisites to do better for several keywords. Will this help? Is this ok, or against some Google policy? Can this hurt the main site rankings? Thank you! **Edit: **I noticed that sites ranking above me on the first page for some keywords have much less on-page elements than my page, have about the same domain trust and also very little inbound links. The only factor I can see is the exact match of keywords in the domain name.
Technical SEO | | Eladla1