Victim of Negative SEO - Can I Redirect the Attacked Page to an External Site?

[howardd]

My site has been a victim of Negative SEO. During the course of 3 weeks, I have received over 3000 new backlinks from 200 referring domains (based on Ahref report). All links are pointing to just 1 page (all other pages within the site are unaffected). I have already disavowed as many links as possible from Ahref report, but is that all I can do? What if I continue to receive bad backlinks?

I'm thinking of permanently redirecting the affected page to an external website (a dummy site), and hope that all the juice from the bad backlinks will be transferred to that site. Do you think this would be a good practice? I don't care much about keeping the affected page on my site, but I want to make sure the bad backlinks don't affect the entire site.

The bad backlinks started to come in around 3 weeks ago and the rankings haven't been affected yet. The backlinks are targeting one single keyword and are mostly comment backlinks and trackbacks.

Would appreciate any suggestions

Howard

[Carson-Ward]

First, don't freak out. What does the anchor text look like? Is it for a term you're trying to rank for on that page? Chances are actually pretty low that it's going to hurt you. Google has a few intent- and source-detection mechanisms built in that work relatively well.

If this is a high-value page that you're making a lot of money on or that is ranking well, don't move it and don't 410 or 404 it. It's Google's job to filter through spam and spam attacks, and they do an OK job. I don't think it's totally wrong to disavow the links, but my experience is that people generally over-react.

http://www.seroundtable.com/google-bad-links-disavow-17195.html

TL;DR this is all good advice, but don't drop or redirect a high-value page.

[howardd]

Thanks for all the responses!

[BlueprintMarketing]

410 / GONE

“Indicates that the resource requested is no longer available and will not be available again. This should be used when a resource has been intentionally removed and the resource should be purged. Upon receiving a 410 status code, the client should not request the resource again in the future. Clients such as search engines should remove the resource from their indices. Most use cases do not require clients and search engines to purge the resource, and a "404 Not Found" may be used instead.“ — wikipedia

“The requested resource is no longer available at the server and no forwarding address is known. This condition is expected to be considered permanent. Clients with link editing capabilities SHOULD delete references to the Request-URI after user approval. If the server does not know, or has no facility to determine, whether or not the condition is permanent, the status code 404 (Not Found) SHOULD be used instead. This response is cacheable unless indicated otherwise.
The 410 response is primarily intended to assist the task of web maintenance by notifying the recipient that the resource is intentionally unavailable and that the server owners desire that remote links to that resource be removed. Such an event is common for limited-time, promotional services and for resources belonging to individuals no longer working at the server's site. It is not necessary to mark all permanently unavailable resources as "gone" or to keep the mark for any length of time -- that is left to the discretion of the server owner.“ — ietf

410 / CODE REFERENCE(S)Rails HTTP Status Symbol  :gonehttp://httpstatus.es/410

[JamesNorquay]

A few options:

1. As david said make the page a 401 page.

2. Try to remove the links on scale, review why they are comming in i.e same IP address, same who is, request sites to remove them, if they don't remove add them to the disavow.

I wouldn't 301 pages this will just transfer the problem to a new websites, ive seen numerous cases where domains have been hit because of cross site 301's.

[David_ODonnell]

Return a 410 http status (page permanently gone, disregard links) on that URL, move the content to a new URL.

[FedeEinhorn]

Are you positive that it wasn't anything you bought as a service, right?

Although Google's Matt Cutts claims that Negative SEO exists but it would take a lot of work to achieve and you could actually benefit the target instead, it has been proven over and over that it isn't that hard, see here: http://www.fulltraffic.net/blog/85062/is-negative-seo-becoming-a-mainstream-tactic-infographic/

As it is something you actually can't control, I would just go with trying to contact the owners of those pages where the links are and ask them politely to remove the link, as it will also help them too (usually the most affected side is the one selling the links, as there's no way to know who is buying them). Don't only go with an email, try social networks too, contact forms, etc.

But, considering that your rankings aren't affected, after contacting those Webmasters you shouldn't go as far as disavowing the links, you are not being penalized, you did the job on trying to remove the links (document your efforts!!), etc. IF, and only if you notice a ranking drop, an actual penalty, you should go ahead and disavow those links, and in case of a penalty, send a reconsideration request explaining them everything an showing the efforts you did to get rid of those links.

As Cutts told: it may actually benefit you...

Hope that helps!

[BlueprintMarketing]

Take the page the bad links are being sent to copy the content get rid of the old page make a new URL put your old pages content on a new URL.  The 301 will hurt you.

If you want to try and find the person sending you the links use removeem.com

I hope I was of help,

thomas