Lot of new suspicious external links
-
I am running a small-language site and suddenly saw a lot of incoming English links in Moz Reports and Opensiteexplorer from various domains (the sites are in English, but anchor words are not). When I check the page sources of there is no link to the site (as there shouldn't).
Any idea what is happening and what to do about it?
Thanks for help in advance!
-
I've seen a lot of spammy links pop up for some of my smaller sites and they have usually been scrapers. When these would show up in OSE, the links wouldn't be on the page anymore. While I wouldn't initially be too concerned, here's a few follow up questions for you:
- How many of these shady links are you seeing in OSE?
- Do they have optimized anchor text?
- How many links/root domains are in your backlink profile?
- Are you seeing these links reported in Google webmaster tools?
If these links aren't making up much of your backlink profile and they aren't optimized, I wouldn't be concerned. If you have a small link profile and these links make up a good portion of your profile, or they are highly optimized, they might be something to watch for.
If you're really nervous, you could just use the disavow tool now.
-
Thanks for quick reply Martijn. For some reason I get the feeling that somebody is trying to make the site appear blackhat (though it is not)...
-
I've seen this a couple of times as well, in my case mostly the Web sites were totally focused on making money and by accident they dropped a link there to our sites. Mostly such links will be gone within a couple of days/ weeks. If you really want Google not to see these links you could use the disavow tool to make sure Google ignores these links.
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
-
Buying a blog that already has links and authority
Hello, I hope all are well and keeping safe. I am about to launch a brand new website and am looking to get a slight boost of links to get started. I looked on Fiverr, but realise that this may not be the best option. I have found a blog for sale that matches with a section of my niche. SO have a couple of questions: 1. Is it still worth buying blogs and doing a 301? 2. If yes, would it still work if i 301 these to a category of my main blog? 3. According the moz tool, it has a spam score of 2%, I am attaching an image of the spam score from moz. I am a bit lost and would appreciate any feedback on best practice or if anyone has tried something similar. Many thanks Shehzad O92dqn7
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | shehzad0 -
Link Building vs. Straight Earning Links Discussion
Hello, I'd like to start a discussion on link building outreach techniques vs. just building a good website with good 10X content. I don't like to receive unsolicited emails in my inbox, so why should the people in my industry? Also, I've seen plenty of evidence of 10X content soaring without link building outreach. But link building isn't dead of course, so can you tell me your personal experiences either way and the ethics of what you do? I especially want to hear if you've had luck with just building good websites and being successful based on the content itself, but an open discussion of either side is welcome. Leaning towards just building good websites and letting the Google algo do it's thing. Would love to hear your experiences either way. Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW3 -
JavaScript encoded links on an AngularJS framework...bad idea for Google?
Hi Guys, I have a site where we're currently deploying code in AngularJS. As part of this, on the page we sometimes have links to 3rd party websites. We do not want to have followed links on the site to the 3rd party sites as we may be perceived as a link farm since we have more than 1 million pages and a lot of these have external 3rd party links. My question is, if we've got javascript to fire off the link to the 3rd party, is that enough to prevent Google from seeing that link? We do not have a NOFOLLOW on that currently. The link anchor text simply says "Visit website" and the link is fired using JavaScript. Here's a snapshot of the code we're using: Visit website Does anyone have any experience with anything like this on their own site or customer site that we can learn from just to ensure that we avoid any chances of being flagged for being a link farm? Thank you 🙂
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AU-SEO0 -
Competitors Linking to My Site
One of the more successful competitors in my niche has embarked on new strategy that seems to be working well for him. I noticed that many new links began to appear to my site from my competitor's stable of many websites. It appears that he has setup a link wheel to benefit a site that has been in the top Google position for several months now. The rim of the wheel links back to authority sites, including my own main site (established 7 years, now hanging on to the lowly 10th place on the serp). So the strategy seems to be: a) create a dozen sites that no-follow link back to authority sites including competitors, b) place links in a such a manner (bottom of page, uncolored links, from images) that a customer is unlikely to ever click on it, c.) do-follow to your own site and blast it to the top of Google. I don't think this competitor is worried about getting penalized. I've been watching this for years. When one site gets burned, he just shifts things around and brings up another one of his sites. He seems to age them for years, calling them up one by one as they are needed. Has anyone else noticed this? Is it a trend? Because it sure seems to work. He's crowded the front page now with 4 of his sites. Would it be appropriate for me to "disavow" his links? Would it matter?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | DarrenX0 -
"Via this intermediate Link" how do I stop the madness?
Hi, -1- I have an old site which had a manual spam action placed against it several years ago, this is the corporate site and unfortunately has its name placed on all business cards etc, therefore I am unable to get rid of this site entirely.. -2- I created a brand new site with a new domain name for which white hat SEO marketing has been done and very little of it... everything was doing well up until last week when I dropped from bottom of page one to top of page 11 for my keyword in question. -3- I changed the old sites ( the one with the manual spam action ) to mimic the look of the FIRST PAGE of the new domain I am using, and I have the main menu items on this first page linked to the appropriate sections within the new domain site, i.e About US etc. On this page I'm the following: <link rel="<a class="attribute-value">canonical</a>" href="[http://www.mynewsite.com](view-source:http://www.norsteelbuildings.ca/)" /> and am linking as such: <li><a href="http://www.mynewsite.com/about/" class="" rel="<a class="attribute-value">nofollow</a>">ABOUT USa>li> using this approach I was hoping that I was doing the correct and not passing along any link juice good or bad however when I view the "Webmaster Tools->Links to your site" I find 1000+ links from my old site and then when I click on it I see all the spammy links that my old site got banned for pointing to my old site and accompanied by a header "Via this imtermediate Link>myoldSite.com". Can someone please sehd some light on what I should e doing or if even these link are effecting my new site, something is telling me there are but how do I resolve this issue.. Thanks in advance.. ```
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | robdob120 -
Need a Service to get back links- info on Youtube PR Ranking
I have about 4000 you tube video urls that I need someone to submit for comment links, and profile links, and other links above pr2 and above. (will consider lower pr too). The ones I see when searching, don't seem to be able to understand how to use their submitters. Yes I know PR most likely will not be passed, but at least the vid will rank better with higher pr. My pr4 vids do. It seems to be that you tube vids are easier to gain pr. When I do a link search for pr5 vid urls, it doesn't seem to return links that justify the PR, so any info on that is appreciated. Any comments about how I should not do this or any form of this will not be appreciated. Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | joemas990 -
Problems with link spam from spam blogs to competitor sites
A competitor of ours is having a great deal of success with links from spam blogs (such as: publicexperience.com or sexylizard.org) it is proving to be a nightmare. Google does not detect these (the competitor has been doing well now for over a year) and my boss is starting to think if you can’t beat them, join them. Frankly, he is right – we have built some great links but it is nigh on impossible to beat 400+ highly targeted spam links in a niche market. My question is, has anyone had success in getting this sort of stuff brought to the attention of Google and banned (I actually listed them all in a message in webmaster tools and sent them over to Google over a year ago!). This is frustrating, I do not want to join in this kind of rubbish but it is hard to put a convincing argument against it when our competitor has used the technique successfully for over a year without any penalty. Ideas? Thoughts? All help appreciated
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RodneyRiley0 -
Linking Profile Gone Bad?!
Recently, I was looking over the linking profile for one of our large clients, and I noticed that a ton of spammy links were appearing. I have never purchase any links or done anything shady that would contribute to this large increase in bad links. It appears as though someone is trying to hijack the SEO of this company, and I don't know how to proceed. Currently, they have not been penalized by Google, but I would not be surprised if a penalty is on its way due to the obvious link spam. Is there any way to report this to Google to ensure that no penalties occer? Any advice on the issue is much welcomed! Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | tqinet0