Relevancy of link profile
-
Hi! I'm doing an audit of http://www.stevesims.com/ at the moment, who has had rankings for 'website designers' plummet recently. Looking at the site, there a few things to do with on-page and on-site optimisation, but nothing major.
Instead, I think the link profile is the issue. There's a lot of site wide links from non-relevant sites, but I'm struggling to see anything else. Any thoughts would be much appreciated!
-
Thanks for those valuable inputs Karl.
Just a quick glance at the site's IP revealed that stevesims.com is hosted on a shared web server with an IP address 195.238.172.64 that has about 1,134 domains hosted on it. There are few porn and other bad sites sharing this IP address. Though there are different views in this regard and this might not be the cause of current rank drop, I recommend this site to be moved to a better host with a dedicated IP as I recommend to all my clients who are serious about their online business.
Also Google PageSpeed test for this site says that the server response time is sub-optimal and the score is 48% where it should have been ideally above 80%. Please look out for detailed analysis at a site like, gtmetrix.com.
Next, I would recommend you to visit, http://www.barracuda-digital.co.uk/panguin-tool/ and check if (I am sure it is) this site is a victim of Penguin update and take it from there.
You can then try bad link removal service like, http://www.removeem.com/
Hope this helps and good luck with your SEO audit.
Best,
Devanur Rafi.
-
You're welcome, good luck with it all!
-
Hi Karl. I just spotted some of the bad ones. A few look to have built using a spinning tool, which obviously isn't great. Pretty clear what the way forward should be now. Thanks for helping!
-
Hi,
I had a quick look through the back link profile on OSE and there are a number of low quality websites linking to the website. I'm assuming some of these are websites that he's built but the way he is linking to the site isn't the best. He links to "web designers sim designs" and that is sitewide (as you said).
I would also look at the ratio of branded to non-branded anchor text links as there are a high percentage of keyword rich anchor text links. This is likely to have resulted in seeing the profile as unnatural. Look at getting rid of the sitewide links and changing some of the keyword links to branded links. Have a good look through the linking domains because some will be doing more harm than good.
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
-
Sitewide links and owned site
Hi everyone, I need the community opinion on something. I am webmarketer and SEO for a pure player who runs a couple of e-commerce sites. On one side we have bigsite.com. It makes all our revenue. I have been in charge for years. Results are good. We have smallsite.com. It is starting. But small revenues for the moment. We have a new SEO working on this. My question is : We always had a banner on bigsite.com's homepage, sending valuable traffic to smallsite.com.T he new SEO, has footer sitewide links from smallsite.com to bigsite.com homepage. Considering both sites share same ssl, server and company name, I am quite sure this is out of google's guide lines and would hurt bigsite.com. Do you agree that this is wrong from the new SEO, and that it could hurt my work and the search results for bigsite.com and smallsite.com, as well as team work ? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kepass0 -
Need to update Google Search Console profile for http to https change. Will a "change of address" option suffice or do we need to create a new GSC profile?
In the past I have seen most clients create new Google Search Profile when they update to a https URL. However a colleague of mine asked if just updating the change of address option will suffice https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/83106. Would it be best to just update the change of address for the Google Search Console profile to keep the data seamless? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB0 -
Which links to disavow?
I've got a new client that just fired their former SEO company, which was building spammy links like crazy! Using GSC and Majestic, I've identified 341 linking domains. I'm only a quarter of the way through the list, but it is clear that the overwhelming majority are from directories, article directories and comment spam. So far less than 20% are definitely links I want to keep. At what point do I keep directory links? I see one with a DA of 61 and a Moz spam score of 0. I realize this is a judgement call that will vary, but I'd love to hear some folks give DA and spam numbers. FWIW, the client's DA is 37.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rich.owings0 -
More bad links
Hi, After a recent disastrous dalliance with a rogue SEO company I disavowed quite a few domains (links he had gained) which I was receiving a penalty of about 23 places. I cleaned up the site and added meta descriptions where missing, and deleted duplicate titles and pages. This gained me another 5 places. In the meantime I have been getting a few links from wedding blogs, adobe forums and other relevant sites so was expecting an upward momentum. Since the high point of bottom of page 1 I have slowly slid back down to near the bottom of page two for my main keywords. Just checked my webmaster tools latest links and another 4 domains have appeared (gained by the dodgy SEO) : domain:erwinskee.blog.co.uk domain:grencholerz.blog.co.uk domain:valeriiees.blog.co.uk domain:gb.bizin.eu They all look bad so I am going to disavow. I expect to find an improvement when I disavow these new domains. As I have said, have started using the open site explorer tool to check my competitors backlinks and getting some low level links(I'm a wedding photographer) like forum comments and blog comments and good directories. I know there is much more than this to SEO and plan on raising my game as time progresses. I have also gained more links from the domains I disavowed on the 8th January mostly from www.friendfeed.com. will webmaster tools ignore any new links from previously disavowed domains? Like I have said I know there are better ways to get links, but are these links (forum comments, blog comments and respectable directories) one way of raising my rankings? To be honest that is all my competitors have got other than some of the top boys might have a photograph or two on another site with a link. No-one has a decent article or review anywhere (which is my next stage of getting links). Thanks! David.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WallerD0 -
Simple Link Question
Hi Guys, I will appreciate if you answer 1 small question..... Will our site benefit from that link?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Webdeal
Valuable website related to our business ---nofollow link--> PDF Doc(on second site) ---link to our site ---> Kind Regards,
webdeal0 -
Counting over-optimised links - do internal links count too?
To whit: In working out whether I've too many over-optimised links pointing to my homepage, do I look at just external links -- or also the links from my internal pages to my homepage? In other words, can a natural link profile from internal pages help dilute overoptimisation from external links?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jeepster0 -
Seasonal links, seasonal ranks
As the garden season begins to wane I notice yet again how my ranking for some garden specific terms - eg ' garden tealight holders' start to rise again.Since I am doing nothing much I can only assume that my competitors have moved their focus to more winter based merchandise. Does anyone have a good understanding of how some websites are able to acheive high rankings during peak season only? I am assuming they are buying advertising (with the follow) for say 3 months before the season peak and manipulating internal linking to direct link juice from one section of the website to the other. Is this strategy risky. Has Google ever made mention of this issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GardenBeet0 -
Competitors and Directory Links
Hi guys, wanted to get some input and thoughts here. I'm analyzing many competitor links for a specific client (even other clients actually as well) and come across a pretty heavy directory backlink profiles. has anyone here had success with directory listings? Seem many of the competitors backlinks are coming from directories. What say you?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PaulDylan1