Identifying a Negative SEO Campaign
-
Hi
A friend/clients site has recently dropped 2-3 pages (from an average #2 - #3 position on page 1 over last few months) for a primary target keyword & suspects a Neg SEO campaign hence asked me to look into it.
I checked on Removeem and the KW does not generate a red (or even a pink) result.
I looked at Ahrefs & MajSEO, backlinks and referring domains have dropped over the period the KW dropped hence presume i can be sure its not a neg campaign since this would show an opposite pattern (as per articles like this: http://moz.com/blog/to-catch-a-spammer-uncovering-negative-seo ) ? Also site has very few site wide backlinks.
The keyword is a 3 word phrase with 2 of those words being in the domain and brand name hence presume such kw are relatively safe from neg seo campaigns anyway
I would have presumed the backlink/ref-domain drop may well explain the ranking drop but site still in first field of view of page 1 for the other keyphrases which 2 out of the 3 are words are same as effected keyphrase (and also in the domain/brand name) so would have thought these would have dropped too if a neg campaign. Also many of the anchor texts in the disapeared backlinks are for one of the other partial match variant keyphrases which are still top of page 1.
Anchor text is at 4.35% for the effected kw according to MajSEO
Im pretty confident from the above that i can conclude no negative seo campaign has occurred, nor other type of penalty and probably just a 'wobble' at Google that may well right itself shortly
Would appreciate feedback though from others that im concluding correctly just for confirmation ?
Many Thanks
Dan
-
I would have thought if that were the case would effect the other partial match variation rankings too, which it hasnt since all others are still on page 1 !
The kw in question (along with the other kw still ranking on page 1) are partially matched with the domain
-
Is it possible that there are so few links that losing a few cause a big change in ranking values? Was the keyword in question an exact or partial match with the domain name?
As far as accuracy, it can go either way. Majestic often reports links that existed but are now dead, but it can sometimes be more thorough. The only way to know for sure is to check the links and see if they're still live.
Panda is often site-wide, but it can apply to one or several page/kw combination, or even to all the pages with the same layout in a section.
-
Thanks for taking the time to comment Carson
One of the reasons friend/client has hired me to look into this is because he cant retrieve any link data from GWT. Have asked him to check messages and new manual notifications too.
If Panda surely probs would be site wide not kw/page specific ? Its the HP thats dropped for a primary target kw when all other similar kw rankings for hp are still page 1
Also interestingly there is link growth spike of aprox 1200 backlinks (but only an increase of 4 domains) over 3 days according to MajesticSEO although hrefs reports a link & ref domain drop over same period, any idea which is the most accurate/trustworthy data since directly contradictory date, one of those data sources must be WAY off the mark !?
cheers
dan
-
Panda would be site wide not kw specific !
It was the HP
there is link growth of aprox 1200 backlinks (but only an increase of 4 domains) over 3 days according to MajesticSEO (although hrefs reports a link & ref domain drop over same period)
-
Most claims of negative link efforts are either not link-based penalties, or something self-inflicted. I'd be fascinated to see one, but it doesn't sound like that's what's happening. This is the process I follow in diagnosing penalties:
The very first step is always to check webmaster tools for messages - or now you can check for manual penalties. Second, look at the date of drop and compare it with http://moz.com/google-algorithm-change. Try to figure out when the drop was and whether Google was making any updates at the time.
Link profile: look first for overly-targeted unbranded anchor text first, as you did. Don't forget to pull the link info from Webmaster Tools and check for newer links from Moz newly discovered or ahrefs.
Panda or other site/page quality updates: If you couldn't tie it to an announced Panda release, we just have to guess. Is there a heavy template? Are there a lot of pages targeting very similar terms? Is there any "form-letter-like content"? Is the organic bounce rate/time on site very bad?
Link profile part 2: Look through the linking sites. Check for looking for links that are clearly ads, but lack the nofollow attribute. Start with sites that have been knocked down to PR 0 despite having plenty of links, and look for paid links, especially of the site-wide or overly-targeted variety.
Finally, remember that rankings can fluctuate without it being a penalty.
Google might suddenly "realize" that "Cavendish" is a biker in addition to a type of banana, and might also refer to a philosopher. They'll then push more diversity into the SERP for disambiguation, which will cause rankings to fluctuate wildly. (QDD). Sometimes Google just devalues links that were helping you to rank - it's not a penalty, but it has the same effect. Sometimes we just don't know; the rankings might pop back, and they might not.
If you come up empty after all that diagnosis, you have only one choice: carry on building great content, optimize the design and structure for users, and work on building awareness and authority throughout the industry. It will pass eventually, and you'll come back stronger for having built value and done real marketing.
-
Could it be something else, like a Panda update?
I agree, a typical negative SEO campaign in my mind is a ton of easy to acquire links. I doubt anyone is going to take the time to email webmasters and have links pulled.
I would look at your content stats in GA for YTD and see if you can see any trends for the pages that lost rank (or was it the homepage?).
Unless the negative campaign is targeting individual pages then I would assume the whole site would be affected.
-
Also does anyone know which is the more accurate data source MajSEO or Ahrefs since im getting wildly conflicting data from both. MajSEO now showing 845 links added for early July (which would indicate a neg link campaign) but hrefs shows 345 links lost over same time period ! ?
-
Thanks Irving
do you know if any free versions of linkdetox ?
how will doing a link:(space)www.yourdomain.com search help since results wont highlight site quality will they ?
All Best
Dan
-
Thats a great answer Robert, i really appreciate you taking the time to comment so helpfully
I should have added that there was a big rise in backlinks beginning of may, that peaked and levelled throughout June to then drop from beginning of July to date (according to ahrefs data). So in an otherwise nice natural looking link growth rate from nov last year to date there is a huge hump or wave in the graph as links rise in may but then drop over july.
So if i was looking into this in June it would, initially at least, look like it could well be a neg campaign, but the ranking drop has only occurred recently, correlating with the drop, not the rise, in links. If a neg campaign i would have thought the rank drop occur soon after the spike in link growth, not after a drop in links. Also the link growth period is spread over a month (as is the period of the link drop too), not a few days as article suggest one should look out for in a neg campaign, hence i'm pretty confident that its not (which is why i didnt mention it originally but thought best to now just in case).
When you say look at CTR do you mean purely in regard to traffic from the effected kw in the run up to the rank drop ? What kind of time period do you recommend, a week or more ?
Cheers
Dan
-
main keyword anchor text is sometimes not exploited with a negative SEO attack, it's just a massive amount of links from bad sites which harm the site in general. this can easily be detected with link detox for example or you can do a link:(space)www.yourdomain.com search in Google.
-
Dan,
First, Good job on the linking evaluation, it sounds pretty thorough.
Without a complete picture, it is hard to say, but based solely on what you have here it doesn't appear to be something nefarious. I would add, however, that if I had a site with KW's ranking in spots 2-3 and then was on page 3 to 4 and it lasted for more than a couple of days, I would not lay it off to a Google 'wobble.'
I would suggest looking deeper and seeing what else is going on. Look into analytics and WMT for any trends like falling CTR, etc. Look at changes in query or landing page patterns. Look at the content and then at cached content for same pages to ensure yourself nothing changed on the page and then I would look at competitors who have been consistent during this period for differences between them and your client.
We have all seen a page move up or down in Google for 'no reason' from time to time, but if it is for more than a week, I certainly would be digging up everything. To wait loses too much time if there is a problem.
Best,
Robert
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
-
3 word brand name + SEO. Will I be losing out on organic searches with spaces?
Hello, Starting a new website and the company name has three words. We've made the decision for the brand guide that we will not have spaces when the name is included in copy. Are we going to have difficulties ranking for both instances? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jessicarechkemmer0 -
Is this campaign of spammy links to non-existent pages damaging my site?
My site is built in Wordpress. Somebody has built spammy pharma links to hundreds of non-existent pages. I don't know whether this was inspired by malice or an attempt to inject spammy content. Many of the non-existent pages have the suffix .pptx. These now all return 403s. Example: https://www.101holidays.co.uk/tazalis-10mg.pptx A smaller number of spammy links point to regular non-existent URLs (not ending in .pptx). These are given 302s by Wordpress to my homepage. I've disavowed all domains linking to these URLs. I have not had a manual action or seen a dramatic fall in Google rankings or traffic. The campaign of spammy links appears to be historical and not ongoing. Questions: 1. Do you think these links could be damaging search performance? If so, what can be done? Disavowing each linking domain would be a huge task. 2. Is 403 the best response? Would 404 be better? 3. Any other thoughts or suggestions? Thank you for taking the time to read and consider this question. Mark
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MarkHodson0 -
Surely this cannot be a good SEO technique?
I have a client whose competitor has great positions in Google, and a quick look at the meta data revealed this (I removed the company name): I'd love some opinions on this. My gut feel tells me this is spammy. But all my client sees is that this site is on page 1! ~Caro
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Caro-O0 -
Recovering from Black Hat/Negative SEO with a twist
Hey everyone, This is a first for me, I'm wondering if anyone has experienced a similar situation and if so, what the best course of action was for you. Scenario In the process of designing a new site for a client, we discovered that his previous site, although having decent page rank and traffic had been hacked. The site was built on Wordpress so it's likely there was a vulnerability somewhere that allowed someone to create loads of dynamic pages; www.domain.com/?id=102, ?id=103, ?id=104 and so on. These dynamic pages ended up being malware with a trojan horse our servers recognized and subsequently blocked access to. We have since helped them remedy the vulnerability and remove the malware that was creating these crappy dynamic pages. Another automated program appears to have been recently blasting spam links (mostly comment spam and directory links) to these dynamically created pages at an incredibly rapid rate, and is still actively doing so. Right now we're looking at a small business website with a touch over 500k low-quality spammy links pointing to malware pages from the previously compromised site. Important: As of right now, there's been no manual penalty on the site, nor has a "This Site May Have Been Compromised" marker in the organic search results for the site. We were able to discover this before things got too bad for them. Next Steps? The concern is that when the Penguin refresh occurs, Google is going to notice all these garbage links pointing to those malware pages and then potentially slap a penalty on the site. The main questions I have are: Should we report this proactively to the web spam team using the guidelines here? (https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?hl=en&pli=1) Should we request a malware review as recommended within the same guidelines, keeping in mind the site hasn't been given a 'hacked' snippet in the search results? (https://support.google.com/webmasters/topic/4598410?hl=en&ref_topic=4596795) Is submitting a massive disavow links file right now, including the 490k-something domains, the only way we can escape the wrath of Google when these links are discovered? Is it too hopeful to imagine their algorithm will detect the negative-SEO nature of these links and not give them any credit? Would love some input or examples from anyone who can help, thanks in advance!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Etna0 -
Hit by negative SEO
I think my site got hit by a negative SEO campaign. We got nailed by the latest Google update and our traffic dropped significantly. We don't buy links, ask for links, do link exchanges, etc. Since the last update was all about spammy backlinks, I downloaded backlinks from Google Webmaster Tools just to see if there was any info in there. There are tons, hundreds, thousands of backlinks from spammy sites to us. Sites that are spammy as heck and sell backlinks on the footer. I can only assume someone went after us with a negative SEO campaign. We're the #3 site in a hot market. Is the only way to combat this to disavow all those spammy backlinks with the Google disavow tool? We also have a manual penalty on our site as well. I've asked for a reconsideration request and have heard nothing. Please advise.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CFSSEO0 -
Definition of Black Hat SEO
I recently had an old client that called me in a bit of a panic over a significant loss of rankings due to penguin. The internet marketing company she had hired, is actually a very large player in the industry, but because I'm not out to slander anyone, I won't name names. They engaged in some "link building" that resulted in the vast majority of the website's anchor text being keyword-rich, exact match anchor text from such gems as www.link-add.net. They also placed a couple dozen incredibly keyword-rich articles on the site that were clearly not meant for human consumption, and were only accessible through a footer link that's only located on the homepage. The client forwarded me a response from them saying, (quoting verbatim). "We have never engaged in any black hat SEO techniques, nor will we ever engage in any black hat SEO techniques. Just that notion is ridiculous" So clearly, the strategy I outlined above, in the mind of this company, is not black-hat SEO. So getting to my point: **if that's not black hat, then what is? ** I'm posing this question largely because I'm appalled that a large internet marketing company seems to be suggesting that the aforementioned techniques represent good, sound SEO, and I'd like to get an idea as to what people in our industry actually feel are good, acceptable practices. Where is the line? Can we not set higher standards for ourselves?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | stevefidelity0 -
Help for a complete SEO newbie!
Hi all, I've just joined seomoz today to try and further my very young education on SEO. My major problem is i need my site to rank high in local search engines but feel that none of the customers read much of the content as i am a landscaper and feel they just search "landscaping in Newcastle" and are immediatly looking for a contact number to arrange a free estimate. I dont do any online sales, its just to generate leads. I've spent alot of time building a better site than my local competitors but they still out rank me on alot of keywords i.e. "Driveways in Gateshead" My question is do i keep adding more and more content hoping this will work long term or do i link build with anchor text etc or both? I cannot believe they still out rank me when i feel i have more links more anchor text and a load more origional content and images. I think it may be that my site is still under 1 year old. I feel i am boucing from content to link building then trying something else without any real knowlegde of what i really should be doing or what should be the priority at this young stage for my site. I have managed to get on page 1 of google for most of my keywords in local searches ( obviously not national) but still feel its been more down to luck and effort than actually knowing what i am doing when it comes to site and offsite optimization Any help, tips etc would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks John
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | totaldriveways0