How can I block incoming links from a bad web site ?
-
Hello all,
We got a new client recently who had a warning from Google Webmasters tools for manual soft penalty. I did a lot of search and I found out one particular site that sounds roughly 100k links to one page and has been potentialy a high risk site.
I wish to block those links from coming in to my site but their webmaster is nowhere to be seen and I do not want to use the disavow tool.
Is there a way I can use code to our htaccess file or any other method?
Would appreciate anyone's immediate response.
Kind Regards
-
Hi Yiannis,
As far as I'm aware, there isn't really a way to "block" a link. The link is seen on the other site. Returning a 404 for the page being linked to doesn't change the fact that there are a 100K links from one site pointing at your site. The only options I'm aware of are to 1.) contact the owner of the website with the links and ask them to remove the links and 2.) if that doesn't work disavow the links.
I understand your hesitancy to use the disavow tool, but quite frankly, this is exactly what it is intended for.
If you feel comfortably with the links being there and think Google has already dealt with them, then do nothing, but if you want to do something about the links, you either have to get them removed or disavow them.
BTW - My understanding of the partial manual actions is that often times Google not only deals with the suspicious links (devaluing them), but they also penalize the pages/keywords they think you were attempting to manipulate. So, just because it was a partial action and not a full site action doesn't mean it's not effecting some of your rankings. It's just not going to affect all your rankings for all your pages.
Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com -
Hi eyepaq and thanks for your reply, much appreciated
The reason I do not want to use the disavow tool is because
- Google sent on the message that "took targeted action on the unnatural links instead of on the site’s ranking as a whole", meaning they took care of the problem 2) Ranking and traffic looking solid
- I have seen a lot of cases where people used it and lost rankings (some never recovered).
My thoughts were to block the spammy links and monitor if the traffic will be affected (which I doubt as it seems most of it is for branded searches). If then I face de-index, drops then use the disavow/reconsideration request.
What do you think?
-
Hi,
If you are talking about one or only a few sites then it's easy.
Just build a disavow file as there is no down side to that . The disavow with domain:domainname.com (not individual pages) and upload it via Web master Tools. After sumbiting the file - send a reconsideration request explaining the situation and mentioning the disavow file. You should be safe after that.
Alternatively - but to be honest I don't see the reason why not going with the first option - is to return a 404 if the referral is that domain.
Hope it helps.
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
-
Nofollow links on our site menu
Hi Our site's front page has almost 900 internal links on it (it's an ecommerce site with about 25,000 products). A lot of these are on a pretty involved dropdown menu, which is on every page. I can't really do anything to get this figure down (its outside my remit), but one thing the developers have done is make all the menu links nofollow on the mobile version of the menu (site is responsive) - otherwise there would be even more links! My question is as to whether doing this for the mobile menu is a good idea, in terms of SEO?
Technical SEO | | abisti21 -
Site hacked in Jan. Redeveloped new site. Still not ranking. Should we change domain?
Our top ranking site in the UK was hacked at the end of 2014. http://www.ultimatefloorsanding.co.uk/ The site was the subject of a manual spam action from Google. After several unsuccessful attempts to clean it up, using Securi.net and reinstating old versions of the site, changing passwords etc. we took the decision to redevelop the site. We also changed hosting provider as we had received absolutely no support from them whatsoever in resolving the issue. So far we have: Removed the old website files off the server Developed a new website having implemented 301's for all the old URL's (except the spam ones) Submitted a reconsideration request for the manual spam action, which was accepted. Disavowed all the spammy inbound links through Webmaster Tools Implemented custom URL parameters through Google to not index the SPAM URLs ( which were using parameters) Our organic traffic is down by 63% compared to last year, and we are not ranking for most of our target keywords any longer. Is there anything that I am missing in the actions I have taken so far? We were advised that at this stage changing domain and starting again might be the way to go. However the current domain has been used by us since 2007, so it would be a big call. Any advice is appreciated, thanks. Sue - http://www.ultimatefloorsanding.co.uk/
Technical SEO | | galwaygirl0 -
Spam link? Links from linguee
Hi Everyone My site received a notification of unnatural links in Webmaster Tools and the site has had a penalty applied. I can see there are a lot of links from a site : linguee.com .de. nl. ect ..more than 30k of them! I am not sure where did those links come from! The suddenly appeared over the weekend. Does anyone has similar experience before and any suggestion? Thanks Ricky
Technical SEO | | SEO-SMB0 -
How to remove all sandbox test site link indexed by google?
When develop site, I have a test domain is sandbox.abc.com, this site contents are same as abc.com. But, now I search site:sandbox.abc.com and aware of content duplicate with main site abc.com My question is how to remove all this link from goolge. p/s: I have just add robots.txt to sandbox and disallow all pages. Thanks,
Technical SEO | | JohnHuynh0 -
Can anyone help me understand why google is "Not Selecting" a large number of my webpages to include when crawling my site.
When looking through my google webmaster tools, I clicked into the advanced settings under index status and was surprised to see that google has marked around 90% of my pages on my site as "Not Selected" when crawling. Please take a look and offer any suggestions. www.luxuryhomehunt.com
Technical SEO | | Jdubin0 -
International Site Links In Footer
We have several international sites and we have them linked in the footer of our main .com site . Should we add "nofollow" to these links? Our concern is that Google could see these sites as a network?
Technical SEO | | EwanFisher0 -
Can someone help me get this site ranked? www.2sponsors.com
Hi, I am have been trying for months to get a site ranked for one of my customers and I am not doing very well. I have been doing SEO for years and have gotten lots of sites ranked but this one has been the most difficult. Does anyone have time to look at it for me? Thanks The sites PR=4. I am trying to get it ranked in www.google.com.ar Thanks Carla skype: carla.dawson78
Technical SEO | | Carla_Dawson0 -
If I redirect my WordPress blog to my main site, will it help my main site's SEO?
I have separate sites for my blog and main website. I'd like to link them in a way that enables the blog to boost my main site's SEO. Is there an easy way to do this? Thanks in advance for any advice...
Technical SEO | | matt-145670