Site dropping in rank even through there are more backlinks being added
-
Hello,
One of my client's sites is ranking lower than he should. This happened when we took off backlinks (20 little blogs, several site-wide paid links. It really dropped the site, but it had to be done. Since then we've increased his # of root domains by 10% through white hat link building in his non-competitive niche, and rankings are still poor. I know that's not much in the way of added backlink value, but we're working on it.
My question is, how have the recent (and coming) updates possibly effected us. We want to take the remaining problem areas off right away, but another drop in traffic is not a good idea. Even though the blogs (see below) have no backlinks of themselves, they cause drops when taken off)
He still has
-20 little blog backlinks w/ a quarter of them being exact match anchor text.
-1 sitewide paid link - an image, exact match alt tag anchor text
-1 non-site-wide paid links that is an image near the footer, exact match alt tag anchor text.
-3 links on a domain, this one looks fairly editorial, but there are a bunch of paid links on that page. Changing to non-exact-match anchor text
-2 links on two domains that look completely editorial with no other paid links on that page. non-exact-match anchor text-70 backlinks total with about 1/3 being problematic.
How does this site look in regards to updates and when to take links off without tanking our site even more?
Thanks.
-
Actually if you feel some of the links you have created in the past could be problematic in the future and you know they are the type of links that have caused other sites a problem then I would remove them.
Penguin 2.1 has affected Businesses who have used bad link practices a long time ago. I would say it is better to be safe than sorry and fix it now before you do get hit. It would be harder getting out of an Algorithmic penalty.
That is my opinion anyway
-
Thanks! Should we change all of the anchor text though?
-
I wouldn't remove any links unless you've determined that a site has been hit by Penguin. The way you can do this is by looking at the traffic history for the site, and see if there have been any drops that correspond to Penguin updates, or rankings drops that correspond to Penguin updates and the anchor text being optimized.
Otherwise, I would leave links alone, as any normal site will accumulate low quality links, sitewide links, etc. Just focus on having a strong & balanced backlink profile. 70 links is not a lot, and leaves you more vulnerable to low quality links throwing off your profile.
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
-
Does .me takes more time to rank than .com?
Hi, our company website is about freight forwarding, and im feared about .me extension they have taken. The location is for Dubai and the website is running google ads with a no-indexed landing page. I have the doubt, that our cargo company based website shipwaves.me is not receiving Google ads attention in that case. Besides, the other confusion is shipwaves.me takes time to rank for the keywords with high search or not other than .com extension. I'm confused why this company has taken, .me extension and anybody got the idea- is this .me is a top-level domain or it takes more time than .com domains.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | LayaPaul0 -
Free tool, and it ranks well for adult sites and checking if they are down, will that hurt us with ranking for normal sites with google?
Hi all, We rank for searches around "is youporn down" and similar because we provide a free tool to check if a website is up or down: https://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/youporn I am worried that ranking for these adult searches is hurting us with ranking for things like "is reddit down", thoughts? I'd appreciate some input!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | bwb0 -
Negative SEO - Spammy Backlinks By Competitor
Hi Everyone, Someone has generated more than 22k spam backlinks (on bad keywords) for my domain.Will it hurt on my website (SEO Ranking)? Because it is already in the top ranking. How could I remove all the spammy backlinks? How could I know particular competitior who have done this?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | HuptechWebseo0 -
Duplicate content - multiple sites hosted on same server with same IP address
We have three sites hosted on the same server with the same IP address. For SEO (to avoid duplicate content) reasons we need to redirect the IP address to the site - but there are three different sites. If we use the "rel canonical" code on the websites, these codes will be duplicates too, as the websites are mirrored versions of the sites with IP address, e.g. www.domainname.com/product-page and 23.34.45.99/product-page. What's the best ways to solve these duplicate content issues in this case? Many thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Jade0 -
Whether to disavow fettish sites
Hello, In one niche, all competitors have fettish backlinks. Some of these sites have related products on them, some are just information, but some border on porn sites. I'm wondering which if not all of these I should disavow. There's quite a few. We're doing a non-manual penguin recovery based on link building like paid links, unnatural anchor text and doorway sites. Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Drop In Rankings Evaluation
My cousin asked me to look at his site, http://www.gaport.com/ and I'm wondering what his main website flaws are? I looked at his backlinks, and while I don't know enough to exclude penguin being the cause, I don't think it is. I think it has more to do with duplicate content and lack of keyword optimization. However, before I tell him that, I wanted to get the opinion of this forum, please. Thanks! Ruben
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Penguin Update or URL Error - Rankings Tank
I just redid my site from Godaddy Quick Shopping Cart to Drupal. The site is much cleaner now. I transferred all the content. Now my site dropped from being in the top ten on almost every key word we were targeting to 35+. I "aliased" the urls so that they were the same as the Godaddy site. However when I look at our search results I notice that our URLs have extra wording at the end like this: ?categoryid=1 or some other number. Could this be the reason that our rankings tanked? Previously on the godaddy site the results didnt show this.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | chronicle0 -
Is someone trying to sabotage my site?
I think I may have a problem with someone trying to get me in trouble for paid links. If you look at the following websites, scroll to the bottom and look at the featured links area. There is a link to my website with my keyword on all of them. mercurynews.com contracostatimes.com twincities.com insidebayarea.com marinij.com Now I see a lot of the same links here which leads me to believe these sites are all owned by the same group. Also, 4 of the 5 are Bay Area news sites. The question I have is, are these links hurting me? I did not buy these and did nothing to put them there. I asked the previous owner of the domain who I am in touch with. He is the only other person to own it and he never purchased those links. My guess is a competitor is targeting me perhaps? Just wondering on everyone's take on this. I really can't afford to be getting hit by these potentially penalizing links right now, not when the busy season is starting up. Should I try to get them removed? Does anyone have experience with this or know how it might have happened?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | DanDeceuster0