11 000 links from 2 blogs + Many bad links = Penguin 2.0\. What is the real cause?
-
Hello,
A website has :
1/ 8000 inbound links from 1 blog and 3000 from another one. They are clean and good blogs, all links are NOT marked as no-follow.
2/ Many bad links from directories that have been unindexed or penalized by Google
On the 22nd of May, the website got hurt by Penguin 2.0. The link profile contains many directories and articles.
The priority we had so far was unindexing the bad links, however shall we no-follow the blog links as well?
Thanks!
-
Sitewide links are not the ideal, even if their are good.
I suppose the links in the good blogs are from a blogroll in sidebar, and that location for a link may sound suspect.
Said that, I would maintain them at first, concentrate in cleaning the toxic links you have detected, do a reconsideration request (and eventually uploading a disavow).
Just in the case the penalization is not quit, then I will consider the idea of asking the blogs to move the link from a sitewide situation to an editorial one (maybe creating a page: "The site we like", which should not be just a list of links but also give an explication why the blogs like those sites.
That would be helpful also for the sites themselves, because they will get rid of any suspect of manipulative link building from their side.
-
Hello!
I'm assuming those blog links are sitewide links like in the header/footer/sidebar?
In which case the question is really, is it a natural link? It's not the fact that it's a sitewide link that's really the problem. You'd expect sitewide links in some situations, for example with group company websites that link back to the main group website and this is natural behaviour. It's more where you get links that just have no reason to be there, Like, 'Blogroll:' and then 5 random unrelated sites linked by their anchor text. If on the other hand you've earned a couple of links in a list of good related resources in the sidebar, these are unlikely to cause you any problems.
If they don't 'feel natural', I would definitely ask if they can be made no-follow or better still, ask if they could each just give you one nice in-content link
ED: apologies for repeating some of the above answers, I think we all posted at the same time!
-
I think you just need to ask the question - how "natural" is it to have 8000 or 3000 links from just 1 domain? And how natural is it that it takes up a large proportion of your link profile?
The answer is likely to be not very natural at all. And for that reason, you should remove/nofollow/disavow if you can. Incidentally, if the amount of links has been inflated by tagging/category issues on that blog, then your website is potentially being linked to by masses of duplicate content, which is even more of a problem.
All 8000 links might be contextual and earned, but I'm almost certain Google would not see it that way and that's contributing to your algorithmic penalty. I'd nofollow if you can or better yet have the links removed.
Hope this helps.
-
Why are there so many links from just 2 domains?
If they are sitewide, Google is not a fan of that unless they are nofollow, however why are some nofolow and others follow? Is that not a signal to Google in some way? Why would a site naturally have some nofollow and some dofollow links to your site?
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
-
How do I deal with Negative SEO (Spammy Links)?
For the past 12 months, our website has been hit by spammy links with annoying anchor text. We suspected one of our competitor are deploying negative SEO on us. The image is an example of the sites and anchor text we have been spammed with. The frequency is about 1 - 2 spammy links a day. I have a few questions from here onwards: Does those links affect our SEO? (Most are mainly nofollow) Other than disavow, what other stuff can I do? How will google and other search engines see this incident? TcmFsti
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Changsst0 -
Outranked by link farm
Hello Mozzers, I got a questions about some rankings. Some of my sites always had no. 1 rankings for most of the competitive terms per niche. I recently made the change to a full responsive design for more mobile friendliness. No all of the sudden I see different competitors that are not mobile friendly outranking me for some of my most important keywords but also I see some link farm sites (like: camping.startpagina.nl) outranking me for some terms. I was under the impression that Google doesn't like link farm sites? Also I provide a lot of good unique content on my pages and my competitor does no such thing. Still for some terms he outranks me. I understand that it can't be just 1 thing and that there are a lot of factors playing a rol in the big picture but still, you must understand that this is pretty frustrating. I obey the rules of the search engines and see competitors do no such thing and still being outranked by them. Further details of this matter can be send to you in PM if you need it. Looking forward for your thoughts on this. regards Jarno
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | JarnoNijzing0 -
Does this graph look like a Penguin 2.0 hit?
Hello,Does the attached graph look like a Penguin 2.0 hit? Keep in mind that on our eCommerce site most purchases are from return customers. I forgot to add here that we cut a bunch of paid links in May 2013 as well. We quit cutting paid links when our rankings dropped - we thought it was the paid links. We currently have 30% paid links. Penguin 2.0 was on May 22. ga2.png
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Asynchronous loading of product prices bad for SEO?
We are currently looking into improving our TTFB on our ecommerce site. A huge improvement would be to asynchronously load the product prices on the product list pages. The product detail page – on which the product is ordered- will be left untouched. The idea is that all content like product data, images and other static content is sent to the browser first(first byte). The product prices depend on a set of user variables like delivery location, vat inclusive/exclusive,… etc. So they would requested via an ajax call to reduce the TTFB. My question is whether google considers this as black hat SEO or not?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jef22200 -
Where Is This Link Coming From?
According to Moz Analytics we have a link coming from here: http://www.grayshadowfinancial.com/ The anchor text is earthquake prone map. I can't find the link, but if I cntrl+f "earthquake prone map" it shows in the find box, even though I can't see it. I'm guessing this is some spam tactic and they are hiding this with their CSS? Is there anyway I could see it? Best, Ruben
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Preparing for Penguin: Remove, Disavow, or change to branded
For someone that has 80 root domains pointing to their domain and 10 of them are sitewide backlinks from 10 PR4+ sites. All paid for. All with the same main keyword anchor text Should I advise him to remove the links, dissavow the links, dissavow then remove or just change to branded anchor text for the 10 sitewide links. Another option is to just keep one link (preferrably editorial) from each site. The only reason not to pull them off right away is that the client could not sustain his business with a drop in sales. These are by far the strongest 10 root domains. Eventually, when he has enough good backlinks these are all coming off. There was a huge drop in sales for this site last fall, but it recovered almost completely by changing keyword stuffing and adding ecommerce content. Looking to keep his sales and also prepare for this years updates.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Seo back linking proposal review
Hi guys, below is a proposal i received from someone on freelancer.com for some seo building. Is this really all it takes? Obviously done overtime but basically is this it aside from the usual basics onsite keywords, urls, artciles, content etc. This is a the proposal for $250 (some are cheaper but almost the same details as below). This is one of the top seo people on freelancers.com and they all have good reviews. Is this basically it? Shell out $100 bucks or more a month to someone who will just post stuff all over the internet. It just seems all very simple, what is $100 bucks a month to stay at #1. Is there any real questions i should ask to make sure i am not just throwing my money away? I would like to recommend the following services for attaining better search results for the website. 1)Press Release Submissions
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | topclass
2)Social bookmarking submissions
3)Drip Feed Article Links - 100 Article submissions everyday for 25 days
4)Article directory submissions
5)Link directory submissions
6)Blog Post Submissions(All Blogs have PR1 to PR6)
7)Wiki Page Submissions(.EDU and .GOV Sites Included) PR of the directories, social bookmarking websites, Blogs, wiki pages and Article directories are from PR0 to PR8.
Most of them are in the range of PR1 to PR4. If you are interested in the above services then these are the details about those services. 1)Press release Submissions - We will write 3 press release and submit them to 25 press release websites.
Submitting press release gets the news to Google news, Yahoo news etc..
Please note we even submit to Paid press release websites like PRBuzz, SBWire, pressdoc etc.. 2)Social Bookmarking submissions - I will also submit your website to 150 social bookmarking websites.
Here are the example of social bookmarking websites.
www.digg.com
www.furl.net
After we finish submitting to social bookmarking websites we will then create rss feeds with approved link URL's and ping them so that links get indexed. 3)Drip Feed Article submissions - We will be writing one article.
Everyday we will submitting the article to 100 different websites.
We will be submitting for 25 days.
100 submissions x 25 days = 2500 submissions.
In each article submissions we can use 2 links to the website. 4)Article directory submissions - We will write 5 articles.
Each article will be around 500 words.
Then we will submit them to 300 different article directories. That means 5 articles x 300 article directories = 1500 article submissions.
In each article we can use 2 links to the website.
1500 x 2 Links.
I have experience in submitting articles to article directories.
Till now i have submitted more than 1000 articles to article directories.
I will also create separate accounts with article directories wherever possible. 5)Link directory submissions - I have a list of 1300 directories.
I will submit your website to these directories.
I have experience in submitting to link directories.
Till now i have submitted more than 2500 websites.
All the submission work is done manually.
All these directories provide one way links. 6)Blog Post Submissions(700 PR1 to PR6 Blogs) - We will write 1 article.
we spin and post to 700 PR1 to PR5 blogs.
We can spin the article, title of article and links
You will be given a confirmation when complete, and a code to search backlinks in the search engines.
They are hosted on 650 different C Class IPs! 7)Wiki Page Submissions - Get 200+ wiki site contextual backlinks (3 per posted article) from a range of PR 0 to 8 wiki sites including over 30 US .EDU and US .GOV sites.
I will also ping Them.0 -
Partners and Customers logo listing and links
We have just created a program where we list the customers that use our software and a link to their websites on a new "Customers" page. We expect to have upwards of 100 logos with links back to their sites. I want to be sure this isn't bordering on gray or black hat link building. I think it is okay since they are actual users of our software. But there is still that slight doubt. Along these same lines, would you recommend adding a nofollow or noindex tag? Thanks for your help.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | PerriCline0