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
-
Want to remove a large amount of links from spam sites. SEO company says we will lose a lot of link juice?
Hi, We have a lot of links that have a spam score above 30% and 60%. I don't know if someone has spammed our website. However our SEO company has said we should remove these carefully over a period of 3 months while they add new good links. I don't quite trust this advice. Are they trying to get more business?? They have put doubt in our mind. Can anyone please shed any light on this?? Thank you
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | YvonneDupree0 -
C-Block and link juice
We manage a couple of different domains on different hosting providers. I want to consolidate to one provider, but one site has some good links juice to another site (actually just one link). Should I worry about having both sites on the same C-block - and probably the same IP address?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ThomasErb0 -
Help with a Link Building Audit
A customer wants to have a better position with a keyword (he has already a great position, but he wants more...). So he need a bit of extra link building to have better position in serp(this niche is very competitive so on page is not sufficient).
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Maximilian21
He asked me to do a Link Building Analysis to find good link opportunities.
How can i structure a good report? I need something like a Seo Audit for link building. That's my idea:
Identify what are the business objectives
Identify the brand strenghts and weakness
Find the strongest competitors and understand their tactics
See what are the top links that they have
Copy their best strategies
Find new strategies not used by the competitors
What else i can do for my link building audit?0 -
Inbound Links Inquiry for a New Site
For a site that is only one to two months old, what is considered a natural amount of inbound links if you're site offers very valuable information, and you have done a marketing push to get the word out about your blog? Even if you are receiving backlinks from authority websites with high DA, does Google get suspicious if there are too many inbound links during the first few months of a sites existence? I know there are some sites that blow up very fast and receive thousands of backlinks very quickly, so I'm curious to know if Google puts these kind of sites on a watchlist or something of that nature. Or is this simply a good problem to have?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
Partner Site In Bound Links
We have a staffing agency client that uses a 3rd party site (with different URL) to display open jobs for web viewers to see. However we are getting a bunch of backlinks from this site from the footer because it is set up as a White Label... Should I add a rel=nofollow to the links in the footer? Disavow the links from the site? Do nothing? I am not really sure. Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Aqabatech0 -
2 Questions about 301 Redirects
So I have a couple of questions about 301 redirects: Do Google penalties EVER pass through a 301? I've done 20+ domain 301s in the last year and have yet to see it happen, but the other day I read a an article (or maybe it was a QA post?) that suggested doing 302s to avoid transferring penalties. Has anyone seen any authoritative information regarding this? I 301'd a domain in February that another SEO firm had built a lot of spammy links and I began building contextual links for it at a very slow rate (like 10 or so a month). Within a month, my domain authority was a 26 on the new domain and my inbound links were non existent. By month 2, my links were 70k and domain authority was 34. By month 3, down to 25k inbound links and domain authority of 29, where it has settled for the last 3 months despite some really high quality links. My question (don't worry it's coming), is does anyone have any clue why my links shot up so quickly and then dropped? I'm assuming the 301 links kicked in and then only about 45% ended up 'sticking'?? Thanks in advance
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BrianJGomez0 -
How to Remove Unwanted Links
I dropped like a rock in Google rankings on the 24<sup>th</sup>
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | rdominey
of April. After having to become familiar with Google webmaster tools and doing
allot of investigating I discovered that there is a website www.siteloki.com that has 6,742 links to my website. I have
tried to contact siteloki with no response. I tracked them on Whois to an
office suite in LA called the building to find that the suite listed is the
building management suite. I have had
the following sent to them via email, their contact page and posted on their website
forum and still no reply: Please take action to remove all links to this website
immediately! I have been notified by my client that your website has a
malicious attack using links from www.siteloki.com
against www.getyourphotosoncanvas.com. My client did not solicit these links, pay for these links or authorize any
third party to build links for them. They just appeared. The links are even
pointing to my client’s old website (same url). This is a big problem and I
don’t understand why these links exist. There are currently 6,471 links from
your domain. Please remove these links immediately or we will consider legal
action against your company. We have contacted Google on the behalf of our
client and informed them of this malicious act. I expect to see these links
removed immediately! Regards, I have submitted the site in the malware reporting section
of webmasters tools. I have searched but cannot find any documentation on how
to block this type of attack. It seems that Google failed to provide any means
for an honest website owner following the rules to block this type of attack and
as a result we have been unjustly penalized by Google with a drop to the bottom
in our page ranking. I would appreciate ANY HELP in removing these links and getting the Siteloki website blocked from linking to my website? Any Ideas?0 -
Which of these elements are good / bad link building practices?
Hi, I need some help. I recently got some help with an seo project from a contractor. He did 50 directory submissions and 50 article submissions. I got good results, going up about 20 places (still a long way to the first page!) on google.co.uk on a tough key word Since this project I learned article marketing is not cool. So I am wondering about what I should do next. The contractor has proposed a new bigger project consisting of the elements listed below. I don’t know which of these elements are ok and which aren’t. If they are not ok are they: 1) a waste of time or 2) something I could get penalized for? Let me know what you think?? Thanks, Andrew 100 ARTICLE SUBMISSIONS [APPROVED ARTICLES] -> 1 article submitted to 100 article directories 50 PRESS RELEASE SUBMISSIONS [APPROVED & SCREENSHOTS]-> 1 PR writing & submissions to top 50 PR distribution sites each 150 PRIVATE BLOGS SUBMISSION [APPROVED ARTICLES] -> 1 article submitted to 150 private blogs submission 100 WEBSITE DIRECTORY SUBMISSION -> 1 url (home page) submitted to 100 top free web directories 50 SOCIAL BOOKMARKING [CONFIRMED LINKS] -> 1 url of site submitted to top 50 social bookmarking websites 40 PROFILE BACK-LINKS [CONFIRMED LINKS] -> 1-3 url's of site submitted and create 40 profile websites 50 SEARCH ENGINES -> submission to all the major search engines 20 NEWS WEBSITES -> Ping all links from reports to news websites
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | fleurya0