Are bad links the reason for not ranking?
-
Hello Moz community. I'm looking here for some input from the experts on what could be wrong with a site I'm working on. The site is in Spanish, but I'm sure you'll get the idea.
We want to rank the site first page on Google Mexico (www.google.com.mx) for the keyword "refacciones Audi" and some other brands (refacciones = replacement parts would probably be a good translation, just FYI). Now, our page hasn't been completely optimized, so in my mind it's OK not to be on first page yet.
However, our main competitor is ranking first page for all the keywords we want to rank for, but when you check their site, you'll find there is hardly any content, no keywords are being used in their content, all pages have the exact same title and meta description, their catalog is in a completely different domain. In short, no SEO whatsoever. Looking at Moz data, our site has a DA of 26, while our competitor's has a 10. They have no external backlinks at all, while we have a few hundred.
This leaves me scratching my head: how can a completely non-optimized site outrank us?
I decided to check our backlink profile, and a previous SEO agency seems to have built MANY fake blogs with lots of backlinks with rich anchor text. Quite a big percentage of our backlinks are of this kind, so this is the only thing I can think can be affecting our ranking. Will disavowing be our solution?
If you'd like to check, our site is: www.refaccionariaalemana.com.mx
Our competitors' is: www.saferefacciones.com
ANY help will be extremely appreciated as I feel a bit lost.
Thanks!
-
I agree with Keri...there are a ton of factors that all contribute to ranking for any given term. It's possible to rank well based simply on a few of them, if it's not super-competitive space.
-
They are extreme examples, but Adobe Reader ranks for "click here" because of all of the links pointing to it with "click here" to download adobe acrobat since the beginning of (web) time. Same with Disney and Yahoo ranking for "click here to exit", as adult/liquor sites often have a click to enter if you're over 18, and click to exit if you don't want to visit that site, and they'll link to Disney or Yahoo.
-
Thank you everyone for your input on my question. It seems this could be an interesting problem to tackle.
So, if I may pose this extra question: how can a site that has absolutely no SEO (I mean, if you went through an SEO checklist this site would surely fail) rank first page? Does this make sense from an SEO perspective? I know there are many factors considered by Google to determine rankings, but what about pages that don't seem to match any of these "requirements" and rank highly? It's weird... Sorry, I probably must post this as a separate question.
-
I'd agree with Keri on this one. If you want to start with a fairly inexpensive investment to see how bad the problem is, buy a subscription to Link Research Tools and run a Link Detox report on your site. If you get a pretty bad result, then go to the Moz recommended list to find someone with experience identifying and getting you out of penalties.
-
In cases like this, it may be advisable to go ahead and pay a professional for an audit/evaluation of the site. This is the type of thing that takes some time to examine, especially with so many moving parts. Q&A is great for some questions, but some of the larger ones like this (especially with a foreign language and different version of Google) are better suited to someone who can spend a few hours devoted to your site and your competitors and figure out what is happening and give you some advice as to the next steps.
-
I don't think that you are going to get good actionable advice on this site in a forum. There are too many factors to consider, too much time and expertise required to do an assessment.
Just saying that you should not take action based upon kibitzin'.
-
Eduardo,
I haven't looked into the specific backlinks, but there are a few factors involved. First, most likely you are not seeing all of the links to the site and to your competitor's site. I would check Webmaster Tools as well as a few other sources of links (ahrefs, majestic, open site explorer, etc.) and combine those links to get a better picture of the links to your site. Different tools have different crawlers and they all don't get all the links all of the time.
It sounds as if you may have an issue with bad and toxic links pointing to the site, I would review all your links and get the toxic and bad links removed (focus on the low quality links with exact match anchor text). There is a very good chance that you are suffering from these bad links.
-
Hi Eduardo,
I have just answered another question very similar to this one and poor links are very problematic. I deal with a lot of companies who have this exact same problem, so go through the process of cleaning the backlink profile up for them.
Google Panda has a habit of penalising for these backlinks and it certainly would be a starting point by the sounds of things.
You have to be a little careful when disavowing though as you don't want to remove good links, just those that will be contributing to this problem. There many be other reasons for it, but if you have a poor link profile, it is a little bit of a waste trying other SEO techniques that could do absolutely nothing for you.
-Andy
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
-
Regarding Internal Links
I analyse my Birthday Page "https://www.giftalove.com/birthday"with comapare link profiles and found that total Internal Link 47,234. How my internal link suddenly increse. Please provide my details about my internal links.
Technical SEO | | Packersmove0 -
Too many on page links
Yes this question again. I know it get's asked a lot and I know of a few fixes, but this one I'm having a problem with. So we have a fan gallery on our site which is not only causing duplicate page titles, which I'm thinking we can fix with a canonical, but also too many on page links. The issue is this is on drupal which I have very little experience with and it seems to just be located within the fan galleries section of the site. After looking at a few things I know that no-follow wont be an option since from what I read it wont really work anyway so I was wondering if anyone else has an asnwer. I just read through a million articles trying to find a simular situation and can't seem to find anyone with the same thing. It might have something to do with the plugins the programmers used, but my inexperience with drupal is making this difficult. Thanks guys.
Technical SEO | | KateGMaker0 -
Different links to to the same page
Hi, Based on the user's actions we post activity into users Facebook timeline. And each activity has link back to our particular page on our website. For example if original page was: www.Domain.com from Facebook timeline it would be like this: www.Domain.com?Ffb_action_ids=101508953168 Do you think this will have a negative effect on our page rankings as we will eded up having a lot of different URL's to the same page? www.Domain.com?Ffb_action_ids=101508953168 www.Domain.com?Ffb_action_ids=456788765609 etc.. Thank you, Karen Bdoyan
Technical SEO | | showme0 -
How to defend against link cloaking
Hi, I own a website where recently a lot of backlinks have been going to my old domain that 301's to my new domain. During the past 2 months I have noticed a massive amount of links pointing to my old domain. When I go to look at the links and go to the page all I see is a search bar which to me this seems like link cloaking. I am not sure what I should do. Obviously I am not doing the link building and someone is targeting anchor specific keywords from multiple domains that all look the same. My question is should I report it myself in google webmaster tools before I get hit with a filter or penalty, or would this force them to penalize me. And if I do get caught up in a penalty I would not know how to fix this since I doubt the webmaster is linking to me out of the kindness of his heart. Any advice? Thanks
Technical SEO | | dreamfire0 -
Mini site links?
Can anyone point me to information about the "mini" site links on the Google search results or tell me how to get them set up? These aren't the full site links that show 3 by 3 under the first listing but small text links that appear for certain results. (See attached image for reference.) Are these something that can controlled/requested? NAj6E.png
Technical SEO | | DVanSchepen0 -
How much effect does number of outbound links have on link juice?
I am interested in your thoughts on the effect of number of outbound links (obls) on link juice passed? ie If a page linking to you has a high number of obls, how do you compute the effect of these obls and relative negative effect on linkjuice. In the event that there are three sites on which you have been offered the opportunity of a link Site A PA 30 DA50 Obls on page 10 Site B PA 40 DA50 Obls on page 15 Site C PA 50 DA50 Obls on page 20 How would you appraise each of these prospective page links (ignoring anchor text, relevancy, etc which will be constant) Is there a rule of thumb on how to compare the linkjuice passed from a site relative to its PA and the number of obls? Is it as simple as page with 10 obls passes 10x juice of page with 100 obls?
Technical SEO | | seanmccauley0 -
What should i do with the links for "Login", "Register", "My Trolley" links on every page.
My website ommrudraksha has 3 links on every page. 1. Login 2. Register 3. My trolley My doubt is i do not want to give any weightage to these links. does these links will be calculated when page links are calculated ? Should i remove these as links and place these as buttons ? ( with look a like of link visually ? )
Technical SEO | | Ommrudraksha0