Is this negative SEO? Should I disavow these links?
-
We have been doing our own internal link building for the last year and getting nice backlinks. As of the last few days, ahrefs is showing a lot of new links that seem very spammy. We have not hired anyone to do link building for us, and these are all being created on these sites under the same user name. There is a good amount of them popping up, and I fear we will be subjected to a google pentalty for unnatural links if its not addressed.
My first question is, am I correct thinking this is negative seo, and not some random sites that picked up our content and is going across their affiliate websites?
If so, then should I preemptively disavow all these links? Are there any good ways to stop this? How can I track who is placing these garbage links? Here are some examples of these bad links. I know I can find the webmaster via a whois but I think that really wont get me anywhere, but I could be wrong.
Here are some examples of the links that started popping up yesterday and today.
http://pligg-cms.info/story.php?title=student-loan-debt-relief
http://www.sharklinks.info/story.php?title=-student-loan-consolidation-options
http://factson37.com/story.php?title=student-loan-debt-forgiveness-website
http://social-marker.info/story.php?title=-student-loan-debt-forgiveness
http://makingbookmarks.info/story.php?title=-student-loan-consolidation-options
http://bookmarkingforseo.com/story.php?title=top-student-loan-consolidation-options
http://jadelinks.info/story.php?title=-student-loan-consolidation-optionsThere are quite a bit more and they don't seem to be stopping. All of them look pretty much identical to this.
Thoughts?
-
I think this could be an attempt at negative SEO. But whether or not the links will hurt you is hard to say. I see all kinds of odd links that just randomly appear in some site profiles, but these look like they were made deliberately. One other explanation that is not negative SEO is if someone at your company, or a well meaning friend has ever purchased a cheap link building plan. I've seen links like these appear as the result of fiverr gigs or purchasing one of those "buy 1000 links for $100" type things.
Google says they're really good at determining whether negative SEO is happening and just not counting these links. However, if this were my site, I'd probably disavow these once every 2-4 weeks just to be sure. Make sure you disavow them on the domain level.
If it is a competitor who is using xrumer or something similar to pepper the web with links to you then hopefully it will stop when they decide to give up. There's really no way to determine who is doing it though as these really are all most likely automated.
I think that anyone who is in a really competitive space like this needs to be monitoring for negative SEO regularly. Again, I think in most cases it won't hurt you, but Google is certainly not perfect and I wouldn't take the chance.
-
Most spammy backlink related services, especially those created from Xrumer and similar services, say that they do their customers a service by giving them a diversified backlink portfolio full of both do-follow and no-follow backlinks.
Their reasoning is that by creating both link types they fool Google and make the backlink portfolio look more natural and effective. You'll also see them pitch that the link anchor texts will be full of both keyword rich and generic terms, again to look natural and fool Google.
Most services like this are configured this way and automated. Someone probably bought a backlink package and just let the 'seo' go wild.
And yes, this is most likely a bot creating these links.
-
Thanks for the great replies everyone. Its much appreciated.
Another question or something interesting I just noticed is that almost all of these bad links are nofollow, which kind of defeats the purpose of doing negative SEO, no? So either the person doing the negative SEO is really lost, or there is some kind of bot scraping info and reposting it over a network of websites?
Any idea why these would be nofollow links? Only three of the links are dofollow
-
"but use it carefully and sparingly"
Absolutely, this is how most should approach the disavow tool. With that said, there are some obvious link farms and spam directories that, if you're experiencing a problems with, can be domain disavowed without much worry.
+1 to Hashtaghustler for expanding on a fundamental piece of the disavow tool
-
Demi,
I am running into a very similar problem with my website, and after coming across the same Matt Cutts video as the one linked above I have begun a pruning campaign of my own. A plethora of the links that are coming to my website are all asking for 5$ for my link to removed. I haven't paid for anything, yet, and obviously would prefer not to, but drastic times call for drastic measures.
In one of my posts a few weeks ago EGOL, a member on every single SEO board ever made (literally), said:
"I don't trust having Google do stuff for me that I could do myself, because plenty of times Google says how they are gonna do things and then change their mind without tellin' anybody."
That says it all right there. At the time we were talking about redirects, which is slightly different then this, but still. The more that you can do on your own the better. Not only will it be immediate, but it will effect all search engines, not just Google. Even the Disavow Tool suggests contacting the webmaster and asking to be removed. The Disavow Tool is a very advanced dangerous tool, that used incorrectly, can harm your site.
Marie Haynes, one of the "penalty experts" around in the SEO world wrote a great article on the Disavow Tool. Here it is below.You can also find here around these boards if you're lucky! It's rumored she has an affinity for Penguins and Pandas, but that's just water cooler talk.
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2330944/7-Things-You-May-Not-Know-About-Googles-Disavow-Tool
Anyway, I think the disavow tool is great FOR GOOGLE, but use it carefully and sparingly, and pretty much as a last resort. Ray-pp brought up some good points about Google ignoring some of the links, and I too am confident in their ability to weed through the jungle of negative SEO. There is also "link rot" which is the concept that over time a link that is left alone will slowly wither and die a painful death and stop hurting you as much as it is.
Depending on how deep the spam runs, it may be worth calling in some 3rd party SEO experts who deal with penalty analysis, and spam. Depending on the size of your website and just how much they are hurting you, it's always worth getting a second opinion.
Hope that helps!
-
Here are my thoughts, I encourage others to add their own experiences and advice as well:
-
I assume negative SEO will always exist. If my SEO is successful, someone will eventually come by and try to bring that success down and Negative SEO is one strategy to do just that.
-
Google understands Negative SEO exists and they do simply ignore certain links and web properties. I'm confident they work to mitigate Negative SEO impact
-
How organized is the Negative SEO? Is a competitor targeting certain terms they are trying to drag me down for? If not, then it may not even be effective
-
Use your favorite tool to get a huge spreadsheet of spammy backlinks. Then use the file upload feature to bulk disavow all the domains you do not wish to have backlinks from.
-
-
Any advice on how to get this to stop? Seems like it could be a never ending problem that will take a lot of time to combat if it doesn't stop.
-
Hi DemiGR,
At very first glance I notice the Pligg CMS on your backlink list. This CMS is a highly targeted CMS by automated backlink tools, like Xrumer.
Those links are most definitely spam or spam quality.
Is this Negative SEO? I'm not sure it was done intentionally by a competitor, but this is what Google's Matt Cutts says about that:
"If you are at all worried about someone trying to do negative SEO or it looks like there's some weird bot that's building up a bunch of links to your site and you have no idea where it came from, that's the perfect time to use disavow as well," Cutts said.
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
-
Domain SEO
Hi, May I know for the keyword "engagement rings" which domain is the best in term of SEO perspective? www.engagement-rings.com www.engagementrings.com 3)www.engagement_rings.com Thank you
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | KINSHUN1 -
Adult Toy Store SEO
Hi fellows, I'm not so strange to SEO. I have been promoting our spiritual network through SEO and we have received great returns from it. I'm planning to promote an adult toy store via SEO. I have never done any adult store promoting before but I think there are a lot of down sides to it, such as: #1 When I search related keywords many porn websites show up; I assume it seems spammy to google's eye. Also most of the links that I will get are probably from porn websites due to relevancy. #2 Many of our returning customers are coming from retargeting but I assume there is no adult promotion via google display. Is that right? (It's not SEO related) I'm wondering to know if google is against adult content in any way? Any feedbacks are appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Arian-Ya0 -
Footer links VS Page links - Which one is best?
Hello all 🙂 I was wondering if someone could advise me on a link building question. If you wish to create a couple of landing pages for different locations with anchor text link building etc is it better to have a page like this web site here: http://www.acorncommercial.co.uk/commercial-property/development-sites/ or quick footer links like this web site here?: http://www.robertholmes.co.uk/ (click on quick links at the bottom). I would like to know if there is a difference from an SEO perspective or if they are considered black hat. Your advise would be much appreciated! Yiannis
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | artdivision0 -
Press Releases and SEO in 2013
Mozers, A few questions for the community: Distributing a press release through a service like 24-7pressrelease.com - is it a serious duplicate content issue when an identical press release is distributed to multiple sites with no canonical markup (as far as I can tell)? All of the backlinks in the press release are either nofollow or redirects. If there IS a duplicate content issue, will the website be affected negatively given the numerous Panda and Penguin refreshes? Why SHOULDN'T a company issue a press release to multiple sites if it actually has something legitimate to announce and the readership of a given site is the target demographic? For example, why shouldn't a company that manufactures nutritional health supplements issue the same press release to Healthy Living, Lifestyle, Health News, etc _with a link to the site?_I understand it's a method that can be exploited for SEO purposes, but can't all SEO methods be taken to an extreme? Seems to me that if this press release scenario triggers the duplicate content and/or link spam penalty(ies), I'd consider it a slight deficiency of Google's search algorithm. Any insight would be much appreciated. Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | b40040400 -
Google Panelizes to much SEO
I just read this interesting article about a new Google Penalty that will be up in the next upcoming weeks/months about Google making changes to the algorithm. The penalty will be targeted towards websites that are over optimized or over seo'ed. What do you think about this? Is this a good thing or is this not a good thing for us as SEO marketeers? here's the link: SEL.com/to-much-seo I'm really curious as to your point of views. regards Jarno
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | JarnoNijzing0 -
Link Building: Location-specific pages
Hi! I've technically been a member for a few years, but just recently decided to go Pro (and I gotta say, I'm glad I did!). Anyway, as I've been researching and analyzing, one thing I noticed a competitor is doing is creating location-specific pages. For example, they've created a page that has a URL similar to this: www.theirdomain.com/seattle-keyword-phrase They have a few of these for specific cities. They rank well for the city-keyword combo in most cases. Each city-specific page looks the same and the content is close to being the same except that they drop in the "seattle keyword phrase" bit here and there. I noticed that they link to these pages from their site map page, which, if I were to guess, is how SEs are getting to those pages. I've seen this done before on other sites outside my industry too. So my question is, is this good practice or is it something that should be avoided?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AngieHerrera0 -
Ditching of spammy links - will it be of benefit?
Hi there. We have recently taken over the SEO for a five-star hotel who rank very well already for a lot of their main terms, largely down to the fact they have decent off-site strength (as yet very little on-page optimisation has been done, so they aren't appearing for some quite key terms). This off-page strength includes around 2000 links, giving the home page an authority of 63 in the OSE tool. However, upon looking at the links to check they were pointing to the most relevant page etc, I notice they have A LOT of spammy links, pointing to their site with anchor text like 'cheap cialis' or 'buy valium'. Clearly these aren't the kinds of links that should be pointing to a five-star hotel, but should I expect to see much of a drop by attempting to remove these links? We obviously want to clean their link portfolio up, but I'm not sure they would be too happy if all their top rankings disappeared - even if only temporarily, and even if done with the best intentions. I ask as none of the other sites we handle SEO for have had such a proliferation of these links, so I've not seen the ramifications in full. Any help would be much appreciated, along with advice on the best way to remove these links.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | themegroup0 -
40,000 High Value Links - Sold?
I'm a developer spending ever more time on SEO for SMBs. I've never had cause to buy links. Not one bit. I've done ok. Until now that is. Now I am getting my arse kicked into last year. By, I think, a top SEO company. Really, you know these guys and they are whiter than white. But what they have achieved seems an impossibilty to me using white hat techniques. Maybe they are from another planet than me. Or maybe something else is going on. In six months they have built 40,000+ links. These are unbelievably high quality links in their thousands. Really top notch. Keyword rich anchors slap bang in relevant content on great, great sites such as newspapers, univertsities, government, corporate, charity etc. Nothing spammy at all. Amazing. I was skimming but I found nothing to question at all until link 800 which was a cloaked link on a well known review site's product page. But generally the high quality sustained. Gradually, some began to feel somewhat worked into the content, although worked very well. 2000 links in and there are still magazine and review sites, still page authority 40+. There are still local government sites at 10,000 links when the export file ends. I go dizzy at the thought of the remaining 30,000. How far down could this quality have gone? Gulp. I am in awe, intimdated...and a little suspicious. How on earth do you do that with a pure white hat on? Actually, whatever colour your hat - how on earth do you do that? Rand's position is clear. He doesn't do it. Other's are less unambiguous. Comments like "I do it, you do it, we all do it" go unchallenged. Even on a recent link buying question here on SEOMoz most comments say don't do it but one advocates "Paid, targeted, individually prospected links". Am I too suspicious - a fool trying to rationalise my relatively pathetic link building? Honestly, you should just see these links. Of course, maybe some of you have. 🙂 Come on, please don't tell these guys simply worked hard. But maybe that's the harsh truth I cannot face. I have to say I cannot see the site generating an income to pay for the man hours needed for 40,000 high-value, white-hat links but then what do I know. Tell me, what do you think: Is it possible to build 40,000 very high value links in six months using pure white hat techniques - or is there another way? Phil
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Phil_2