Too Many Links?
-
Search Term is Indianapolis Wedding Photographers.
Site is http://www.tallandsmallphotography.com/
Their metrics are through the roof compared to everyone else's. They've dropped from 27 in May to 40 Now. 'A' Grade on-site optimization.
Either there's too many links, or there's some bad links involved... I don't know which it is...
-
I liked your article. You had a lot of really good points. I think that a lot of non-SEO savvy people are still trying to build links by leaving comments, so it's good to advise people not to do that!
I still think you should go looking for Panda issues for this particular client though. Yes, it's good to get rid of the unnatural links. But, if Penguin was the only issue for this site then you really should have seen your drop at the time of a Penguin update and there was no Penguin update in May of 2014.
-
And... as it turns out, I was part of the problem. I had a DoFollow directory on my site that people could use for a little Blog Love action.
There was also a thread on a photography group that has been going on since 2009, that I encouraged people to use over the years.I've written a blog post here http://flauntyoursite.com/jig-is-up/ denouncing the practice. I have a bit of clout in the photography communities, so hopefully this spreads out there.
Marie, if you wouldn't mind reading this and letting me know if there's anything you think should be added, I'd appreciate it.
I let people down big time. I hope the word can get out there and fix this thing.
-
Thanks Marie,
I will shoot you an email. Most of my clients are photographers (I do custom website design as well as SEO), so if this is something that's happening more and more, it'd be good to have a solution for them.
-
Thanks very much for the recommendation EGOL.
William, I have seen a lot of photographers that have been affected by Penguin. With that being said, your backlink profile doesn't look typical of most Penguin hit sites that I see. The first thing I'd check is whether you have a manual unnatural linking penalty. This is different than Penguin that is an algorithmic issue and not a manual penalty.
If you've traded links with a lot of other photographers than a manual penalty is possible. To check go to Webmaster Tools then Search Traffic and then Manual Actions.
If you see "no manual webspam actions found" then that's not it.
I see a lot of sites that go on a link pruning crusade when really their problem has nothing to do with links. A lot of these sites have issues with the Panda algorithm which really is not a link based algorithm at all, but rather, deals with on site problems.
If you'd like me to have a more detailed look, feel free to contact me via the email on my Moz profile and I can give you a few options.
-
Marie Haynes.
Check out all of these link penalty articles on SearchEngineWatch. http://searchenginewatch.com/author/2779/marie-haynes
Another list of link penalty articles published here on Moz. http://moz.com/community/users/308135
Her site and book are here. http://www.hiswebmarketing.com/unnatural-links-recovery/
Those are just some of what she has published.
-
Thanks EGOL,
I spent a little time investigating to rule out other issues. I didn't want to rush to a conclusion. But I'm fairly positive we're looking at Penguin now.
Since Penguin isn't really my area of expertise, do you have recommendations for good services that are skilled in determining which links would be causing problems?
Thanks!
-
And EGOL, what is it that bothers you about the links to other sites?
The blog looks like a link factory. Are these being sold? Are they being traded? Simply by volume there will be links in there to other websites that have been penalized by Google. Inbound or outbound links can cause a site to have a problem with Google's Penguin algorithm.
Site-wide links in the footer have been a known method of google manipulation for about ten years. If Prophoto and NetRivet have dozens or hundreds of other sites giving them site-wide links in the footer that could cause a problem. I would get rid of those links if this was my website. They are not necessary. The site will look better without these advertising links.
**Most photographers actually do use commenting as a means to up their DA/PA. **
That statement proves an observation that I have made.
I look at Moz Q&A every day and pay attention to sites that see rankings drops. Photographers are waaayyy overrepresented in the sites that post here with problems. If you do a few searches of Q&A you will find lots of photographers in here cryin' because their sites have great metrics but apparently weak competitors are beating them.
**Most photographers do this as a way to promote vendors that were at the wedding. **
Photographers link to other wedding vendors and other wedding vendors link back to photographers... they do this every week. Over and over for hundreds of weddings. It creates a pattern that is easy to spot and looks like manipulation. They, or their agents, have also spent countless hours finding open photography blogs where they can place a ten word comment and get a link or two.
Their metrics are through the roof compared to everyone else's. They've dropped from 27 in May to 40 Now. 'A' Grade on-site optimization.
This sounds exactly like a site that has been penalized for link spam. Great moz grading, great link metrics, rankings lower than expected in Google.
Just offering what I would do if this was my site. No guarantees.
.
-
Thanks Chris and EGOL,
Most photographers actually do use commenting as a means to up their DA/PA. They occasionally get posts from wedding blogs as features with links back to them. But the majority of the industry uses comments. Plenty of sites have maintained rankings with that link strategy (I'm not saying if it's good/bad or even sustainable over the long term, just saying what has worked for years).
Could this just be a situation where having hundreds of more links than your competitors could cause the problems?Also, are there any tools that you'd recommend that could start to actually figure out if the links truly are bad?
And EGOL, what is it that bothers you about the links to other sites? Most photographers do this as a way to promote vendors that were at the wedding. Reading it I admit it's a bit link heavy in the amount of text they have on each post, but is there anything inherently wrong with 5-10 outbound links on posts?
Thanks guys.
William -
I'm not sure there is such a thing as too many good links, which leaves just the bad-links side of your equation. If by "take a sharp ax to what's currently out there," EGOL means to start disavowing those low quality links, I'd agree. Moz's metrics don't really count spammy stuff against you, which can lead to to believe that your ranking factors are through the roof. It might be good idea to bone-up on your knowledge of link valuations.
-
A lot of the links fit the pattern of the examples below. Google probably sees this and thinks that the only reason these links exist is because someone deliberately spent a lot of time finding a couple hundred photography blog posts where they could type less than ten words and obtain a link, or two, or three. They would call it blog spamming because the links were manufactured - not given on merit.
Three examples....
http://paperphotographs.com/blog/2012/04/02/columbus-senior-portraits-carly-whetstone-park-of-roses/
http://alexmillerweddings.co.uk/blog/benjamin-arrives/
http://www.jackchauvel.com/the-year-that-was-2013/
If this was my site I would get rid of the site-wide footer links to ProPhoto and NetRivet. If they are being paid for their service then linking to them is probably not a requirement. If it is a requirement and I am paying I would leave them simply on principle.
Another thing that bothers me is that the blog posts each have a load of links out to other sites. This, I would think, is unnecessary. I would stop doing this and take a sharp ax to what is currently out there.
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
-
Internal Links issue in webmaster
we implemented our website on the basis of WordPress, then we migrate our website to PHP (YII Framework). after a while, we found out an issue around internal links which they were increasing severely. when we check our landing pages in webmaster (for example Price list), in contains 300 internal links but the reality is that there are no href tags on this page. it seems that webmaster calculate most of our links with the links of a single page and show them to us. is it natural or a mis configuration has been happened? Yh1NzPl
Technical SEO | | jacelyn_wiren0 -
Should we nofollow footer social links?
Like most sites today we have a whole raft of social links in our footer, these are on every page of the site and link out to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc Should these links be nofollow to avoid juice leaving our site or would you recommend allowing them to be followed to increase the power of these social sites? Is there a definitive Yay or Na on these social links?
Technical SEO | | Twist3600 -
Links in a Flash document
How do I tell if a link in a Flash document is follow or nofollow? Or doesn't it matter? (I just found out that my company placed an advertorial in a Flash publication and I want to make sure it doesn't wind up as a paid, followed link.) Thank you!
Technical SEO | | Linda-Vassily0 -
Link from Blogspot.com subdomain...
I have found an author that has an article about a particular product we sell online. I was thinking of speaking to them about getting a link to our site. But then I looked at the stats: <label>Page:</label><label id="Page Authority" class="key lsdata">PA:1</label><label id="mozrank" class="key lsdata" title="MozRank">mR:0.00</label>mT:0.00<label id="SEOmoz-data-uid">0</label> links from
Technical SEO | | bjs2010
<label id="SEOmoz-data-uipl">0</label> Root Domains<label>Root Domain:</label>**<label id="dom-pageauthority" class="key lsdata" title="Domain Authority">DA: 59</label>**24,797,212 links from
<label id="SEOmoz-data-pid">110,858</label> Domains<label>Subdomain:</label>Its on a subdomain of blogspot.com - and the page is relevant to a particular category and our e-commerce site.Is it worth pursuing the link?Thanks!0 -
Ratio of linking C-blocks to Linking domains
Hi, Our linkbuilding efforts have resulted in acquiring a high number of backlinks from domains within a C-block. We all know Google issues penalties whenever someone's link profile looks unnatural. A high number of backlinks but a low number of linking C-blocks would seem to be one of reasons to get penalized. Example: we have 6,000 links from 200 linking root domains coming in from 100 C-blocks. At what point should we start to worry about being penalized/giving off an unnatural look to mr G?
Technical SEO | | waidohuy0 -
No-follow links on advertising pages
Hi I run a job board that enables employers to post job vacancies and information about their organisations. These are 'paid for' pages (advertising) on our site. These link out to their own websites. My question is, would it be better for these links out to their sites to be no-follow? From my site's perspective, I cannot necessarily dictate the quality of their websites (although the majority are leading firms) as I would in article and feature content, where we do happily link out and refer to other quality sites with information that gives readers further information. I know that many large job boards do this where they run listings of feeds from other sites, but should we also do this at the page level where the link out is effectively paid for. What would be the pros and cons if I do or if I don't use no-follow? I hope this makes sense and look forward to some replies. Many thanks
Technical SEO | | CelestialChook0 -
Diagnostic says too many links on a page and most of the pages are from blog entries. Are tags considered links? How do I decrease links?
I just ran my first diagnostic on my site and the results came back were negative in the area of too many links one a page. There were also quite a few 404 errors. What is the best way to fix these problems? Most of the pages with too many links are from blog posts, are the tags counted as well and is this the reason for too many links?
Technical SEO | | Newport10300 -
No. of links on a page
Is it true that If there is a huge number of links from the source page then each link will provide very little value in terms of passing link juice ?
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050