Anyway to get old back links back?
-
My site ranked in the top 3 for my keyword for many years until someone hacked into my blog in December 2012, which is a subdomain. Google saw I had malicious malware on my domain and removed my site from being indexed (I think that is the word). Basically, I was no longer in the search engines.
My domain and products have been featured on blogs and other places for many years (2 celebrity sites for gift guides), but not many are coming up (actual links with anchor text, not spammy links). I even have one on a friend's site and one in a directory. When I went to Google and put link:www.site.com , I got 1 link. I have seen a few, so I know they exist.
Now, I am on page 3 and have not moved from this place since getting it back up in December 2012. For all of 2013, I thought I would have to wait it out, but now, I fear that waiting it out hurt me. Is there anyway to get Google to look further back and retrieve old links? Should I submit the high ranking ones? I am just wondering if I lost all my hard work in the past. Please advise.
-
Even if you do a link: search in Google for a major brand it will still omit the majority of the results. I've seen a brand with 1,000's on linking domains bring back 8 listings in Google using link:www... so if you know the links are there it's not something you need to worry about.
There are many more ranking factors than just links so you may need to do a full audit on your site:
Refresh content, improve structure, review meta data, review internal/external linking, trim any bad links coming into your site, resolve duplicate/thin content, check for broken links and redirect, improve site speed, enhance your brand with social sites.....there's a long list of things you could be doing and it might be just the sites around you are doing all of this better.
Kind Regards
-
I have started to venture out, but nothing seems to be working. I cannot seem to move. I am not 100% sure that the reason that I lost my ranking because of the links, but I do 90% believe that it is because of that. The main pages of the sites I was featured in are not coming up unless I manually search for it. If it is not the links, I am at a complete loss what it could be. I will check into Majestic. Thank you.
-
OSE and WMT don't offer the complete list of links. Majestic and Ahrefs offer a more comprehensive list.
You can't get Google to manually reindex pages from other sites and if they are pages with high authority then it is more than likely that they will be indexed already. If you can see that the links are still there then I would say don't worry about them.
If you have been "waiting it out" since 2012 then that could be the reason won't be ranking too well. Google rewards fresh and current sites that are regularly gaining fresh links and producing new content. So the best thing to do would be to stop worrying about links you might've lost and concentrate on improving your sites and aquiring new, quality links.
Kind Regards
-
I think if you have used OSE and Webmaster tools you should be able to find the majority of the links you have,However i do think that Google intentionally doesn't include information on every link you have in its webmaster tools,
If you are sure the links are still in place on the external pages its tough as they are not your sites,
Are these pages providing your links all indexed by google themselves ? you could maybe check the cache pages in the search results,
Are you sure this loss of links is the only reason for your loss of ranking ?
James
-
I have used OSE and Webmaster Tools and they show a few more than what Google shows when I do the site option, but still, they are nowhere's near what it should be.
So, is there no way to manually get Google to re=index up some of these pages that have a high authority and, in turn, give me some credit back?
-
Using link:www.. isn't a fully comprehensive way to search for your links. Using proper tools as mentioned above as well as Webmaster Tools and Ahrefs will give you a much more accurate and comprehensive reports of the links that exist to your site.
Regards
-
Have you tried using any tools to see what links you still have besides the Google Link:www.yoursite.com method ?
Are http://moz.com/researchtools/ose or try http://www.majesticseo.com/ still picking up your links you had, unless they have been physically removed ?
James
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
-
links
Hi, in our Google Search Console account, all of our links, built up over a long time have disappeared. they just vanished. it was for a Cardiff demolition company, we work for. any idea why links would just vanish?
Link Building | | sarahwalsh0 -
Suddenly Getting more than a 100 links. Is it a problem?
Hi Everyone, My client writes articles for a very prominent news source in the area where I live. Attached to each article there is her bio, but she never asked the news source to link to her website. So far, she has written more than 100 articles. What would happen if the news source suddenly links 100 times to her site? Would this be considered spammy from google or unnatural link building? Thank you very much for your answers. Arben
Link Building | | Arben_K0 -
How do the powerful links of an old domain help my new domain?
I recently purchased a domain with over twenty years age, a few .gov links and A LOT of .edu links. Of course, the domain is relevant to my site's content. I'm hosting the domain on my shared server and have setup 301 redirects for each page that had external links pointing to it via the htaccess file within the domain's root directory. These 301 redirects, of course, point to my new domain, which is on a dedicated server. Specifically, they point to a directory on my new domain. I've also verified the purchased domain and my new domain on Google Search Console/Webmaster Tools. Finally, I've completed a google site change request for the old site to point to my new site. My questions: Should I also list my old domain on the dedicated server over the shared server or does it matter? Will the backlinks of the old site show up in my new site's links via Google's search console, Open Site Explorer, etc.? Will the backlinks of the old site improve the authority of my domain? Also, keep in mind that I have the 301 redirects pointing to a directory on my new site, not the root page of the new domain. Will the backlinks of the old site help my new domain's authority? In the eyes of Moz I've read, NO. I understand it's just a MOZ metric but from what I understand it also correlates with Google's actual 'authority' metric/method of giving value to a particular domain over another based on the backlinks. How exactly do the backlinks of the old domain benefit my new domain and is there a way to measure this/see the relationship? Thank you for any help you're willing to give!
Link Building | | ninel_P0 -
AllTop Linking Me to Other Sites Feeds, Webmasters Reporting Lots of Broken Links
I submitted my blog to All Top awhile ago and something seems to be wrong with their feed. They're sending people to mysite.com/truth-o-meter.com/this-is-a-post. It's not just truth-o-meter either. I'm getting links that are supposed to go to all kinds of political blogs. As a result, I'm getting a ton of broken links reported on Google Webmasters. I couldn't find any real support option on alltop.com, and when I log in, there are no sites for me to manage. Instead, I resubmitted the site with the correct feed address and in the comments, I mentioned the problem. All I got was a message saying the site was rejected. I believe because I already added the site. But I'm thinking they didn't pay attention to the comments. (In fact the message may have gone through an auto-filter considering how quickly it was rejected.) Is there a way to solve this? Is this a situation in which I would use the disavow tool? If All Top continues to create bad links, how do I stop the issue once and for all? Thanks!
Link Building | | eglove0 -
Link Auditing
Anyone have any useful ways to link audit? I'm stuck picking up the slack from a previous worker who decided buying links was a great idea for our clients.
Link Building | | CGR-Creative0 -
Link Building - Affiliate Link Programs
I'm getting some conflicting information when researching this... I want to create the most organic link building strategy that not only gets high authority sites linking to a website, but relevant websites. I'm creating an affiliate link program where I link to partner and affiliate companies, who in turn link back to me. The question is where to put these links. I was initially thinking of putting them in the footer so they add credibility to every page, and in turn ask my affiliates to do the same thing. However; some sources say that Google no longer looks at links in the footer section. Is it true that Google doesn't count links in footer sections? And do you have any tips on creating this Affiliate Link Program?
Link Building | | reidsteven750 -
Back linking to t foreign sites
One of our major competitors seems to be linking to an Asian speaking website that has a blog/product review formant. I was wondering how they are achieving this. Are there any non English /Asian sites worth submitting to and what is the best way to go about this if English is the only language you speak! And of course is it worth while doing this from an SEO perspective.
Link Building | | Hardley10 -
Is it worth it to link to sites that link to you in guest posts?
Suppose you published a guest post on a quality site and you link to a previous guest post you have written for another site (which links to you). In theory you could send link juice to the page that links to you for a second order effect. Has anyone seen results from this tactic?
Link Building | | ProjectLabs0