Anyway to get old back links back?
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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?
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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
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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
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