Should I work with current site or start a new site with more keywords?
-
I have been working with my site for some time. Sadly, I am moving lower and lower in ranking. I am wondering if I should just transfer my site to a new URL (this time including keywords). I don't understand the whole disavow link thing. I hired someone about 2 years ago, when I lost my ranking due to malicious software. Well, it turns out that, she submitted my link to weird sites that I don't even know what they are. It is like sites with thousands of websites just listed. Things have never been half of what they were and I am really just growing frustrated. I understand that having an a URL for awhile is helpful, but I appear to have lost many of my good linking sites. Any thoughts?
-
It sounds like part of the reason for your question is frustration and uncertainty about what to do next. I often feel exactly the same.
So you may want to read this post which helps you work out where to start and puts the issues with disavowing well down the line
http://savvypanda.com/blog/guide-how-to-use-google-disavow-tool.html
In a nutshell
- Use google webmaster tools to figure out where most of the links are coming from
- Work down the list in order and email the websites to ask them them to remove the links
- Once you hit diminishing returns start using the disavow tool.
This is a good approach as it makes the problem manageable and you can then be systematic about moving forward. If it's like everything else I've ever done - 20% of the sites will be responsible for 80% of the links and at least some of them will be nice and take stuff down. That will give you a nice morale boost when they do it, and then another one when you get some rankings benefits.
And then you will be over the hump and it will just be another task you have to undertake
Hope that this helps
Denis
-
Always an awkward one. First of all, don't rush to kill off the domain. I have done a lot of these and everything can be pulled back. That question of 'if' it should or not though, is only something you can answer.
If you want to know a little about what state your links are in, go to Open Site Explorer, enter your URL and look at the Anchor Text that is used to come back to you. Are most of these 'money' phrases? Is your brand used much?
Look at the Linking Domains. Do you have many that are coming from sites with high Domain Authority? Do you have sites that are linking back to you from more than one page?
When you look at the overview of your site, what does it tell you for your stats? Is everything very low?
Of course, this is only a short peek at what's going on. If you are still unsure, drop me a message and I'll be happy to do it for you.
-Andy
-
I would suggest 2 things:
- Hire someone to do an audit of inbound links for your website, or have someone in-house perform the audit. While it may be beneficial in some regards to move your site to a blank slate, your domain age (how long your site's existed) will be lost - that being a factor in SEO.
- Never hire anyone without knowing their tactics and requesting to look at prior projects they've worked on for your own edification. From what you've said, it sounds like the person you hired 2 years ago used some black-hat (risky cheat) tactics. It's great to have help, but unless you're informed about whomever's helping you, it will always have the potential to backfire.
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
-
Could someone be sabataging my site by bad backlinks?
Hello, As I have said before I am new to SEO and especially new to this type of software. I am trialing MOZ, ahrefs and MajesticSEO. I just used the Site Explorer on ahrefs and it showed me that a bunch of backlinks was created today but I haven't engaged anyone in "SEO" for many months. Why would this be? See the image for a screenshot. yhpUxFv.png
Link Building | | infinart0 -
Cyber Monday Deal Submission Sites?
Hi, Does anyone know of any good sites where I can submit a Cyber Monday deal/sale? Thanks!
Link Building | | S.S.N0 -
Backlinks - Linking to new domain
Hello Moz community! My established client recently franchised their business by adding a metro area location. We have thousands of back links built to the corporate website, a lot of which have anchor text that are geo-targeted to the new metro area website. We still find the corporate website important, but would rather focus our efforts now on the newly franchised location. Does anyone have experience with successfully having old links changed to a new domain and if so how? When changing directory listings, such as everything on get listed, is it better do do slowly or as much at once as possible? Any recommendations or information would be appreciated! Thanks!
Link Building | | FullMedia900 -
Main keyword problem
Hello Since the latest Google update our main keyword has been dropping. We employed a SEO company about 6 weeks ago and since then the keyword has dropped a couple of pages further on Google. We have been using the Remove'em site to check our backlinks and a blog this SEO company have done has appeared on the list. The DA is good but the PA is low. In the blog they have linked the exact keyword to our site homepage. Do you think the blogs the SEO company are doing will be causing us more problems? Any help is very much appreciated. Thanks
Link Building | | Palmbourne0 -
Free PR Sites
Is it advantagous to post to PR sites such as this one: http://www.i-newswire.com/fitness-professional-online-launches/218349 I've seen posts like these on several sites - same post on multiple sites. I'm wondering if it's even worth having them on one, or multiple. Thoughts?
Link Building | | DougHoltOnline0 -
Help! Does SEOMOZ Work?
New to SeoMoz and im struggling!! I have been trying to study SeoMoz and how to use all these tools but I am totally at a loss where to start with it. I think i am OK with on page work but the link building and how to get better ranking i find really difficult. After all we all need results in our jobs or why would we bother with it. Does any one have any tips with the linking tools and how to see some results for me to keep SEOMOZ on. I really think a good video on practical steps on link building would help. All this talk about do something practical!! What practical things build the best links?
Link Building | | sunshine640 -
How do you check to see if your site (site A) has already been linked to by another site (site B) when you have a large site with lots of links
There are some basics in SEO relating to finding out about who has linked to whom that I could use some help with.
Link Building | | hughman0 -
New to all this, any suggestion will be appreciated
I operate an Airport Parking Agency or Secure Car Parking. Any ideas on keywords would be greeeeeeeat 😉
Link Building | | ginag0