Ever seen this tactic when trying to get rid of bad backlinks?
-
I'm trying to get rid of a Google penalty, but one of the URLS is particularly bizarre.
Here's the penalized site: http://www.travelexinsurance.com.
One of the external links Google cited as not being natural that links to the penalized site is: http://content.onlineagency.com/index.aspx?site=6599&tide=769006&last=3111516
In the backlink profile of the penalized site, there are about 100 different backlinks pointing to www.travelexinsurance.com from content.onlineagency.com/...
So when I visit http://content.onlineagency.com/index.aspx?site=6599&tide=769006&last=3111516 it actually is displaying content from http://www.starmandstravel.com/787115_6599.htm, which you can see after clicking the "Home" button. That company is a legit travel agency who I assume knows nothing about content.onlineagency.com and is not involved in whatever is going on.
And that's the case for every link from content.onlineagency.com.
So I'm just wondering if someone can help me understand what sort of tactic content.onlineagency.com is using. One of my predecessors I fear used some black hat tactics. I'm wondering if this is a remnant of that effort.
-
They've messed up in general really. They should be blocking robots to what appears to be the CMS for their clients use as there are surely numerous effects on their clients (cannibalization caused by the duplication of pages, for instance). As Mike said they've not taken into account the SEO aspects of the way they've implemented their system.
-
Thanks Alex,
It I assume could also be the "nofollow" issue Mike mentioned.
-
Michael has it right. Online Agency (onlineagency.com) build websites for travel agencies. In the URLs you gave, Patrick, you can see some sort of ID for the site (starmandstravel.com). I guess that this content.onlineagency.com subdomain is the content management system to allow the travel agencies to update their content.
Google may be interpreting lots of similar/related websites on the same infrastructure as an attempt to game its algorithms (they have the same nameservers, although different c blocks but many of the other sites built by that agency also share the same c block [..170.140]).
-
I don't think there is any tactic happening. They simply are building lots of mini websites for their clients and messed up on no following affiliate links. it appears that they have not done any of the basic SEO audit work on their system. Nothing deliberate here IMHO.
-
Thanks for the input. I've never seen something like this before, nor can I really tell why it would benefit content.onlineagency.com, but I figured perhaps this was a normal black hat tactic I had not heard of.
Perhaps if it is a tactic to get travelexinsurance.com more inbound links, it's somehow designed to copy relevant content from someone else that is already pointed at travelexinsurance.com, and then simply create another backlink, piggybacking on the content.
-
That is a strange one.
It seems that content.onlineagency are themselves a travel company (http://content.onlineagency.com/c/74/74684/7466411_74684.htm)
It's strange that they have that page that is clearly copied.
I can't see any connection between the 2 companies, apart from their websites are quite similar in terms of quality.
The only thing that I can think is they are actually competitors and somebody is trying some sort of negative SEO tactics.
But this shouldn't really effect your clients site, just disavow and move on is my advice
-
I must not be explaining it well.
Here's the penalized site: http://www.travelexinsurance.com.
One of the external links Google cited as not being natural that links to the penalized site is: http://content.onlineagency.com/index.aspx?site=6599&tide=769006&last=3111516
In the backlink profile of the penalized site, there are about 100 different backlinks pointing to www.travelexinsurance.com from content.onlineagency.com/...
So when I visit http://content.onlineagency.com/index.aspx?site=6599&tide=769006&last=3111516 it actually is displaying content from http://www.starmandstravel.com/787115_6599.htm, which you can see after clicking the "Home" button. That company is a legit travel agency who I assume knows nothing about content.onlineagency.com and is not involved in all that.
And that's the case for every link from content.onlineagency.com.
So I'm just wondering if someone can help me understand what sort of tactic content.onlineagency.com is using. One of my predecessors I fear used some black hat tactics. I fear this might be a part of that.
Hopefully it makes more sense.
-
So if I understand you correctly, your client who's penalized is www.starmandstravel.com, and you're seeing in their GWT backlinks list a ton of links from content.onlineagency.com/index.aspx?site=6599 and one or both of the other parameters are varying, right?
So then your question is: where are the onlineagency pages linked from?
-
My guess is no. I'm fairly new here, but I'm sure my predecessor would not have.
Or are you asking if these websites who link to use are using canonical URLs? My guess in that case is they wouldn't be either.
-
Are you using canonical URLs?
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
-
Assessing the true value of a backlink
I want to start a discussion about assessing the true value of a backlink. Here's a scenario: I've just started working on SEO for a new client. Once I've got the strategy stuff out of the way, I like to start by looking at backlinks that competitors have. I use Moz OSE (and other tools) and filter by followed links to the root domain. This gives a good starting sense of where competitors are getting links from. As I start to explore those links, I see some black-hat (or grey-hat) practices at play: display:none links, footer links, sidebar links, comment spam, etc. The problem I have is, there seems to be no way of knowing whether or not those links are responsible for boosting the competitors rankings. They come from sites that have good DA and PA, yet we're told that tactics like display:none and comment spam will either get those links devalued or may cause some sort of manual action. My question is, how do others evaluate the full spectrum of the value a link has that goes beyond trust, authority, and citation flow?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SEMbyotic2 -
Bad keywords sending traffic my site, but can't find the source. Advice?
Hi! My site seems to be the target of negative SEO (or some ancient black hat work that's just now coming out of the woodwork). We're getting traffic from keywords like "myanmar girls" and "myanmar celebrities" that just started in late June and only directs to our homepage. I can't seem to find the source of the traffic, though (Analytics just shows it as "Google," "Bing," and "Yahoo" even though I can't find our site showing up for these terms in search results). Is there any way to ferret out the source besides combing through every single link that is directing to us in Webmaster Tools? I'm not even sure that GWT has picked up on it since this is fairly new, and I'd really love to nip this in the bud. Thoughts? Thanks in advance!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | 199580 -
Getting Back Links When I Cannot Add Outbound Links to My Site
I have a collection of websites that I do not control in terms of content or page creation/editing. As a result, I have no way to add links to outside sites on any existing or new pages. Given this, how can I go about finding and requesting other sites link back to our sites/pages if I cannot offer them a link to their site in return? I know that content is a link driver, but I do not control the content, so I cannot develop new content to help drive links. I appreciate any help/advice any experts can provide.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | dsinger0 -
I need to find a website I can get guest blogs on for a removal website.
Hello everyone, I need to find a website I can guess blog posts on. Please can someone tell me where I need to look and how the process works: E.g Do i email the blogger saying I'll pay him? Also what categories would work well for removal website. www.van-plus.com to be precise. Thanks in advance!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vanplus1 -
Google penalty having bad sites maybe and working on 1 good site ?!!!
I have a list of websites that are not spam.. there are ok sites... just that I need to work on the conent again as the sites content might not be useful for users at 100%. There are not bad sites with spammy content... just that I want to rewrite some of the content to really make great websites... the goal would be to have great content to get natual links and a great user experience.. I have 40 sites... all travel sites related to different destinations around the world. I also have other sites that I haven't worked on for some time.. here are some sites: www.simplyparis.org
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | sandyallain
www.simplymadrid.org
www.simplyrome.org etc... Again there are not spam sites but not as useful as they coul become... I want to work on few sites only to see how it goes.... will this penalise my sites that I am working on if I have other sites with average content or not as good ? I want to make great content good for link bait 🙂0 -
Is my SEO consultant doing blackhat tactic?
Hi, Can someone tell me what my SEO consultant is doing? I have engaged a SEO company in Singapore for my site: Http://www.rollerblinds.com.sg The thing is for the 1st 2 months, it is ranking well but for the next 4 months it is out of google. I noticed my links are on some strange article site. Is he doing blackhat tactic, I have been paying monthly for many months now with no result. Shall I continue to pay and how can I recover?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | chanel270 -
How do I know what links are bad enough for the Google disavow tool?
I am currently working for a client who's back link profile is questionable. The issue I am having is, does Google feel the same way about them as I do? We have no current warnings but have had one in the past for "unnatural inbound links". We removed the links that we felt were being referred to and have not received any further warnings, nor have we noticed any significant drop in traffic or rankings at any point. My concern is that if I work towards getting the more ominous looking links removed (directories, reciprocal links from irrelevant sites etc.), either manually or with the disavow tool, how can I be sure that I am not removing links that are in fact helping our campaign? Are we likely to suffer from the next Penguin update if we chose to proceed without moving the aforementioned links? or is Google only likely to target the serious black hat links (link farms etc.)? Any thoughts or experiences would be greatly appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BallyhooLtd0 -
Are there *truly* any white-hat link-building tactics?
With our new knowledge -- yielded from J.C. Penney, Forbes, Overstock, content farms, et al -- that the link graph/link profile can be algorithmically mined by search engines to uncover non-natural patterns of links occuring over time, is there any level of link-building that is safe to engage in? If so, then what are those "bright white"-hat tactics that are 100% safe for a site to use?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jcolman0