I have over 23,000 inbound links from Booksie.com
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I have recently had a HUGE SEO issue costing my organization 250K a month in sales - looking under all rocks now - this is something that has existed and I cannot find any issues related with the self-publishing website, but thought y'all may know.
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Hi Michelle,
As Robert has said below, it's hard to say for sure if those links are hurting you without having a closer look at your website. However it does sound like an unusual amount of links to have if you're not aware of any kind of a partnership between your website and Booksie.com.
I did notice that on pages such as this:
http://www.booksie.com/young_adult/novel/suzannee/beating-the-player/chapter/1
There are comments which link back to profile pages. Without looking at your site, I'd venture a guess that these are the types of pages that the links are coming from? If so, it may be that someone is automatically creating the profiles and linking to you from them. If this is the case, then these probably are links that Google are not going to like.
If you can determine that they are definitely low quality links, then you should try to remove them and if you can't, you should disavow them using Google Webmaster Tools. This blog post may help you learn more about this topic:
http://moz.com/blog/guide-to-googles-disavow-tool
I hope that helps!
Paddy
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Hello Michelle,
This definitely sounds like spammy behavior (and is likely being treated as such by Googlebot). Without access to your site and determining the relevant link profiles, it's hard to say for sure. That being said, it sounds like removal might be your best bet in this situation as at best you are receiving very low link quality from so many inbounds and at worst you are being punished for something you didn't ask for.
Based on the function of booksie.com, this might be reflective of your organization being represented in the footer of all published works - something to consider.
I'm sorry I can't offer much more insight into this particular dilemma without further information, but it is probably in your best interests to consider removing it as a back-linking partner.
A site audit or consulting with an SEO firm might help clarify the situation further.
Hope this helps and best of luck - no one likes seeing losses as a result of poor linking practices from any source!
Rob
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