Need help determining how toxic this backlinking is
-
Okay, so my company has an SEO company already. However, we're trying to get people internally cross-trained on SEO, so I've been selected to kind of do a crash-course in SEO and look at our site from a new perspective. We are in the process of getting our old site ported over to a new one we've also created on Wordpress. I've been doing a LOT of online research, but this is definitely a very new field for me.
Here's our current site: www.cedrsolutions.com
So, here's my question: While doing some SEO-optimizing automatic tests on our site, I came across some weird backlinks to one of our pages: http://www.cedrsolutions.com/dental-office-manual/
http://en.calameo.com/read/003415063525a885728e7
Here's the thing: We didn't make this. It looks HORRIBLE, the copy is gibberish, and it looks weird. Doing some more searching, I started finding stuff like this
https://lessons.engrade.com/dentalofficemanual/1
http://pumosust.over-blog.com/2014/09/how-to-get-customized-dental-office-manuals-online.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egMonqa5eRo (???? I don't even understand how someone did this, the photo in the book is just the photo from our page)
http://www.tuugo.in/Companies/cedr-hr-solutions/0150008267958#!
Conservatively, I'd say there's at least 100 of these types of pages out there linking to us, maybe more
Then I started finding comments on blogs
http://blog.kenexa.com/hr-focus-on-increasing-revenue-not-just-managing-costs/
So, my first thought is obviously "Okay, these are gibberish, over-optimized, and ALL of them are trying to bump our relevancy for something along the lines "Dental office manual"
EDIT: I should also mention these links ALL just appeared out of thin air. A whole bunch in early July, and more in mid-September. They didn't just slowly accumulate.
So (finally) here's my questions:
1. Did our current SEO company probably do this? The only thing they've mentioned before is that they were going to create some backlinks for us, with an assurance they'd be genuine links that would build Pagerank without getting us slapped by Google.
2. Am I correct in my opinion that these are toxic links that could get manual action taken against us by Google? I'm not sure how LIKELY it is (as again, there's only about 100 or so) but they seem to be violating multiple Google principles. With how often Google pushes out algorithm updates I feel like we could still get busted for this even if the links are like 6-7 months old and not sending us much traffic.
I'm asking because I've been told to set up a conference call with the account manager at our current SEO place, and I want to know what I'm getting into. I might be wildly over-reacting about nothing, I might be kind of right but it's not that bad, or I might be 100% right and what they are doing is not cool at all, and could kill our SEO if we get busted by Google. I'm not sure which it is.
Checking Google webmaster tools and analytics, I don't see any drops in organic traffic between July '14 and now, so I don't think we've been smacked by Google algorithm-wise. And there's no notice from Google of manual action being taken, or anything being wrong with our backlinks, so I'm fairly confident these links haven't hurt us at least as of today. I'm just worried going forward (especially when we finish the new site and submit it to Google to get crawled, the URLs will be the same)
Sorry this was so long. I'm kind of nervous, honestly. On the one hand, these backlinks seem SUPER sketchy to me, but on the other hand, I don't KNOW any of this stuff. It sounds kind of ridiculous for me, someone with maybe 3 weeks of intense Google-education in SEO, to be questioning something a real, established SEO company is doing. I mean, I kind of have to assume they know better, right?
-
I'd say you need to get a full overview of what's been done so far - and sign-off on anything that they're planning to do for you in the future (including tactics, target media and so on). You might find this helpful: http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/what-is-nofollow/
See the bit here, under "How do we get natural links" http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/unnatural-links/
Switch to PR focused work, in the future, where your submissions are editorially reviewed (sure, some will be rejected - yet this is all about quality over quantity).
This is a good rundown of what not to do: http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/seo-to-avoid/
-
That is tough to say. I think there is more likely the sites themselves can be punished for having poor quality content, but, that being said Penguin is becoming ever more advanced and you can be penalized for being in a bad neighborhood. So far that refers specifically to link profiles, but I don't put it passed Google to start including content in that evaluation as well. My rule of thumb is always go with your gut, because your instinct is usually spot on. If you get bad vibes then do whatever you can to make sure you are satisfied with the end result.
-
Thanks, you've answered my question! I understand what you're saying, building a backlink profile in this way isn't automatically bad, per se, if it's done really well. But we seem to be in agreement that these were done very poorly.
I'll ask about getting them re-written, of course since this is the first we're seeing of these links, it's entirely possible our SEO company will deny ever making them. Of course, in that case, it's either a poorly done negative-SEO campaign, or someone REALLY likes CEDR and is just incapable of expressing it correctly.
I know removal is the best step, and then disavowal. Do you agree then, that these links are a penalty threat from Google if just left alone and Google later notices them? I'm assuming that's why you didn't mention just ignoring them as an option.
-
Yes, you are not incorrect. As I said, this is not necessarily bad, but it isn't necessarily good. The tactic isn't bad, but the implementation is bad. If you can rewrite the content, that would be my recommendation. Before you disavow, ask the webmaster of the other sites to remove the links if you feel that is what you want to do.
If the current company you are working with published these articles, you should remind them of Hummingbird, Panda and Penguin. I am not saying these links are best practice, but there are alternatives to disavowing them. Without knowing what the rest of your link profile is I cannot say that removing them would be my first jump. I would first try to fix the content and anchor text, second I would ask whichever webmaster has links you can't salvage to remove them, and my last resort would be to disavow them.
-
I'm not disagreeing (I mean, I asked for opinions, so I appreciate your input) but I feel like a lot of what I've read about what kinds of things annoy Google's algorithm, these posts are like Exhibit A for how to do everything incorrectly.
-
Most of the posts are either written by a robot script or a non-english speaker. With how insanely keyword optimized the writing is, and how a lot of it is borderline gibberish, it just screams "SPAM" to me. My understanding the rule of thumb with Google's algorithm is "If it feels really spammy to you, it will come across as spammy to Google"
-
Is it really just kind of frowned-upon for an SEO company to just slap our name on content that like, without discussing it with us first? That fake CEDR e-book, and the Youtube video, those look like a 12 year old made it. A potential customer who sees that kind of stuff isn't going to think "Well, these guys sure seem competent and like someone I can trust with my livelihood!" I would think doing this sort of thing without telling us would be a HUGE red-flag no-no.
-
Bottom line though, your feeling is that these links are very unlikely to get us penalized at all, SEO-wise?
-
-
These all look like directory listings and guest blog posts. I don't believe they are toxic, but I also don't think they are the best kind of links either. I would have a chat with your seo company and give them the clear understanding of exactly what you want your content to sound like and where you want it to be.
Guest blogging is not an unacceptable form of backlinking. In my opinion it is just not 100% best practice anymore. You want high authority natural links.
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
-
Buying domains for the backlink profile: Still a white hat strategy?
There's a DR 51 domain we'd like to buy, with a quality backlink profile. We'd like to 301 redirect this domain to our DR 46 domain, and possibly setup something to make the user experience smooth for people expecting the old domain. Is this still a white hat strategy? How would you calculate the value/what kind of offer to make?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | catbur0 -
Spamming Backlinks - doesn't seem to be detrimental enough?
Hi, We have noticed sites such as http://www.rattanfurnitureoutlet.co.uk & http://www.supremerattanfurniture.co.uk/ have huge numbers of what appear to be spam like and invaluable backlinks yet they have both maintained a great ranking for their search terms despite this. We would like to know why, does the good outweigh the bad so to speak?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | birdmarketing0 -
I need a lot of content completed in a short amount of time. Suggestions on where to look?
I'm looking for writers to write content for 1000+ key words. 300-400 words per keyword. I would like this done by the end of July. Any suggestions or recommendations on where to find a team that can produce quality content in that amount of time? Thank you!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | cloudhasher0 -
Our site has too many backlinks! How can we do a bad backlink audit?
Webmaster Tools is saying we have close to 24 million links to our site. The site has been around since the mid 90s and has accumulated all these links since. We also have our own network of sites that have links in their templates to our main site. I'm fighting to get these links "nofollow"'d but upper management seems scared to alter this practice. This past year we've found our rankings have dropped significantly and suspect it's due to some spammy backlinks or being penalized for doing an accidental link scheme network. 24 million links is too many to check manually for using the disavow tool and it seems that bulk services out there to check backlinks can't even come close. What's an SEO to do?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | seoninjaz0 -
Site dropping in rank even through there are more backlinks being added
Hello, One of my client's sites is ranking lower than he should. This happened when we took off backlinks (20 little blogs, several site-wide paid links. It really dropped the site, but it had to be done. Since then we've increased his # of root domains by 10% through white hat link building in his non-competitive niche, and rankings are still poor. I know that's not much in the way of added backlink value, but we're working on it. My question is, how have the recent (and coming) updates possibly effected us. We want to take the remaining problem areas off right away, but another drop in traffic is not a good idea. Even though the blogs (see below) have no backlinks of themselves, they cause drops when taken off) He still has -20 little blog backlinks w/ a quarter of them being exact match anchor text.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW
-1 sitewide paid link - an image, exact match alt tag anchor text
-1 non-site-wide paid links that is an image near the footer, exact match alt tag anchor text.
-3 links on a domain, this one looks fairly editorial, but there are a bunch of paid links on that page. Changing to non-exact-match anchor text
-2 links on two domains that look completely editorial with no other paid links on that page. non-exact-match anchor text -70 backlinks total with about 1/3 being problematic. How does this site look in regards to updates and when to take links off without tanking our site even more? Thanks.0 -
Website Vulnerability Leading to Doorway Page Spam. Need Help.
Keywords he is ranking for , houston dwi lawyer, houston dwi attorney and etc.. Client was acquired in June and since then we have done nothing but build high quality links to the website. None of our clients were dropped/dinged or impacted by the panda/penguin updates in 2012 or updates previously published via Google. Which proves we do quality SEO work. We went ahead and started duplicating links which worked for other legal clients and 5 months later this client is either dropping or staying in local maps results and we are performing very badly in organic results. Some more history..... When he first engaged our company we switched his website from a CMS called plone to word press. During our move I ran some searches to figure out which pages we needed to 301 and we came across many profile pages or member pages created on the clients CMS (PLONE). These pages were very spammy and linked to other plone sites using car model,make,year type keywords (ex:jeep cherokee dealerships). I went through these sites to see if they were linking back and could not find any back links to my clients website. Obviously nobody authorized these pages, they all looked very hackish and it seemed as though there was a vulnerability on his plone CMS installation which nobody caught. Fast forward 5 months and the newest OSE update is showing me a good 50+ back links with unrelated anchor text back links. These anchor text links are the same color as the background and can only be found if you hover your mouse over certain areas of the site. All of these sites are built on Plone and allot of them are linked to other businesses or community websites. These websites obviously have no clue they have been hacked or are being used for black hat purposes. There are dozens of unrelated anchor text links being used on external websites which are pointing back to our clients website. Examples: <a class="clickable title link-pivot" title="See top linking pages that use this anchor text">autex Isuzu, </a><a class="clickable title link-pivot" title="See top linking pages that use this anchor text">Toyota service department ratings, </a><a class="clickable title link-pivot" style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;" title="See top linking pages that use this anchor text">die cast BMW and etc..</a> Obviously the first step is to use the disavow link tool, which will be completed this week. The second step is to take some feedback from the SEO community. It seems like these pages are automatically created using some type of bot. It will be very tedious if we have to continually remove these links. I hope there is a way to notify Google that these websites are all plone and have a vulnerability, which black hats are using to harm the innocent... If i cannot get Google to handle this, then the only other option is to start fresh with a new domain name. What would you do in this situation. Your help is greatly appreciated. Thank you
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | waqid0 -
Will cleaning up old pr articles help serps?
For a few years we published articles with anchor text backlinks to about 10 different article submission sites. Each article was modified to create similar different articles. We have about 50 completely unique articles. This worked really well for our serps until google panda & penguin updates. I am looking for advice on whether I should have a major clean up of the published articles and if so should I be deleting them, removing or renaming anchor text backlinks? Any advice on what strategy would work best would be appreciated as I don't want to start deleting backlinks and making it worse. We used to enjoy position 1 but are now at 12-15 so have least most of our traffic.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | devoted2vintage0 -
We seem to have been hit by the penguin update can someone please help?
HiOur website www.wholesaleclearance.co.uk has been hit by the penguin update, I'm not a SEO expert and when I first started my SEO got court up buying blog links, that was about 2 years ago and since them and worked really hard to get good manual links.Does anyone know of a way to dig out any bad links so I can get them removed, any software that will give me a list of any of you guys want to do take a look for me? I'm willing to pay for the work.Kind RegardsKarl.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | wcuk0