Can bad traffic by association ever be a good thing?
-
Back in May, my client's website www.mfcomm.co.uk was hacked. Pages were added to the site which instantly received backlinks & traffic. The secuirty flaw was plugged & offending pages deleted within the following weeks. I also created 301 redirects for the most popular pages because the domain appeared to be affected by the increase in 404 errors.
Reviewing stats & Moz reports, I notice fresh backlinks - one from http://forum.kolodec.info/. By association to the spurious page that was created as part of the security breach, should I distance the domain with any traffic from all referring sites?
Reviewing http://forum.kolodec.info/ in Open Site Explorer it only gets spam score = 4
So my question is, should I count all traffic by association as bad traffic & blacklist the domain or be more lenient? More the point, what would Google think?
Regards, Terry
-
I think that you should check is this real visit or fake one. Check HTTP access logs about such referrer and see in Analytics (or other website analytics software that you used). Also visit URL where backlink should be. Then:
- In case of link to hacked pages - disavow ASAP. Bad guys make backlinks to hacked webpages to get higher position in SERP. But this could change your linking profile. And in some situation you may face Penguin algo filter.
- In case of link to other pages and source look shady - disavow ASAP. This could be even revenge for removed hack. Also can bring Penguin.
- In case of link to non-existing link i.e. bot traffic - leave. This is case when bot make "fake visit" tricking Analytics to count it. And webmasters go to inspect source. This is "curiosity driven visit", but messing your Analytics statistics.
- In case of regular link that is relevant - keep it. Example - i have link from Pakisanian forum about people discussing something like type X vs. type Y. And someone share link from mine site explaining "here is difference between them" in article that is exactly about their discussion.
So until you didn't see original source can be anything. Also please check question and answers here:
https://moz.com/community/q/is-there-value-in-disavowing-links-if-you-there-is-no-google-penalty
so disavowing isn't tool that you only use in case of penalty. You can use it even w/o penalty to make link profile clean as possible.
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
-
SEO traffic + backlinks question
Let's say I want to write a guest post for a website that is relevant to my website. Should i guest post on a website with high traffic but the traffic country is not mine? (eg// My website sells products in Canada only, should i guest post on a high traffic site from India?) Or would it be better to find a lower traffic website to guest post on but their organic traffic comes from Canada? Thanks!
Link Building | | chrisjordan0i10 -
How does a business have a link back where I can't see the anchor text?
So, I'm running competitor websites through Open Site Explorer and following the link from Moz to where their link is coming from. It has the anchor text 'Christmas Gifts'. When I go to that page there is no mention of this anchor text. No mention of that persons website. No display ad's that could be providing that link. How is this link pointing to their page?
Link Building | | Byron_Bay_Gifts0 -
Getting free search engine traffic and monetize it with google adsense
Hello moz comunity, I have a couple of websites with 10-30 articles on each, 700+ words, images and so on.Which steps I need to take in order to see a faster free search engine traffic?All of these articles I optimized with seopressor and all in one seo pack.I want to know how much time and money I need to put in the traffic process for each site.I mean, how much it takes to see 500 visitors/day in my analytics for each website. I want to monetize that traffic with Google Adsense and amazon links+skimliks.Thank you !
Link Building | | Sebastyan220 -
Where I can find a backlink community exchange?
I know is difficult but it's worth to try. I am looking for a community eager to exchange links. I am in the venue rent for weeding and conferences in London and I would be delighted to find other people to exchange the links. At the moment my page is PR4 I have seen communities for games where they exchange anything, why don't link exchange!!!!
Link Building | | lnietob0 -
Are the following considered bad links for Link Building.
I've been doing a lot of research lately on link building & I've read a lot about having a diverse amount of links. Social links, Blog links, comment links, footer links, No follow links, Directory links as well as links with Anchor text URL match, brand match, partial brand match, non-descriptive, and with keywords. But there is a lot of talk of removing those links that look like a site that's built just for link building purposes.... but Directories are basically built for link building are they not? I'm wondering if anyone can tell me if they feel links from the following directories would be bad links. (Non-Paid) http://www.yoganza.com http://www.wkool.com http://www.wee-directory.com http://www.voicelet.com www.hotfrog.ca http://www.webdirectorieslist.com http://multiplelistingboard.com http://mozdirectory.net http://freedirectorypr.info Industry specific below: http://bestautolinks .com http://automotivedome.com http://automobilebuzz.com http://craigsautolinks.com Thanks so much for the help!
Link Building | | DCochrane0 -
Blog comments good for SEO
Does anyone use/recommend the use of anchor text links in blog comments (on sites relevant to your sites market)? Thanks, Mark
Link Building | | DenverKelly0 -
Is buying blog reviews a good idea?
Hi there, I was wondering if it's worth investing on buying blog reviews for me site, by using sites like buyblogreviews.com? I've been making sure the blog sites are relevant and has good rankings, and not too many outgoing links. I also make sure they write about something interesting related to my site, that should get people's attention and gain more traffic. Any thoughts? Thanks.
Link Building | | eugenecomputergeeks0 -
How can I Improve My Site Page Rank?
How can I improve my site page rank? We were a three now a two as of today. How can I get it back to three at least or more?
Link Building | | AppleCapitalGroup0