Huge amount of backlinks detected - what to do ?
-
The websites that use Yotpo review solution can display product galleries like this //imgur.com/4dHUh7O - orginal source page: http://skibox.fr/fr/veste-de-pluie-dynastar-long-shell.html
Every product in the gallery generates a link to https://yotpo.com such as https://yotpo.com/go/eAaQNjJh
This generate a huge amount of links detected in Google Search Console (GWMT) of yotpo.com
And every of those links redirects 301 to a page of the website using Yotpo review solution. Example: https://yotpo.com/go/eAaQNjJh redirects to http://skibox.fr/fr/batons-de-ski-leki-worldcup-lite-slalom-4683.html?#.VymNdr5_TwY
It seems to be similar to shorten URL links (that are legitimate), but I am not about the influence of this, what do you think ?
- Is this really influencing (in bad) the (potential) rankings of https://www.yotpo.com subdomain pages?
- What would you recommend to do?
-
Hi YotpoKaiser,
Thanks for the question. I think this brings up a really good point when it comes to the review platform space.
As you mentioned - it appears that Yotpo is doing this to track clicks back to you (that's why they 301 redirect).
If I were in your shoes, I would take one of 3 approaches (from least to most risk-averse):
- Don't worry about the links - There are plenty of websites out there that spin up copies of your website that the engineers at Google are brilliant enough to filter those out of your Google Webmaster Tools (GWT), they'll eventually get these Yotpo ones as well.
- Email the support team at Yotpo and see if they can "no-index, no-follow" the 301 redirect links that go back to your website. This is happening to you and it's happening to everyone else who is using the system. If they really want to provide a long-term review solution, this is INVALUABLE feedback that they can get.
- Disavow the links. As Eric and Deacyde above mentioned - you can go through a full analysis of the links and disavow them or disavow the entire domain.
I like taking a data-driven approach, so here's how I would decide:
-
Look at the impression data in GWT from Before/After you started using Yotpo. Look at a few of your best performing pages, that also have reviews pointing to them (very important), and see if (seasonally-adjusted*) the impressions are down.
-
If you started using Yotpo>90 days ago, you cant using this technique due to the data limitations in GWT.
-
I would pick a handful (maybe 10) pages to review first - look at ones that are the highest traffic/impressions.
-
If Impressions have bottomed out (seasonally adjusted) for these pages - disavow the domain AND email the support team at Yotpo. Here are the instructions straight from Google. Use the domain:yotpo.com flag in your file.
-
Look at the Organic session/user data in Google Analytics (GA) from before after you started using Yotpo. Use the same criteria here as you would GWT, about 10 pages, that have a decent number of monthly visits (>300).
-
If your data is small - this probably won't help much as any change could cause a big swing in it.
-
If your Organic sessions have bottomed out (seasonally adjusted) for these pages - disavow the domain AND email the support team at Yotpo.
-
If you are unsure about #1 and #2 - email the support team at Yotpo and ask them to noindex/nofollow their 301 redirects. They owe it to you as a customer NOT to mess up your SEO.
-
If you are ok with a little risk, then don't worry about it for now and monitor continuously.
- A word on seasonally adjusted data - I worked with a Ski Gear/Equipment company in the past and we saw very dramatic swings in traffic from November - February. You are probably seeing something similarly. If your work with Yotpo started during the "high season", I'd recommend seasonally adjusting it (divide the monthly session data by the % that Google Trends gives for that target keyword, in country. Yes - it's ALOT of work, but it will give you a precise idea). Since you posted this question in April, I presume that's soon after you started it and I would recommend only having your "before" traffic start sometime in Mid-March, after the high-season and into the shoulder season/summer. Weather and all other seasonality does play a factor here, but without the data telling you what's going on, you could either over/under panic and no one likes extra anxiety!
Let me know if this helps!
-
As Eric has mentioned above, you really should be doing backlink audits every month or every other month just to keep your site healthy and free from possible penalties.
Using a spreadsheet, entering in all backlink urls, fill in all other data you can find on them, DA, PA, backlink profile themselves, are they a directory, comment spam or are they even relevant to your site, or are they using many exact match keyword anchor texts and especially check if the backlink is still active, does it have a php error and so forth.
Fill out the spreadsheet to the best of your ability and go through and remove site's that are considered no good.
Be careful using disavow tool, google starts working on it once you upload it, if you made a mistake you can reupload the disavow file with updated changes. Make sure you have a copy of all disavow files you send to google, since it will help you very much in the future.
-
The best way to deal with new backlinks that you see is to evaluate them--determine whether or not they are natural links. If they're not natural, then consider disavowing them. If those links are low quality (low Domain Authority and Page Authority), then you might also consider disavowing them.
Besides disavowing them, you may want to contact the site owner and ask them to remove them.
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
-
Backlink (which one is better)
Hi, for guest posting which Anchor is better for my brand website? 1)Naked Anchor text (e.g according to www.example.co.uk) OR Branded Anchor text? (e.g according to Example, which can be clicked to www.example.co.uk ) Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KINSHUN0 -
Minimum amount of content for Ecommerce pages?
Hi Guys, Currently optimizing my e-commerce store which currently has around 100 words of content on average for each category page. Based on this study by Backlinko the more content the better: http://backlinko.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/02_Content-Total-Word-Count_line.png Would you say this is true for e-commerce pages, for example, a page like this: http://www.theiconic.com.au/yoga-pants/ What benefits would you receive with adding more content? Is it basically more content, leads to more potential long-tail opportunity and more organic traffic? Assuming the content is solid and not built just for SEO reasons. Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seowork2140 -
Site not showing up in search - was hacked - huge comment spam - cannot connect Webmaster tools
Hi Moz Community A new client approached me yesterday for help with their site that used to rank well for their designated keywords, but now is not doing well. Actually, they are not on Google at all. It's like they were removed by Google. There are not reference to them when searching with "site: url". I investigated further and discovered the likely problem . . . 26 000 spam comments! All these comments have been removed now. I clean up this Wordpress site pretty well. However, I want to connect it now to Google webmaster tools. I have admin access to the WP site, but not ftp. So I tried using Yoast to connect. Google failed to verify the site. So the I used a file uploading console to upload the Google html code instead. I check that the code is there. And Google still fails to verify the site. It is as if Google is so angry with this domain that they have wiped it completely from search and refuse to have any dealings with it at all. That said, I did run the "malware" check or "dangerous content" check with them that did not bring back any problems. I'm leaning towards the idea that this is a "cursed" domain in Google and that my client's best course of action is to build her business around and other domain instead. And then point that old domain to the new domain, hopefully without attracting any bad karma in that process (advice on that step would be appreciated). Anyone have an idea as to what is going on here?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlistairC0 -
Huge e-commerce site migration - what to do with product pages?
My very large e-commerce client is about to undergo a site migration in which every product page URL will be changing. I am already planning my 301 redirect process for the top ~1,000 pages on the site (categories, products, and more) but this will not account for the more than 1,000 products on the site. The client specified that they don't want to implement much more than 1,000 redirects so as to avoid impacting site performance. What is the best way to handle these pages without causing hundreds of 404 errors on site migration day? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FPD_NYC0 -
How To Detect Primary Site With Duplicate Domains?
I'm working with some backlink data, and I've run into different domains that host the same exact content on the same IP. They're not redirecting to each other, just looks like they're hosting the same content on differnet virtual hostnames. One example is: borealcanada.ca borealcanada.com borealcanada.org www.borealcanada.ca www.borealcanada.com www.borealcanada.org www.borealecanada.ca I'm trying to consolidate this data and choose which is the primary domain. In this example, it appears www.borealcanada.ca has a high number of indexed pages and also ranks first for "boreal canada". However, I'm trying to think of a metric I can use to definitively/systematically handle this (using SEO Tools or something like it). Anyone have ideas on which metric might help me determine this for a large number of sites?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | brettgus0 -
Are This Site's Backlinks Hurting Us?
Google WMT reports more than 198,000 backlinks to our site (www.audiobooksonline.com) from http://dilandau.eu/? We have never been notified by Google of any penalty, malware notification... but continue to struggle to get our page 1 Google ranking back since Panda. Could these backlinks be hurting our Google ranking? Should I implement a disavow rule for http://dilandau.eu/?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lbohen0 -
Backlinking from a Canonical Page to the Non-Canonical Doman - Wrong Signals?
Hi Mozzers, Let's say you have www.mysite.com/page, which is a duplicate of www.yoursite.com/page. www.yousite.com/page has a rel canonical link identifying www.mysite.com/page as the original source. www.mysite.com/page has a followed backlink going towards www.yousite.com/home-page. mysite.com has a DA of 44
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W
yoursite.com has a DA of 33 Google has chosen to index www.yoursite.com/page instead of www.mysite.com/page. Is the followed backlink responsible for the wrong page being indexed? Thanks!0 -
Your Top 5 Backlink Types for 2013
Hi, Share your thoughts about Your Top 5 Backlink Types for 2013, what's the best this year and what will be worthless.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | aivaras0