Are Millions of back links from 3 domains bad?
-
I have a client that has 4 individual domains with duplicate content mirroring certain sections of the main site as well as the home page. I understand the duplicate content issues but have a different question that I would like advice on. I am seeing 3 of these domains back linking to the main domain causing over 5 million backlinks. Is this bad and can it hurt rankings? One domain has 3,215,658 backlinks and another has 1,553,947 backlinks.
I have experienced this in the past with a different client, where sister companies back linked using the exact same anchor text caused over 5 million back links. This client experienced a drop of their top 2 keywords where they dropped from # 1 & 2 positions in Google SERPs to the 82nd position.
Appreciate feedback
-
Happy to be of help,
-
Duly noted Thomas and completely agree. Thanks for your feedback!
-
"In my opinion, it would be best to remove the masking in the DNS and have the client implement a 301 for each of the alias domains to the main site. Is there a better way of correcting this issue vs. a poor way?"
-
Once you have fixed this problem, you will want Google to crawl it think about what is going to occur, and you have to decide if pointing one of these things at your site will be spammy
-
You have to consider rather or not the other domains should even be pointed at the best domain that you have. In my opinion, many times people 301 redirect sites that could be set as a 404 or 410 to get link juice but Google has stated if they are all redirected to the main page or our non-relevant, I guess this includes spamming domains they will act as a soft 404. So, in my opinion, do not redirect the domains unless they are highly valuable.
-
it seems like the content is going to be identical, so they are relevant in the manner of speaking. I would be very cautious in thinking you're going to gain anything by pointing mirror domains at each other.
-
Do the 301 on the server level if you are going to do that is faster than a DNS level a 301.
-
Creating an alias is definitely not the way to do it.
I hope this is of help,
Tom
-
-
Thank you Thomas and Moosa for your feedback. After getting a little more background, these are sites the client once had in existence and have them pointing to the main site but retain their domain throughout – so they are actually aliases.
I am now thinking they set up the DNS for the aliases to mask and pointed to the main site and have unintentionally created duplicate content and multiple backlinks.
In my opinion, it would be best to remove the masking in the DNS and have the client implement a 301 for each of the alias domains to the main site. Is there a better way of correcting this issue vs a poor way?
-
If it looks like a bad set of links, smells like a bad set of links and tastes like a bad set of links - it is probably a bad set of links. If you have control of the other sites, clean them up, otherwise this is a simple fix with a domain based disavow for the sites in question.
-
If the domains have identical content, you probably know what to do (I guessed from your questions’ description). As far as the links are concern, personally speaking this is a red flag to Google I mean why one website will link back to another for thousands of time? This didn’t sounds natural to me.
This usually happens when the link is in the footer or side bar and which is why the one link became multiple technically and this isn’t a good idea when it comes to Google. My advice would be to remove links and build some natural and healthy links coming from different domains and you probably will see an increase in web rankings.
Just a thought!
-
I cannot imagine a situation in which one site needs to link to another 5 million times and another 3.2 and then 1.5. Million if you are talking about time or Newsweek or the Huffington Post linking to each other?
With actually related content and links should be in place then no worries but if you're talking about a site like
I Would be very concerned and start disavowing things but without understanding the size of the sites and how many other links it has from what sources and being able to look at the link profile.
Getting that many links from one source make this sound incredibly look very suspicious in my opinion. Unless that site is a well-known brand.
I would need to look at the domain and understand what type of site you are talking about two tell you, but reciprocal linking is considered a no-no unless it is warranted.
It sounds to me like somebody either had negative SEO or spent a lot of money on fiver. Creating bad back links.
How many of the URLs are actually related to what the site is about or the pages they are linking to? If they're all related you have nothing to worry about if the site has 5 million pages it still sounds suspicious but I'm giving you the best case scenario.
I hope that is of help,
Tom
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
-
A website with a spam score of 5 is back linking to me. How important is to get that link removed?
There is a website that OSE has identified with a spam score of 5, it back links to me with a very specific key word. How important is it to have them remove those links?
Link Building | | absoauto0 -
External links - link to third party sites
Greetings! Actually, got an doubt on linking to external site. The thing, i have working for roof marketers site. They have covered roof products. Each of the products have a page along with major keyword. Actually, i do link from other pages[internally]. Meaning,if i see any main keywords in different page then will link that to corresponding page/product[internally].This is what i am doing to get page rank. Now, my doubt. Some of the pages are having link with main keywords which directs to the third party site those who are really producing the products. But, i remove the third party-link which has with main keywords. Since already the site/my client site having pages for that main keywords. But client really want that link. meaning the links which they have given to direct to third party[product producer] site. So what should i do at this case. Can i just past RAW link like [http://www.thirdpartysite.com] or what do i do. But my client wants that link to be in content area. Hope you would understand my long explanation and case Please help us. Thank you
Link Building | | Webworld_Norway0 -
Does blocking domains help remove bad links?
I have affiliate websites that are harming for one of 2 reasons: 1. They are on adult websites (and I don't want to be in a bad neighborhood) or 2. They are using a Frameset (so their content appears identical to mine and I am getting "credit" for all their junk links) I cannot get these websites to remove our links so I have blocked their IPs on our production firewall. Is this an effective method or should I do something else with these links?
Link Building | | theLotter0 -
Using a temp redirect or a link to another domain.
Helloooooooo (hey, we're in SEO...surely we need some sound effects as told in dramatic word elongation?) //First - background. I work on a site that does pretty well with search visibility naturally (by 'naturally', I mean it didn't need a lot of optimisation due to the relationships it has with its link network). I work on a site that sells a particular product - green widgets will do - as part of its verticals. Traffic to this section is great, and tends to convert rather well. These green widgets, however, are also part of another site that's part of the client I work for. The larger company was interested to understand what would happen to their conversions if these green widget visits were sent to them instead of staying on-site (namely, that's because they turn a bigger profit over there). So they set up a link on the page on my site to a landing page on theirs. Sure enough, conversions stayed the same on their site, and showed there may be value in keeping that flow active. //Second - question. I see a few options which mainly revolve around not changing anything, but the bigger part of company wants to see that change. My question is this: long term, should I keep the green widgets section of my site there, and use a link that goes to green widgets on the other site, or should I 302 it until they decide on what they want to do with the relationship between the sites? I know...a bit convoluted, but I'd love to get some ideas on what others have experienced in these situations, and what kinds of outcomes can help both sites remain strong. Thanks a ton, guys.
Link Building | | aroach0 -
3-Way Link Exchange Method - Does it Work?
Hello People, I have been searching for a service to help us with our link building and have been talking to a company that uses the 3-Way link exchange method and my question is: Does it work well? Below I pasted an email from this company explaining their method. Thanks in advance to everyone! =============================== Our success rate is about 80%. For one way links, we use 3 way link exchange method for making links. Suppose your site is A. My website is B. My friends website is C and friend's client's site is D. I will add a link on B linking to D and my friend will add a link on C linking to A. This is the procedure we use for making links. We check the quality of the website before putting link on it. The site will be completely relevant, no spam links will present there and the page will be minimum of PR1. ================================
Link Building | | k9byron0 -
If Google truly penalizes sites for bad linking, could my competitor sabotage me?
I am sure this has been discussed before (I am new). I am very paranoid about upsetting Google with questionable SEO practices. The white hat people sometimes claim that google will penalize you for bad linking, paying for links, buying social bookmarks etc. If this is true, could my competitor do this for my site to lower my rankings? I would never know about it until it was too late. If they can't do this to me, then what's to stop me from doing it to my own site? Maybe I am missing something here. Thanks for your input.
Link Building | | frankthetank20 -
Links from erotic domains
hi.. I have purchased several domains which have had a lot of backlinks.. a lot of these backlinks are still active but mainly from pornsites.. do those backlinks affect the websites i links to from the domain? fx. lets say i have the domain abc.com which has a link from sex.com.. Now i want to link from abc.com to def.com - will the link from sex.com affect def.com in any way?
Link Building | | AdForce10 -
Links with very bad anchor text!
I have a client with an online shop with auto parts in Romania, on google.ro. The site is quite old but it hasn't good links. The only links (about 700 seen in OSE) the site have are from porn sites/forum/blogs with all kind of obscene words in the anchor text. Those links were placed by competitors, i am sure of that. Now how Google treats those links? Does he know that those links were not placed by any normal human? Does it gives credit to them or doesn't? The site is on a very competitive niche and it is not ranking so good.
Link Building | | maldiniii0