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
-
If I get multiple links from one domain, will that help my rankings?
Hello, I have developed a relationship with a blogger in my niche. He has published a guest post of mine with a link back to my site. Does it make sense to keep providing him with content to build different links from different pages within the same root domain? Thanks! Ricardo
Link Building | | myriad_ricardo0 -
Www to nonwww - domain authority drop build it back up plan
hi there, I recently changed my website over from a www. (or nothing selected so i assume www.). to a non-www. eg webmasters and my website are all on the same page. I contacted as many websites as i could that have my link in there website to update it to the http://websitedotcom the cblocks dropped by 50% (from 12 to 6).
Link Building | | finnmoto
domain authority dropped from 21 to 19. is there a way to see which c-blocks I lost? finnmoto.com.au thanks matt0 -
How can I find all the outbound links from a website domain?
I want to find all the outbound links (basically whatever comes in <a>tag) from a domain (say www.abc.com) as well as all the subdomains under it (say abc.com/a etc). Open Site Explorer provides the inbound links from a website but does not provide any functionality to get all the outbound links from a website. Is it possible to do?</a> <a>Thanks in advance. Deepak Jain</a>
Link Building | | Deepak_Jain0 -
Links from Domain Portfolio Advertising Sites
I recently purchased a domain from a someone with a large portfolio and my site's link is still found on thousands of his one page/low quality sites. I find these links on Open Site Explorer but not in WT. Should I ask the portfolio owner to remove the link from his low quality domain advertising sites?
Link Building | | mj7750 -
Internal Linking - 100 plus links
Hi Everyone, I have a question of how the on-page links are being counted. Say you have a page with a warning of having too many on page links (100+). How are all of these links counted? Let's say there are only 5 links on that page. Do the links on each of those pages count too and so on and so forth? I just want to make sure I have wrapped my head around this correctly. Thanks!
Link Building | | dirigodev0 -
Link to those that link to you? Worthwhile?
We have thousands and thousands of sites that link to a domain we are working on, many with low page authority and high domain (bloggers, forum posts, etc). Has anyone experimented with linking to the pages that link to you (not from your site) but from other means in an effort to boost their quality? I'm not sure what method we would use, maybe some relevant blog comments or social votes. But curious if this could be an effective method.
Link Building | | iAnalyst.com0 -
301 redirect and how linking domains are counted
I have a domain with several great links to it and I decided to change it to a new domain. I did a 301 redirect to the new domain. My question: Let's say youtube.com is linking to the old domain that is being redirected. Do I want to get a new link from youtube to the new domain as well, or is that pointless since there is already one to the old domain? Thanks,
Link Building | | DavidCurrier
Dave0 -
Panda Update: Isn't a link still a link?
I was doing some link building and some SEO's said that the Panda update affected many websites. I am going to use eZineArticles.com as my example. EzineArticles was affected by the Panda update and does not show up in the SERPs as much as before. But they still have doFollow Links coming from the articles I am submitting. QUESTION: Regardless if EzineArticles was affected by the Panda Update, isn't a "Follow Link" still a "Follow Link" OR am I completely wasting my time on this devalued website? Edit: Yes I know a PR 0 page is not as valuable as a PR 9 page. I am asking from the standpoint of the affected Panda Update domains overall.
Link Building | | Francisco_Meza0