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
-
Link Building where link building is dead. Latest tactics in a land of content.
Hello, What is your latest link building techniques considering manual link building is basically dead, and you should really build good content to drive results. Link building has really become less important. It seems to be much more 10X content now. What would you recommend for basic link building considering this besides the 50 first Links video by Rand, which is excellent. Thanks, Bob
Link Building | | BobGW0 -
Are Side Bar Links Bad For SEO?
I'm thinking about adding a sidebar on the right side of my blog post with links to other pages. Is have a sidebar with links to other pages good or bad for SEO.
Link Building | | WilCross0 -
Getting a sitewide links from one domain as oppsed to few links from certain pages, a good, bad or horrible idea?
Hello, I have a website that is performing really well in Google for country specific Real Estate Website. I have had this site for just about 2 years and I have 4600+ indexed pages, and about 50 of my main keywords appear in top 10 results on Google. I have now started a second site with a brand new domain, its only about 2 months old. This one is a Travel website and again its country specific (same country that real estate website is performing well in) and since its still building up the content and has barely a couple of backlinks, I am thinking of adding a linkback to it from my Real Estate Site. Is it a good idea to add a site wide link back from header section of the real estate website to my travel website? Both sites has same country and most of the keywords in both relate to this country. Or will I be better off adding a few text links from few pages with best Page Authority? Or - do you suggest that I do not link the two at all? Both sites are hosted on different servers, with different IP's and one is on windows server created in asp.net while another is a magento site. Any advidce / insight will be much appreciated and thank you in advance.
Link Building | | waituk_sanjeev0 -
What is Followed Linking Root Domains ?
Is it to just have different URLs pointing to my site? I understand that if 1 site posts 5 of my URLs, it only counts as 1. I am just not understanding how I increase this number if link building is now frowned up. Thoughts?
Link Building | | tiffany11030 -
Total Links vs Google Webmaster Site Links
I am interested why the numbers between SEOmoz and Google are so different. In SEOmoz we only show 17,000ish links from 190ish domains. In Google, we show 200,000+ links from 370 domains. Why is there such a dramatic difference?
Link Building | | webspecdesign0 -
Are links from every page of a partners website to my website bad for seo?
I have asked a partner website to link to my website in the Menu Bar. Which has resulted in a link to my website from every page of the partners website (Over 1000 Pages). The link is not a "nofollow" link, it is a regular link. Can this have any negative effects in terms of SEO?
Link Building | | raghavkapur0 -
How to find competition back links
I have used the open source to find my competitors back links, but can't remember the process.
Link Building | | dickslee230 -
Links per Site vs. Domain Authority
Here's a quaint one: 1. Posting follow links on another site helps increase one's domain authority. 2. If I post to the same site/forum with followed links each week, would my domain authority reap a domain authority increase benefit? In short, is there any domain authority benefit to continually post links to a site to which I've already posted a follow link?
Link Building | | GreenCupboards0