Are Millions of back links from 3 domains bad?

[dctomten]

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

[BlueprintMarketing]

Happy to be of help,

[dctomten]

Duly noted Thomas and completely agree. Thanks for your feedback!

[BlueprintMarketing]

"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

[dctomten]

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?

[CleverPhD]

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.

[MoosaHemani]

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!

[BlueprintMarketing]

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

Joesexampleautomotive.com,

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