Never ending new links and our rank continues to plumet
-
HI everyone,
I've been having an issue with a severe drop in rankings (#2 to #36ish). All of my technicals seem to be ok, however I seem to be getting my images hotlinked (which I have killed in nginx) from these spam like pages that pull and link to an image on my site, then link again with a " . " for the anchor. Even more strange is that these pages are titled and marked up with the same titles and target key words as my site. For example, I just got a link yesterday from a site leadoptimiser - d o tt- me which is IMO a junk site. The title of the page is the same as one of my pages, the page is pulling in images relevant to my page, however the image sources are repos EXCEPT for 2 images from my site which are hotlinked to my pages image and then an additional <a>.</a> link is placed to my website.
I have gotten over 1500 of these links in the past few months from all different domains but the website (layout etc) is always the same. I have been slowly disavowing some of them, but do not want to screw up anything in case these links are already being discounted by G as spam and not affecting my rank. The community seems to be really split on the necessity of disavowing links like these. Because of these links, according to Ahrefs, my backlink profile is 38% anchor text of "." .
Everything else checks out in my own review as well as Moz tools and Ahrefs with very high quality scores etc. Webmasters is fine, indexing is fine, pagespeed insights is in the 90's, ssl is A+.
I've never had to deal with what seems to be an attack of this size.
Thanks.
-
Hi Nikki Thanks for the response.
I too am under the impression that with penguin being live that big G had figured out how to diminish value from spam links and it was no longer an issue. On the flip side The only real thing that's changed over the past 6 months for us is a massive increase in these spam links.
I will try to just bullet out a response so I don't write a novel
- Yes I have checked if it's hacked and it is not.
- I have no manual actions listed
- I did just look for weird traffic sources, and out of the 48 that I do have, the only weird ones are from urls with the spammy links.
- Also to note, our ranking has not dropped in any other search engines, only google. In fact we have improved in Bing and Yahoo.
- Another note. I have disavowed a few porn backlinks we have gotten from sites like gay.interracialsexcinema among others.
- In the past 7 days I have gotten 33 new links from sites like zenlaser.c0oo - thefreestates.commm prowp.neeet and lilucia02.coooommmm slash cantilever-coffee-table dot html.
- Many of the domains that are linking to us are literally created (whois lookup) 15 - 30 days before we get a link. All domains are registered private (except one that i caught just before going private and it was in china) and 90% of them are hiding behind cloudflare.
- An annoying thing is that over 90% of these links are on pages that the url path is the actual same url path or title tag that we are using on our page as well as the h1's and h2's with a "." anchor or the actual path anchor linking back to either our page or an image on our site.
I updated the disavow a few weeks ago but have not added all domains to it as I wanted to knock it down little by little. I have been hesitant to do a one shot one kill approach as I want to be cautious in the event that I make a mistake and cause an even larger issue.
Any further thoughts?
Thanks again!
-
Hello there, according to this article by Rand - https://moz.com/blog/what-if-my-competitors-point-spammy-links-to-my-site Google is pretty good at determining spammy links and if you have such pointing to your site, they should be able to discount these links. However, your site is clearly being affected by this as shown by your rankings drop.
Have you checked that your site isn't hacked? http://www.isithacked.com/
Have you checked that you don't have any manual actions on your search console?
Have you checked whether you have some traffic coming from weird locations? I ask because there was a time when a site we're working on published a harmless blog on children and the use of snapchat and there was a spike of visitors searching for explicit materials landing on that page. As a result, we suddenly had a ton of backlinks with explicit anchors that go to that page. Their rankings went down. The page was deleted though and all went back to normal.
This article might also help you: https://moz.com/blog/preparing-for-negative-seo
The author, however, said that for an attack with the same scale as yours, it is a good idea to audit your links regularly and submit a disavow file. Hope this helps.
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
-
Linking Authentic Sites Together - Semi-PBN?
Recently I've had a lot of ideas of sites to build that all would have some sort of relevance to each other, all that would be relevant to my current business. For example, say you have sites for: bars/clubs, music festivals, cinemas, etc, one site for each. While these aren't all directly related to each other, they all kind of fall within a category of entertainment and having fun. Now, I'm not thinking about this as if I were to build a Private Blog Network, but instead each site would actually be valuable to visitors, be content rich, have regular updates and thriving social media etc, as if each were its own individual business. What would be your opinion on actually linking these together at some point down the line? I must stress that these would not be like typical PBN sites where the themes are the same, content is spun or badly written, no human touches or actual value, anything spammy etc, these would actually be authentic quality sites that you would reasonably expect to have a thriving community. Personally, after changing my ways from blackhat to weary-of-linkbuilding whitehat when Penguin 1 was released, I'm aware of what a bad linkbuilding strategy can do and would rather steer clear, however when I compare the plan of these authentic sites I have in my head to the obvious, low quality PBNs that I find competitors use to rank well all the time, I'm coming around to the idea that they may not pose a threat with the way I intend to implement them. Can I get some thoughts?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Leads.Bz2 -
How to re-rank an established website with new content
I can't help but feel this is a somewhat untapped resource with a distinct lack of information.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ChimplyWebGroup
There is a massive amount of information around on how to rank a new website, or techniques in order to increase SEO effectiveness, but to rank a whole new set of pages or indeed to 're-build' a site that may have suffered an algorithmic penalty is a harder nut to crack in terms of information and resources. To start I'll provide my situation; SuperTED is an entertainment directory SEO project.
It seems likely we may have suffered an algorithmic penalty at some point around Penguin 2.0 (May 22nd) as traffic dropped steadily since then, but wasn't too aggressive really. Then to coincide with the newest Panda 27 (According to Moz) in late September this year we decided it was time to re-assess tactics to keep in line with Google's guidelines over the two years. We've slowly built a natural link-profile over this time but it's likely thin content was also an issue. So beginning of September up to end of October we took these steps; Contacted webmasters (and unfortunately there was some 'paid' link-building before I arrived) to remove links 'Disavowed' the rest of the unnatural links that we couldn't have removed manually. Worked on pagespeed as per Google guidelines until we received high-scores in the majority of 'speed testing' tools (e.g WebPageTest) Redesigned the entire site with speed, simplicity and accessibility in mind. Htaccessed 'fancy' URLs to remove file extensions and simplify the link structure. Completely removed two or three pages that were quite clearly just trying to 'trick' Google. Think a large page of links that simply said 'Entertainers in London', 'Entertainers in Scotland', etc. 404'ed, asked for URL removal via WMT, thinking of 410'ing? Added new content and pages that seem to follow Google's guidelines as far as I can tell, e.g;
Main Category Page Sub-category Pages Started to build new links to our now 'content-driven' pages naturally by asking our members to link to us via their personal profiles. We offered a reward system internally for this so we've seen a fairly good turnout. Many other 'possible' ranking factors; such as adding Schema data, optimising for mobile devices as best we can, added a blog and began to blog original content, utilise and expand our social media reach, custom 404 pages, removed duplicate content, utilised Moz and much more. It's been a fairly exhaustive process but we were happy to do so to be within Google guidelines. Unfortunately, some of those link-wheel pages mentioned previously were the only pages driving organic traffic, so once we were rid of these traffic has dropped to not even 10% of what it was previously. Equally with the changes (htaccess) to the link structure and the creation of brand new pages, we've lost many of the pages that previously held Page Authority.
We've 301'ed those pages that have been 'replaced' with much better content and a different URL structure - http://www.superted.com/profiles.php/bands-musicians/wedding-bands to simply http://www.superted.com/profiles.php/wedding-bands, for example. Therefore, with the loss of the 'spammy' pages and the creation of brand new 'content-driven' pages, we've probably lost up to 75% of the old website, including those that were driving any traffic at all (even with potential thin-content algorithmic penalties). Because of the loss of entire pages, the changes of URLs and the rest discussed above, it's likely the site looks very new and probably very updated in a short period of time. What I need to work out is a campaign to drive traffic to the 'new' site.
We're naturally building links through our own customerbase, so they will likely be seen as quality, natural link-building.
Perhaps the sudden occurrence of a large amount of 404's and 'lost' pages are affecting us?
Perhaps we're yet to really be indexed properly, but it has been almost a month since most of the changes are made and we'd often be re-indexed 3 or 4 times a week previous to the changes.
Our events page is the only one without the new design left to update, could this be affecting us? It potentially may look like two sites in one.
Perhaps we need to wait until the next Google 'link' update to feel the benefits of our link audit.
Perhaps simply getting rid of many of the 'spammy' links has done us no favours - I should point out we've never been issued with a manual penalty. Was I perhaps too hasty in following the rules? Would appreciate some professional opinion or from anyone who may have experience with a similar process before. It does seem fairly odd that following guidelines and general white-hat SEO advice could cripple a domain, especially one with age (10 years+ the domain has been established) and relatively good domain authority within the industry. Many, many thanks in advance. Ryan.0 -
Competitor link profile shocking - yet still out ranking!
Howdy fellow Mozzer's,
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TimHolmes
I have been doing some background seo checking on a competitor in my small "insurance niche" to try and see why they have recently shot up the listings and are now consistently out ranking us.
We have quality content on our site and have always taken an approach of trying to be whiter than white when it comes to developing out SEO plans. The site in question has recently moved ahead of us (along with some aggregators e.g. confused.com) possibly due to shifting patterns from possible algorithm changes favouring brand or could it be a case that Google has dropped a ball when it comes to checking back links as the competitors site is 99% linked to link farms, link submission sites, directories and lots of other spammy/poor quality sites. We do not feel they are doing anything from a content stand to justify their sudden propulsion up the ranks. I am reluctant to pursue dodgy tactics to help get out site back in position as I feel it could then contribute and hurt us down the line. Does anyone know how I can combat against their poor QUANTITY over QUALITY banklink profile that is surely helping them at the minute? At a bit of a loss so any help would be greatly appreciated. aRTu4cT0 -
Is Link Building Dead?
I know there are various posts about this but none of them are up to date. I am so reluctant to do any linking now as I was hurt by google algorithms (without even knowing I was doing anything bad back in April 2012). I am just overwhelmed with all the seo info out there - I have written articles, blog on my site, lots of facebook postings but I don't seem to reach people I now have someone who wants to help me get a new linking structure to get my ranking back but the whole idea scares me. He basically wants to do the following using social media platforms only to get natural links (is this a very bad idea? ANY comments will be appreciated: Proposed Plan includes 200-250 Do-Follow Themed Links to your “TARGET SITE” 50 Approved Social Bookmarking Links: - 2 articles are used to build 50 PR 3-9 do-follow links with guaranteed approvals. 25 Approved Article Submission Links: - 2 articles are used to build 25 PR 3-9 do-follow links with guaranteed approvals. 20 Approved Press Release Links: -2 articles are used to build 20 PR 3-9 do-follow links with guaranteed approvals. 50 Approved Web 2.0 Properties: - 2 articles are used to build 50 PR 3-9 do-follow links with guaranteed approvals. 30 Approved Classified Links: - 2 articles are used to build 30 PR 3-9 do-follow links with guaranteed approvals.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Llanero0 -
Bad links showing up in opensiteexplorer
Hello Everybody,I've been working as an inhouse SEO for nearly a year and a half now and i've gotten some pretty great results. Two years ago our site was on the second page for the most important keywords in our niche and with a lot of work we've managed to get top 5 rankings for most keywords and even the number 1 spot for the most important keywords. I've been using opensite explorer to track backlinks and today i noticed that a lot of links we're discovered in the last week from websites that i did not recognize. Most url's won't even load properly because each "blogpost" has over a thousand comments. It took me a couple of tries to even find one that loaded properly and find the link to our website, and it was really there. There haven't been any drops in our rankings but i'm worried about a possible spam penalty. I know that i can use the disavow tool to at least disavow the links from these domains, but is that really the only thing i can do? Furthermore these are just the links that opensiteexplorer picked up, who knows how many more are out there.For any of you questioning wether or not i did this to myself, I'm no saint, but I'm definitely not stupid enough to buy these kinds of links. any help would be highly appreciated
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Laurensvda0 -
How to recognize Panda, Penguin or Unnatural Links Penalty ?
Hey guys, today I've received below message from Google, but I'm confused that there NO such message in WMT ?!??!?!?! I've login /out few times and situation is still same ?!?!? Still Nothing there ? Anybody had same issue ? Do I need to fill reconsideration request ? Pleased to hear back from you guys. NikoT Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links to .com/ Dear site owner or webmaster of , We've detected that some of your site's pages may be using techniques that are outside Google's Webmaster Guidelines. Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes. We encourage you to make changes to your site so that it meets our quality guidelines. Once you've made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google's search results. If you find unnatural links to your site that you are unable to control or remove, please provide the details in your reconsideration request. If you have any questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support. Sincerely, Google Search Quality Team
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | NikoT0 -
Penalty for all new sites on a domain?
Hi @all, a friend has an interesting problem. He got a manuel link penalty in the end of 2011...it is an old domain with domainpop >5000 but with a lot bad links (wigdet and banners and other seo domains, but nothing like scrapebox etc)...he lost most of the traffic a few days after the notification in WMT (unnatural links) and an other time after the first pinguin update in april´12. In the end of 2012 after deleting (or nofollowing) and disavow a lot of links google lifted the manuel penalty (WMT notification). But nothing happened after lifting, the rankings didn´t improve (after 4 months already!). Almost all money keywords aren´t in the top 100, no traffic increases and he has good content on this domain. We built a hand of new trust links to test some sites but nothing improved. We did in february a test and build a completely new site on this domain, it´s in the menu and got some internal links from content...We did it, because some sites which weren´t optimized before the penalty (no external backlinks) are still ranking on the first google site for small keywords. After a few days the new site started to rank with our keyword between 40-45. That was ok and as we expected. This site was ranking constantly there for almost 6 weeks and now its gone since ten days. We didn´t change anything. It´s the same phenomena like the old sites on this domain...the site doesnt even rank for the title! Could it still be an manuel penalty for the hole domain or what kind of reasons are possible? Looking forward for your ideas and hope you unterstand the problem! 😉 Thanks!!!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TheLastSeo0 -
How to rank internal pages?
Hello, I have a website about consoles, on the homepage are a few thoughts about what consoles are and a short history. The main attraction are the pages about Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii, PSP Vita. So, I want to rank my homepage and my internal pages about the consoles ranking for "xbox360", "play station 3" each one on a separate page of course. Basically I want to rank brands. My main questions are: 1. How much link builing should I do for my homepage considering that I'm not really interested in ranking it as much as the internal pages? In percentage how it would look like? Random (stupid) example: 60% links to homepage, 10% to each internal page? 2. I guess I must do links for internal pages otherwise they won't rank good, only linking to homepage. 3. Considering the penguin update, my main keyword should be around what % of the overall anchors to each internal page? Thank you very much for your help!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | corodan0