Backlinks in PDF's created on my site causing algo demotion.
-
I have a few questions. My website allows people to create custom 'puzzle' and education (i.e. "math") worksheets - enter your 'school spelling list' - I can make a crossword or many other puzzles (PDF form) from it. I recently realized that I was being penalized for the backlink I placed in each one. I placed in each PDF ("Created with mydomain.com Crossword maker") - I was linking the "crossword maker" back to my site. BAD! I am now aware of this. I have recently disavowed several hundred backlinks where people have posted those PDF's online - and have started to see a big recovery in ranking and traffic.
My questions about my citation: "Created with mydomain.com Crossword maker":
1. Moving forward, can I leave the same citation on each PDF - but just link 'mydomain.com' back to my domain (not the keywords, just the domain)
2. If not, can I just leave the unlinked text on the PDF: i.e. "Created with mydomain.com Crossword maker" -no embeded links at all.
3. Is it OK to assert that they must leave the "citation" (linked/unlinked?) to post them on their website as a part of my terms of use? If not, is there an acceptable way to get credit for giving away free custom content - other than asking for an 'optional' link back?I have thousands more of these that I would need to end up disavowing so knowing exactly what is permissible is extremely important to me moving forward.
I have watched this whiteboard Friday: https://moz.com/blog/backlinks-maximize-benefits-avoid-problems-whiteboard-friday (I am looking for clarification on what I can put in the original content I essentially syndicate - the content is different on each and every PDF, except for the citation).
Thank you so much for your time and help!
-
We can conclusively say that connecting catchphrases in PDF's holds a type of impending impact on positioning - it has been a moderate channel for a long time. Throughout the years, we have been not able to state - "Hello, we just got hit by penguin", in light of the fact that the downtick on altho change days was so minor contrasted with every other person - practically unnoticeable - Portafina Website however the pattern descending throughout the years is incredible, clear. SO we have consistently had a go at following the Google mantra.
-
Still very interested in #3 above. Or if anyone has any expertise they would like to share on any of the 3 questions in my original post, it would be much appreciated!
-
EGOL - Wow - thank you for your thoughtful insights and experience. That totally makes sense!
EDIT: the rest of this post probably incorrectly assumes my disavow file (submitted on March 11th) was responsible for my ranking and traffic gains since March 11th. I am now reading a big algo change happened on March 12th -which I guess is more likely to be the cause of my increases /EDIT
I can definitively say that linking keywords in PDF's does hold some sort of detrimental effect on ranking - it has been a slow drain for many years. Over the years, we have been unable to say - "Hey, we just got hit by penguin", because the downtick on algo change days was so minor compared to everyone else - almost unnoticeable - but the trend downward over the years is very, very clear. SO we have always tried following the Google mantra, "make your site content better" - and we did, many times over, and for many years. In my opinion, we demonstrably and undeniably better content then those beating us in the ranking, so we could never figure out what was holding us down (I have not been that into SEO -just trying to make better content , unsucessfully, to fix things!), but I saw a tweet from John Meuller a few days ago that said people shouldn't link back to their site in widgets they produce - and so I submitted my first 800 links on March 11th to disavow. On March 13th, we got several of our big rankings back (5th spot back to 1st in a few instances) and about 30% more daily traffic so far (or about 20,000 pageviews daily) - so now we know we initially made a mistake with those links.
Now, we simply didn't know the best way to correct things going forward, so I think your plan makes total sense. I really appreciate the time you took to answer my question!
Sorry for the long description above, I just wanted to leave specifics it in case some other poor sap is having similar issues as I did.
-
For your question, I can post my "beliefs" and "what has worked for me" for many years without producing any problems.
I believe that the use of keywords as anchor text in pdf documents can cause a problem with Google.
We have used our domain as the anchor text in hundreds of pdfs that have been widely used without any problem for at least ten years.
If you want to be conservative, I believe that you can use your unlinked domain on the documents and still receive some credit from Google. I believe that Google uses domaiin mentions and a ranking factor. However, a more important use of your domain, and possibly a reason to use it unlinked is... I believe that Google places extremely high value on domain queries and domain type-ins. For that reason, for the past several years, we have been doing everything that we can think of that might produce domain queries and domain type-ins. We are distributing pdfs, using package inserts, distributing instruction sheets, adding swag to packages shipped, etc.
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
-
My big and famous website is ranking worse than unknown sites, what to do?
I have a major, popular and well-established website in my niche (lil peep merch) (lilpeepmerch.net) in my country, known as the largest, or one of the largest. But even with 12 years and loads of quality content, my website ranks WAAY worse than unknown ones, most of the time not even showing up on the searches at all, or ranking like page 7 in Google, while my rival, who does the same thing I do (and sometimes worse than what I do, like just publishing news when I publish news, and information, in-depth articles) ranks page 1 in Goo. I use Yoast SEO, try to do everything I can (but I'm no developer and have no access to my site codes), but my only good result is for one specific keyword.
Branding | | FitBoyAwesome0 -
Nofollow on Client Site
Hi, On our client sites we have a link in the footer that says the site is maintained and developed by my company. That link takes you to a page that has outbound links to our site. Should these links be nofollow, since in a way they are almost like sponsored links? I feel like I read that somewhere but I can't remember where. Any advice is appreciated! Thanks!
Branding | | AliMac260 -
What marketing/branding services can you recommend to get more awareness of my site?
I am a programmer, not a marketing or social media genius. It also takes A LOT of time to market your website properly. Are there services that people can recommend that can help get my site out there and known to people more. I am always working on the SEO part and that takes time to improve. Just looking for suggestions. Thank you!
Branding | | BrickPicker0 -
External 'Source' link in PPC Ad copy
Afternoon Mozzers, Noticed something today on Google.co.uk that we have never seen / noticed before on PPC adverts. This exampe is a Google UK search for Wonga payday. Within the Ad copy there is a link to a BBC news article about the company. Has anyone else seen these on any PPC Ads? I am assuming this is not an intentional feature from Wonga to link to an external site from within their own PPC advert? i assume they would not get charged for these clicks. If anyone has any further info or insights on this feature it would be appreciated. PqsOoUy.png
Branding | | Sarbs0 -
ECommerce Sites: Sub domain vs. Unique Domains
Hello everyone! I manage 3 large eCommerce sites that sell textbooks, digital learning solutions, electronic teaching resources, etc., to three different markets in the education space (K-12, College, and Post-College/Career Search). Currently, the 3 sites live on three different sub domains of the companies main domain. Is this best practice? I assume we want all three under the same domain to consolidate domain authority. But... What if I told you that we have dozens of sub domains of the companies main domain? Some are for marketing sites, some are for digital products, some are customer-specific sites, etc. We probably have close to 100 sub domains that are used regularly. Then what if I told you that the company doesn't hardly even use the root domain (other than a handful of old pages)? Even the root domain redirects to a sub domain. Just looking for some insight on this, as I will be doing an SEO/marketing/conversion overhaul going forward. On a side note, we use Magento as an eCommerce platform, and it's rampant with duplicate content, duplicate page titles, pages with too many links, and so on and so forth. That's another problem for another day...
Branding | | brad.s.knutson0 -
'The Guardian' Is Moving to a New Domain
'The Guardian' Is Moving to a New Domain according to this article on Mashable - http://mashable.com/2013/05/24/the-guardian-dot-com/ Interested to see all the thoughts from SEOs to see how you would suggest they could implement this correctly, without dropping traffic / rankings etc...
Branding | | Webrevolve0 -
Sites we can submit web design news to...
Hey Mozzers - happy 2013 to one and all, I hope everyone had a great festive season! Now we're all back into the swing of things, we're in the process of getting our new website up and running. We're a web and graphic design agency, and I'm putting together checklists to ensure we get new projects some coverage where deserved. There will be a different checklist for the different disciplines - brand design, packaging, web design and so on. For many of these disciplines, there are multiple news sites that we can reach out to when we have relevant stories - Dieline for packaging, for example. But for web design, any searches I do either show up CSS Galleries / portfolios (which I already have on the checklist under another section) or web tutorial sites. I don't seem to be able to find decent, trustworthy sites that exclusively feature web news. I'm sure they exist and it's just a case of 'can't see for looking', but does anyone know of decent sites that carry news stories about new websites going live? Obviously we know not every new site will be newsworthy - and indeed we wouldn't try to submit every new site we have go live for that very reason - but it would be good to have a clutch of high authority, well visited sites to turn to when we do have something of note. Any help is much appreciated! Thanks Mozzers!
Branding | | themegroup0 -
How to get Google to link external review sites in Google Places
Hi, I have several company profiles in Google Places and Google Sites, I also have the same profiles for those companies in review sites like Yelp! and so on. I have seen that other sites have links on the bottom where Google points to those external review sites, but that doesn't happen for me yet, is there a way to tell Google that I have profiles on other review sites so they can link them or is it Google whenever they find them that will link them? Here's an example: http://maps.google.com/maps/place?cid=14126341780178539960&hl=en At the bottom you'll see that it says: Reviews from around the web Now this is one of mine: http://maps.google.com/maps/place?cid=12168877126282825032&hl=en Now how do I get that line at the bottom provided that I know there are reviews out there in other sites? Is there something I can do? Or is it all about Google doing it whenever they see fit? Thank you!
Branding | | tass0