My site backlinking search came back with 19k results, that's WAY above the usual number
-
Looking into the results I found over 18,000 instances of the same 2 websites having links in every single page, staging version of their site.
How do I get rid of these? Are they damaging my SEO?
-
I'm glad I helped.
As these are sites you closely work with, you can notify them regarding the issue and their webmaster can look over the issue, as excessively generated links do hurt their site even more than yours. As for the links being do-follow that would be beneficial to your website is they weren't so excessive, so no need to mention that.
On the pages that you can't find the link, try opening "inspect element" or right-click on the page and click "view page source" and then find (ctrl+f) your site name.
If your URL shows up, then it means that the link is in a hidden section of the site. If it doesn't show up it means that the link has been removed but Moz hasn't crawled the site yet to update it.
If the links seem too spammy for you and the webmaster doesn't fix them, then you can disavow the domains until a later time when the issues are resolved.
Daniel Rika - Dalerio Consulting
https://dalerioconsulting.com/
info@dalerioconsulting.com -
Hi Daniel,
Very helpful answer thank you - I had a good look through and was able to spot the obviously spammy ones and will be submitting them to Google Search disavow. However, that probably only makes up 200-300 of the 19K+ inbound links.
I think I can identify the main cause for the huge amount of links are from the same two domains. Quite literally, from rows 200 - 18,000 these two websites show up in various different ways, e.g. Staging sites etc. These are actually sites we work closely with. think it's an overlooked issue on their part.
I'm guessing I can't fix that from my end. Is it worth notifying them that there seems to be an issue with their website?
Also on a linked note - one of the sites for example, has the URL as an image link on EVERY page, now I feel as though that is a poor design choice on their part, or they are not using nofollow. Am I right in thinking I need to inform their webmaster that their links are creating negative SEO?
In some cases I followed the link from the data export sheet to the linking page, but couldn't find a link to our site anywhere. What might be the cause of that?
-
As there are 19K new links to your site that appeared out of nowhere, most certainly they are spam links, that could be done by a competitor as a form of negative SEO. It can be very harmful to your site and lower your rankings or ever de-index you from google and bing.
What you should do is disavow the backlinks. In order to remove the spam links, you need to check all the backlinks one by one. Moz Spam Score is a very useful tool to filter some of the links, but mainly it's manual work and you need to be very careful not to disavow the positive links that your site already has. You can read more about it at my answer here: Advise Help on Bad Link Removals
If you need any help with the disavow process, feel free to let us know.
Daniel Rika - Dalerio Consulting
https://dalerioconsulting.com/
info@dalerioconsulting.com
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
-
Do i have too many 'follow' backlinks and am i being penalised by Google for it?
Hi all. I read on Moz recently that if a website has too large a percentage of 'follow' backlinks, that Google penalise the website because that is unnatural. IS this correct please? I ask because i have recently found that our own website, according to Moz, has 16,500 inbound links and they are ALL 'follow' links. These are all from independent 3rd parties and we havent commissioned any of them, so it is completely natural. URL if anyone cares is www.themosquito.co.uk Any advice would be appreciated. Cheers
Link Building | | TheMozzy0 -
SEO value of a 'Most Popular Stories' widget?
Hi there, I work for a theater and live performances publishing site. We write 15-20 quality articles per day on the New York City and national theater community. We show a "Most Read" stories widget on all of our pages, but click rates for these are really low - 1% of readers click to read a story from this. As such we're considering replacing this with higher-value content. My question, however, is this: Is there any SEO value in keeping this widget? I want to make sure we're taking this aspect into consideration. Thank you!
Link Building | | TheaterMania1 -
Best way to build backlinks
Hey guys, I was wondering what is the best way to build back links ? I have all the read moz's articles regarding this and I know the crucial parts are creating content, engaging users via social media etc. What I am interested in knowing is whether guest posting is still a solution to create that domain authority you need to rank ? I've spoken with some people that told me guest posting is out of date and will not pay off using it. By using guest posting of course I relate to creating unique content and valuable to the user. Thanks, Andrei
Link Building | | kiraftw0 -
Help! Someone's inserted my link in the footer of another site!
There's a site in my industry where (I'm guessing on flawed SEO advice) all of their pages contain footer links to rival sites – with each page containing a different set of links. One page has a link to my site, which I've just found out from GWT as the link now produces a 404.
Link Building | | Jeepster
Should I
a) ignore it?
b) ask them to replace it with a live link from my site (their site's highly relevant to mine)? or
c) ask them to remove it altogether as no-one wants footer links?0 -
Site wide back links
Hi, One of our sites has a site-wide link from another site. So, Google sees 6700 pages from that site link to one of our pages. Is that something to be concerned about? The other site is http://www.daum.net/ We also have 2000 pages that blogspot.com links to us from. Both these sites have high domain authority, so I would hope all those links score well. But I certainly don't want to be penalized for links that appear spammy. Thank you in advance.
Link Building | | seotis0 -
What benefit does a site with a low DA get from someone guest posting who links to a site with a high DA?
I'm relatively new to link building and although this may be an obvious question I can't seem to find an answer anywhere even after searching Google.
Link Building | | JoshED0 -
Links from Related Sites with Low PR or semi-related sites with High PR?
Is it better to get a link from a site with lower PR but related content or higher PR but semi-related or unrelated content? For example, if I sell shoes, would a link from a PR1 or PR2 shoe or apparel site be better or a link from PR4 website that sells books be better? I'm not talking about sites with completely unrelated content, but how relevant is PR in obtaining relevant links if I am trying to raise the PR and rankings of my own site?
Link Building | | applesofgold0 -
How do I help an author of family histories and biography's reach her niche's
Please have a look at this site for me http://www.louisewilson.com.au/ louise also has about six blogs on different books she has written. She has sold a few thousand copies which is great and has help people find out where they came from. Not many of these people have linked to her site's and she is not getting the traffic she deserve's for lots of long tail keywords and some broader ones. What simple on page changes can she make and what would be the best broader keyword's to go after. What would a good strategy be she has a very small ( tiny ) budget but can write and is enthusiastic , It's also a great way for her to be involved with people who are interested in simalar thing's. Oh yeah she has never used facebook of social networks how could she effectivly market her books and engage with potential reader's. Thanks in advance Oh and by the way Im not getting paid to help her Just incase you think i'm trying to get you to do my work for me. I just think this is an interesting case. I do do sales for an IT and SEO company but she is not one of our clients. So far I have just explained to her about keywords in titles meta tags and internal linking and just explained to her a bit about link building. But really need some help thanks very much. PS was this question too long?
Link Building | | duncan2740