Too many links pointing to our privacy policy page: Hurting our ranking efforts of main pages?
-
Hi community,
As per the "Links" report from GSC, there are millions of pages pointing to our privacy policy page. We can expect high number of links to this page being ours an open source product. But these links are overtaking the count of links pointing to our homepage which are very artificial from few spammy or low quality sites. "Privacy policy" anchor text is also been the top anchor text.
Our homepage ranking dropped and I suspect this is the culprit. Google might be considering this is the important page being linked on top with anchor text. Shall I Disavow these sites and will this makes Google stop counting links, and the anchor text coming from these sites as well?
Suggestions please.
Thanks
-
I'd at least give it a try and see what happens, if it turns out that your hypothesis is wrong you can always un-disavow the links. When you upload a txt file to the disavow tool, it counts that as your total disavow efforts (so if you just upload a txt file containing these links you have spotted, you may lose previous disavow work). Be sure to download your existing disavow file so you can add to it, instead of just uploading the links you have found
A side-effect of this though, is that later you could upload your disavow again excluding those links and un-disavow them. Before you do anything, you'd want to evaluate the technical features of those links. If they are all no-followed, they won't count towards Google's rankings anyway, so no action would be required (on your part)
Usually speaking, I would suggest making your homepage more link-worthy so that it gains more backlinks over time. Since this case is so extreme, you might actually want to consider disavow (or getting those links no-followed). Followed site-wide links can negatively affect rankings, under certain circumstances
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
-
Back links issue and how to resolve it
Hi there! We have a client who has been generating back links from external sites over a period of two years with all the same anchor text which all link back to the home page. This anchor text is also their main search phrase they wish to score highly on. In total, they have roughly 300 domain names linking to their site. Over 50 of these domain names all have the same anchor text. These links have been generated through articles and blogs. So roughly 20% of the total number of links all have the same anchor text. Over the past 6 months the client has noticed a steady drop in their rankings for this term. From the back link analysis we have done, we believe it is this which is causing the problem. Does any one else agree? For the remedy, do we go in and see if we can change the anchor text or disavow them through Google webmaster tools? Suggestions? Thanks for your help! P 🙂
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Globalgraphics0 -
Image redirection: Will it helps or hurts?
Hi all, There are some old images (non-existing now) from our website which have backlinks. We would like to redirect them to some live images to reclaim the backlinks. Is this Okay or sounds suspicious to Google? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Besides description and design optimization, is there any other main factor that we can influence to get better App Store rankings?
Hi there! I do love SEO, the cracking Web Search engine, but when it comes to other Google's search engines like Youtube and Apps Store it's an unknown field for me.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Gaston Riera
So, i'm diving into App Store Optimization, ASO. This is my question: Besides the text and the design in the description of the app, is there any other factor that we can manipulate or influence?(such as linkbuilding, social media or alien magic hehe). Thanks a lot!
GR.0 -
Google webmasters tools, Majestic and Ahref in a simple case study (Bad links and Good links)
Hey guys, This case study started from here. A simple summary, I discover that I got +1000 backlinks from Blogspot though Google webmasters tools after making a connection with owners of these blogs which points to my new blog. Before starting I proudly invite Thomas Zickell and Gary Lee in this discussion. I wish you accept my invitation. Let's go to the main point, I've used Google webmaster tools so I will start with. Then Ahref which used by **Thomas **and then Majestic which used by Gary. Take a look at "001" screenshot, you will see that Google webmaster tools discovered 1291 links points to my site. Take another look at "002" screenshot, you will find that there are 22 domains points to my site. Most of them are good links since they are coming from websites such as Google.com, Wikipedia.org, Reddit, Shoutmeload, WordPress.org, ...etc. Beside +1000 backlinks came from Blogspot.com (blogs). Also, there's some bad links such as this one came from tacasino.com Necessary to say that I've got some competitors and they nicely asked me to stop the competition for some keywords and I've ignored their request. So, I'm not surprised to see these bad links. At "002" screenshot, we can see that Google didn't discover the bad links as they discovered the good links. And they discovered a lot of backlinks which not discovered by any other tools. **Let's move to Ahref, ** I will use screenshots provided by Thomas. At "003" screenshot, you can see Ahref report that say 457 links from 10 domains. By the way, social engagements data are wrong. I got more than zero engagements .. really. At "004" screenshot, you can see domains points to my site, links with anchor text. Take a look at the second link you will find that it's a spammy link coming from PR2 home page since it's is over optimized. the third link is also a spammy link since it coming from a not-relevant website. Beside other bad links need to be removed. So, Ahref didn't discover all of my good links. Instead of that it discovered few good links and a lot of bad links. In a case like this a question come needs to be answered since there are some people trying so hard to hurt my site, Do I have to remove all this bad links? Or, just links discovered by Google. Or, Google understand the case? **Let's move to majestic, ** Gray Lee provided data from majestic which say "10 Unique Referring Domains, with 363 links, 2 domains make up a majority." Since Gray didn't take any screenshots I will provide mine. At "005" screenshot, you can see some of the bad links discovered by Majestic. Not all of them discovered by Ahref or Google. In the other hand, Majestic didn't discover all of my Good links. Also, there's a miss understand I would like to explain here. When I published the Discussion about +1000 link. Some people may think that I trying to cheat you by providing fake info and this totally wrong. I said before and I'm saying that again you are so elite and I respect you. Also, I'm preparing for an advanced case study about this thing. If any expert would like to join me this will be great. Thank you for reading and please feel free to share you thoughts, knowledge and experience in this Discussion. EE5bFNc jYg21cf Xyfgp28.png iR4UOwi.png D1pGAFO
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Eslam-yosef1 -
Do inbound links from forums hurt our traffic?
We have a manual action against us on Google webmaster tools for unnatural links. While evaluating our back links, I noticed that forums with low page rank/domain authority are linking to us. Is this hurting us?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | imlovinseo0 -
Fix Bad Links in Google
I have a client who had some grey hat SEO done in the past. Some of their back links aren't from the best neighborhoods. Google didn't seem to mind until 9/28, when they literally disappeared for all searches except for their domain name. Google still has their site indexed, but it's just not showing up. There are no messages in Webmaster Tools. I know Bing has the tool where you can disavow bad links and ask them to discount them. Google doesn't have such a tool, but what is the strategy when you don't have control over the link sources, such as in blog comments? Could this update have been a delayed Penguin ranking change from the latest Penguin Update on the 18th? http://www.seomoz.org/google-algorithm-change Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Tom
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TomBristol0 -
Why does my competitor rank so well with so many paid/traded links?
Greetings everyone! I've really been enjoying my Moz membership these past few weeks after studying my data and comparing it with my competitors I think it's high time I started asking some questions. The website I manage has a very good ranking history but over the past year we've seen a slight decline in our SERP positions. I don't think this has anything to do with on-page optimization but rather with our link profile. We have only about 10k links total while they have 175k - our mozranks are nearly identical, but his moztrust is 4.46 and our's is 3.51. I am guessing, on our end, I need to remove some of these low-quality nofollow links (though I'll be honest I have no idea how we obtained them to begin with) but what I don't understand is how our competitor is ranking so well because when I browse their link profile, it is filled with paid link and traded link directories that don't appear to be penalized for what they are. I was under the impression that this was bad SEO, but now I am thinking I should just play his own game and submit to these sites too. Looking for any advice or ideas on a better way to compete... ❤ Jennifer
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Virage0 -
Multiple links to different pages from same page
Hey, I have an opportunity to get listed in a themed directory page, that has a high mozRank of 4+ and a high mozTrust of 5+. Would it be better to just have one link from that page going to one of my internal product category pages, or take advantage of the 'sitelinks' they offer, that allows me to have an additional 5 anchor text links to 5 other pages? I've attached an example. sitelinks.jpg
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | JerDoggMckoy0