Can changing our links page make our rankings drop through the floor?
-
Hi all,
When I first started at my current job, most of the link building (aside from submitting to free directories left, right and centre) was replying to every spammy reciprocal email and adding them to our links page!
Now we're all a bit wiser about such matters (thanks SEOMoz!), I want to get our links page turned into something actually useful. My plan was to get it neatly categorised, with recommendations, cut out unrelated links that would be useless to visitors and call it something like "Our Friends"
I thought this might be useful for future link building efforts, but in its current state, it's a complete mess.
However, I am worried about cutting out a lot of links if they have been reciprocal ones. Are the sort of sites that would be sending typical spammy link exchange emails for window installation in NY likely to notice our UK education site taking away their link six months later and take away ours? If they do, will losing links from these sites harm us? Perhaps more importantly, is my plan a terrible idea in the first place?
Look forward to hearing from y'all!
-
I would personally remove the page(s), but you could also do the following if you are afraid of losing links from partners linking to your site when they see their links are no longer there.
a) nofollow or javascript all of the links
b) noindex, nofollow, noarchive the links page(s)
c) block the links section in robots.txt
at a quick glance or to a non SEO person it would appear that nothing has changed, in reality you neutered all of the links - you should definitely do something to protect your site.
-
Thanks everyone, those are some really useful bits of advice!
Salman - that's a nice way of looking at it. I bet that will help me persuade my boss to let me do it as I'm sure he'll worry otherwise!
Aaron/Kieran - I've got a feeling that they are definitely not good links and there's some dodgy looking stuff popping up in Open Site Explorer. Content's going to be a big part of our future strategy, though I've been interested in how well competitors with poor content have been ranking in comparison and wondering if we are being penalised somewhere. Our recent focus has been much more on improving on site SEO and generating better quality content rather than blindly plugging away on low quality links and we've been steadily climbing rankings since I started that.
EGOL - Thanks for the link! Similar to what Aaron was saying, it really does emphasise having a good quality well-built site over supposed "easy" linkbuilding. Plus, it certainly makes me feel rather less guilty about removing them!
Thanks very much for the feedback everyone!
-
a little off-topic, but relevant
A post made by link trader Maluk nearly ten years ago but still relevant today... (today you would add "nofollow" and scripted links to his complaint....
http://forums.seochat.com/google-optimization-7/warning-ref-link-partners-5513.html
-
Hi Amy
_will losing links from these sites harm us? _
If you are worried about the link quality just put them into Open Site Explorer to see their weighting. If they are spammy then delete.
_Perhaps more importantly, is my plan a terrible idea in the first place? _
If you know/feel/think that your link list is spammy then I would delete them and so it is a good idea. This SEOMOZ link is worth a read as a refresher course on the topic if you haven't seen it already. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/link-building-101-the-almost-complete-link-guide
Good luck with your efforts
-
Salmen is right... I'll add that not only is a link from a spammy site bad, but reciprocal linking can also downgrade the value of a link since it seems forced, which it is.
I hate to sound so cliche, but if you can come up with content people will link to and share without having to trade links with them, then you will get the most SEO benefit.
However, you are definitely headed in the right direction and if linking to your friends is helpful to your audience... do it!
-
The plan is actually good and you should have done it from the start.
Consider link worth from spammy site as 0.2 as compare to a link from great resource as 8.
so if you loose 40 links from spammy site, and gained one link from good site it will be balanced or more beneficial.
Don't worry about loosing your reciprocal links if you intend to work on the plan of gaining more links from reputable sites!
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
-
Wrong page ranking and rank drop, help!
Dear Moz community I would like to hear your advice about our current SEO problems. Our website is www.poolsonline.nl. This is a website where people can learn the Polish language on our website. This website has been online since 2007. The website got really outdated, so we built and launched a new version on March 1st (one month ago). We have created a salespage that we would like to rank for the keywords 'cursus Pools' (Polish course) first of all and 'pools leren' (learn Polish) secondly. The page is https://www.poolsonline.nl/cursus-pools-leren-spreken/ The old website was on rank 4-5 (roughly) for 'cursus Pools' and 'pools leren'. When we launched the new website we were on the top 5 with two of our pages. We were even on rank 1 and our salespage was also showing on the first page and often also in the top 5 (below the 'wrong' page of ours). We got quite a lot of trafic and new clients. However the problem was that the wrong page was ranking higher. We wanted our salespage to rank and not our home page (https://www.poolsonline.nl/) and not our free lesson (https://www.poolsonline.nl/lessen/groeten-en-gesprek-voeren-in-het-pools-les-1/). So what we did: Read/watched recourses about this problem: https://moz.com/blog/wrong-page-ranks-for-keywords-whiteboard-friday and https://moz.com/blog/wrong-page-ranking-in-the-results-6-common-causes-5-solutions and others. Removed the keywords (cursus pools en Pools leren) from the wrong pages (home and free lesson pages). Optimized the Salespage for these keywords Improved internal linking with these key words to our salespage Worked on link building for our salepage. We got about 5-10 links to our salespage in the first week of March (5 seems to be significant for this competition and we are working on more). These links are not yet in Moz OSE, but Google has indexed these pages and links. For reference, here are some of these links (not all): http://www.iculture.nl/apps/ik-spreek-pools-taalcursus-pools-op-iphone/ http://linktopoland.com/nl/cursus-pools-leren-spreken/ http://naukaholenderskiego.pl/artykuly/aplikacje/rozmawiamy-po-niderlandzku-aplikacja-na-iphone-i-ipad/ http://pnkv.nl/nieuwsbericht.php?bericht=rozmowy-po-polsku-juz-po-6-miesiacach http://poolsewoorden.nl/pools-leren/aanmelden/ http://poniderlandzku.nl/ Shared and promoted our salespage on social media What we expected: Our salespage to show up on top for these keywords Our ranking to improve What happened: Our salespage disappeared all together from the search results for these search terms (it does show up for more specific search queries, for example 'cursus pools leren spreken') Our site seems to keep dropping lower and lower. We are now on the bottom of page 1 or on page 2 for 'cursus Pools' and 'Pools leren' and not with the desired page Questions we have for you to help us: Why do you think our salespage is not showing up anymore for these keywords ('cursus pools' and 'pools leren')? Do you think we got a penalty for over optimization or bad links? What can we more to get our salespage to rank for these keywords? (we are working on building/earning more links) What can we do to restore our rankings and not drop lower anymore? Do we need to give our efforts more time? How long? Any other adivce? Thanks so much in advance!
Link Building | | rdudkiewicz0 -
Ranking Riddle: Too many anchor text links, or not enough of the right ones???
This question is about one of my ecommerce sites (www.BestDryingRack.com) which is ranking really well for one of it's money words, and not at all for the other. See the attached screenshot for a quick overview of the riddle we are facing.... Looking at the "Anchor Text" tab in my MOZ Campaign or in Open Site Explorer would lead you to think that I have WAY too many links with my #1 money phrase. (clothes drying rack, or laundry drying rack, as they are synonyms). And since my product page doesn't rank at all for that keyword, that's what I thought too. (My home page does show up on page 3 or 4 when Googling clothes drying rack) On the other hand, my #2 money phrase (umbrella clothesline, or outdoor umbrella clothesline) has it's product page ranking quite well in the middle of the first page of Google results. Digging deeper into the links spreadsheet from Open Site Explorer shows that most of the links are NOFOLLOW (which means they don't really count, right?) As the screenshot shows, here is the breakdown of links that count: FOLLOW links with Brand and URL anchor text totals 17 FOLLOW links with #1 money phrase anchor text totals 10, with only 1 to proper product page FOLLOW links with #2 money phrase anchor text totals 3, with all 3 to proper product page So the riddle is... Can we improve the ranking of the #1 money phrase by just getting a small number of matching anchor text links to the proper page? (making it like #2's situation) Or do we also need to get rid of some of the 9 links with the #1 anchor text that are pointing to the home page? (since the home is outranking the proper product page for this phrase) BDR-anchors-040614.jpg
Link Building | | GregB1230 -
Does more product pages mean better rankings?
We've recently been told that one of reasons why our site doesnt rank as well as a particular competitors because they have much more product pages than us. We can see that they have better quality links, which we are working on improving, which we sort of understand can be helping them beat us, but we didn't think that they would be ranked higher just because of more products. They also do not have much interesting blog / content on site. So should our limited resources be focused on getting better links, better content, or increasing our depth of product range? Thanks all.
Link Building | | onwardsandupwards0 -
Reject a link from a not found page
Hello, I am writing because I have a question about link building. My page has got a link from this URL http://fundacionbanesto.com/ (PageRank 6) but I know that it no longer exists. Do you think it is negative for my site? Should I reject it? Thanks in advance.
Link Building | | ofuente0 -
Can I find out how many of a competitors 25k links are coming from which domains?
Can I find out how many of a competitors 25k links are coming from which domains?You can see in the image I uploaded, the first competitior, Suzuki of Wichita, they have 25,000 total links. dRTAKAt.png?1
Link Building | | Mrupp440 -
Looking for Feedback on Rankings Dropping
Hi, I am looking for some guidance on figuring out a problem I am having with one of my clients. Their site is http://www.macton.com. They have seen a pretty significant drop in rankings for "hoist systems" "industrial turntables" and "railroad equipment." Below is my analysis and thoughts. Please let me know if you have any input you can provide me with. Hoist Systems Rankings started dropping significantly July 2nd. Their average position was around the 2nd - 3rd page. They're now in position 100. Some things I noticed is that Google is now ranking the page /freight_rail/portable-car-hoist-freight for this term, whereas a few months ago it was ranking /rail_equipment/car-hoist. I'm not sure why Google has started to rank this new page for this term when there is no reference to that keyword in the page and the other one is better suited. Industrial Turntables Rankings started dropping off in January and they have been up and down and even fell off for a bit in March. They took a deep dive May 28 - Jun 11 and are slowly picking up. I noticed that Google is also changing which page it is choosing to rank for this term. Currently it is ranking /rail_equipment/locomotive-turntables, previously it was ranking the homepage around May 28th, and before that it was /equipment/industrial-testing. Some things we thought would help this was to create a whole new page just on industrial turntables in order to rank better for this term. Another thing that I think would be highly beneficial is to do some more aggressive link building. Their top anchor text is all brand related, and very few include their target keywords.To my knowledge, I don't think they have a penguin issue, although I could be mistaken. Can anyone provide input and/or guidance on my analysis? Any suggestions?
Link Building | | TopFloor0 -
How we can Compare these 3 Link Building Tools
1. http://ontolo.com 2. http://www.buzzstream.com 3. http://raventools.com If you want to add more kindly add. lets find best one...
Link Building | | vinku0 -
How do I link specific keywords to a specific URL on my landing page? i.e.-Cloud Computing
Example keyword Cloud Computing California. How do I link this keyword on SeoMoz to a specific URL on my landing page?
Link Building | | SteelsmithGroup970