How is my competition causing bad crawl errors and links on my site
-
We have a compeditor who we are in a legal dispute at the moment, and they are using under hand tactics to cause us to have bad links and crawl errors and i do not know how they are doing it or how to stop it.
The crawl errors we are getting is the site having two urls together, for example www.testsite.com/www.testsite.com and other errors are pages that we do not even have or pages that are spelt wrong or have a dot after the page name.
We have been told off a number of people in our field that this has also happened to them and i would like to know how they are doing it so we can have this stopped
Since they have been doing this our traffic has gone down by half
-
Hi no there is only me who deals with the site. I have put copyright notice on the site but i will read about authorship accorss the site.
-
Hi Diane,
I like the way Ryan thinks! ...but I am hoping we won't have to go to the length of having to resort to a content bomb.
The lesson in a situation like this is to realize that being a good white hat SEO unfortunately means needing an understanding of some of the tactics used by black hats or maybe just a little help from some friends
Since there is obviously an issue with your content being copied, the first thing I would do is to implement Authorship markup across your entire site. By doing this you ensure that any content that is "borrowed" is immediately "outed" to the search engines because it doesn't have an external link from your Google profile page, which acts as verification that you are in fact the author of the content. Matt Cutts and Othar Hansson have given a really easy rundown on implementation in this Google Webmaster Help video
For the moment though, it would be better if you can avoid making any changes to the site until we can identify all of the issues in play.
BTW ... I think I have an inkling of what might be going on here ... is there a programmer or designer who is or has been involved in the development of the site besides yourself?
In the meantime, I'm continuing with a diagnostic based on the information we have and will let you know as soon as I have confirmed my suspicions or otherwise.
Hang in there,
Sha
-
May I suggest planting a "bomb" in your content?
Most thieves are lazy. Rather then create content themselves they steal from others. Their laziness is dependable.
Take a look at their copies and determine what content is and is not being stolen. If they are copying everything including the HTML code and meta tags, you can add canonical tags to your site and other helpful code.
If they are not copying the meta tags, you can add fake content and use the noindex, nofollow tag to protect your site, but provide content which otherwise would cause a site to be removed from Google's index. When they steal the content, it wont have the noindex tag and the site would get nailed.
There are many other possibilities but I am confident you can outsmart them if you try. In addition, be sure to report the site(s) to Google: http://www.google.com/support/bin/static.py?page=ts.cs&ts=1114905
Another idea is to copyright your work, thereby protecting it and giving you legal proof the content is yours.
-
thanks for this, will send private message. we have had to redo the site so many times with new content because the content keeps on being stolen by a franchise group who then pass it on to their franchisees.
-
Hi Diane,
Ryan's response is spot on and his suggestions are excellent.
If you can provide the URL(s), then we can take a look and see exactly what is going on with the referring page(s).
If you don't want to share the information publicly in the Q&A, you can private message each of us through your SEOmoz profile page.
If you ever think that someone has access to edit pages on your site without your permission, the first thing to do is to check with your service provider whether there are any active ftp accounts that you are unaware of. I have seen situations before where people have managed to get a "back door" set up and then it is as simple as logging in and changing pages without your knowledge.
Given that this involves a legal dispute, if we can do a proper diagnosis and trace the source of the errors (or if there happens to be a back door in place), then you would be able to:
- issue a cease and desist
- better secure the server against unauthorized access
- Ban any ip addresses identified as malicious
Hope that helps,
Sha
-
You mentioned these are crawl errors. Are you using the SEOmoz crawl report? If so, please look at the "referrer" field. It will offer the page on your site which is providing the bad URL.
If you are willing to share the referring page, we can take a look and possibly provide more detail.
Anyone can create bad links to your site which can appear in Google or Bing WMT. Only someone with the ability to add content on your site can create crawl errors. Either your site is open to user generated content and someone created a bad link, or someone with access to your web server created the content.
-
will do thanks
-
If iit is happniong to many, then maybe its a reason not to suspect them, but like i say go to Bing WMT and have a look at where the links ae comming from.
-
the reason why i know they are behind it, is because other companies in the field of the website have had the same problems and after doing research for our legal team over this matter, we spent time speaking to over 40 people in the field of the website and found it happened to them aswell.
These people are cowboys but hopefully it will all be sorted out soon.
-
I would look in Bing WMT to see where the links are comming from for a start.
i must say also, If you dont know how they are doing it, then maybe you dont know if they are doing it., it may be somthing quite inocent.
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
-
Can I redirect a link even if the link is still on the site
Hi Folks, I've got a client who has a duplicate content because they actually create duplicate content and store the same piece of content in 2 different places. When they generate this duplicate content, it creates a 2nd link on the site going to the duplicate content. Now they want the 2nd link to always redirect to the first link, but for architecture reasons, they can't remove the 2nd link from the site navigation. We can't use rel-canonical because they don't want visitors going to that 2nd page. Here is my question: Are there any adverse SEO implications to maintaining a link on a site that always redirects to a different page? I've already gone down the road of "don't deliberately create duplicate content" with the client. They've heard me, but won't change. So, what are your thoughts? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Rock330 -
Backlink Profile: Should I disavow these links? Auto-Generated Links etc
Hello Moz Community, At first I wanted to say that I really like the Q&A section and that I read and learned a lot - and today it is time for my first own question 😉 I checked our backlink-profile these days and I found in my opinion a few bad/spammy links, most of them are auto-generated by pickung up some (meta) information from our webpage. Now my question is if I should dasavow these links over webmasters or if these links shouldn't matter as I guess basically every webpage will be picked up from them. Especially from the perspective that our rankings dropped significantly last weeks, but I am not sure if this can be the real reason. Examples are pages like: https://www.askives.com/ -Auto-Generates for example meta descriptions with links http://www.websitesalike.com/ -find similar websites http://mashrom.ir/ -no idea about this, really crazy Or we are at http://www.europages.com/, which makes sense for me and we get some referral traffic as well, but they auto-generated links from all their TLDs like .gr / .it / .cn etc. -just disavow all other TLDs than .com? Another example would be links from OM services like: seoprofiler.com Moreover we have a lot of links from different HR portals (including really many outdated job postings). Can these links “hurt” as well? Thanks a lot for your help! Greez Heiko
Technical SEO | | _Heiko_0 -
How is this site ranking so well? Their link profile is awful and website is messy and difficult to use?
Hi folks, This question has been baffling me for some time now and I'm still struggling to get to the bottom of it. www.sterlingbuild.co.uk is the website of choice for Google when it comes to searches relating to roof windows, velux windows, fakro windows etc. I can't understand why? Their link profile is atrocious. I'm struggling to find one 'high quality' link in their profile at all. Most of their links are guest blog posts which Google is apparently now treating as spam, or links from other sites that they own - also spam. The design of the site is incredibly messy and confusing. But one of the biggest flaws of the site (which I am suspicious may also be what is helping them) is they list every single different size of window as a different product. So whereas with most websites in this market, you search for the type of window you want e.g. a VELUX GGL 3050 window, and then choose the size you need from a drop-down menu, Sterlingbuild list every size as a different product. So you have to scroll through reams of product listings to find the window type in the right size before you get to any information about the product itself. Not to mention, their site is riddled with duplicate content because 12 different sizes of product are not different products, they are the same product, just a different size, so they have the identical product description for numerous separate pages basically selling the same product. How on earth has Google decided this is the best website in the marketplace when it comes to roof windows?
Technical SEO | | LukeyB301 -
Does Google differentiate between a site with spammy link building practices from a victim of a negative SEO attack?
I've be tasked with figuring out how to recover our rankings as we are likely being hurt by an algorithmic penalty. I have no idea if this was the workings of a previously hired SEO or the result of negative SEO, **how does Google differentiate between a site with bad/spammy link building practices from a victim of a negative SEO attack? **
Technical SEO | | Syed_Raza0 -
Crawl errors which ones should i sort out
Hi, just had my website updated to joomla 3.0 and i have around 4000 urls not found. now i have been told i need to redirect these but i would just like to check on here to make sure i am doing the right thing and the advice i have been given is not correct. I have been told these errors are the reason for the drop in rankings. I need to know if i should redirect all of these 4,000 urls or only the ones that are being linked to from outside of the site. I think about 3,000 of these have no links from outside of the site, but if i do not redirect them all then i am going to keep getting the error messages. around 2,000 of these url not found are from the last time we updated the site which was a couple of years ago and i thought they would have died off now. any advice on what i should do would be great
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Reciprocal link building a bad idea?
Reciprical Link Building or one way traffic? Good morning from 8 degrees c but very sunny wetherby UK Regarding link acquisition ive had it in my head that the best idea is to secure inbound links only i.e avoid reciprocal link building so that when your source links to you you dont give them a link back. But is this no longer valid when targeting inbound links to increase rank? Is it ok to link back or will that "leak SEO juice" or whatever we decide to call it this week.
Technical SEO | | Nightwing0 -
I am Posting an article on my site and another site has asked to use the same article - Is this a duplicate content issue with google if i am the creator of the content and will it penalize our sites - or one more than the other??
I operate an ecommerce site for outdoor gear and was invited to guest post on a popular blog (not my site) for a trip i had been on. I wrote the aritcle for them and i also will post this same article on my website. Is this a dup content problem with google? and or the other site? Any Help. Also if i wanted to post this same article to 1 or 2 other blogs as long as they link back to me as the author of the article
Technical SEO | | isle_surf0 -
Does the Referral Traffic from a Link Influence the SEO Value of that Link?
If a link exists, and nobody clicks on it, could it still be valuable for SEO? Say I have 1000 links on 500 sites with Domain Authority ranging from 35 to 80. Let's pretend that 900 of those links generate referral traffic. Let's assume that the remaining 100 links are spread between 10 domains of the 500, but nobody ever clicks on them. Are they still valuable? Should an SEO seek to earn more links like those, even though they don't earn referral traffic? Does Google take referral data into account in evaluating links? 5343313-zelda-rogers-albums-zelda-pictures-duh-what-else-would-they-be-picture3672t-link-looks-so-lonely.jpg Sad%20little%20link.jpg
Technical SEO | | glennfriesen1