Can bad backlinks harm your website?
-
Hi,
This has been discussed to death over the web on many forums, some discussions are even very heated arguing both sides.
So... from what I have read on seomoz the answer to this question is... YES.
And if one was so inclined to build bad backlinks to a competitor it would have a negative effect.
Agree?
-
Lots of people (philosophers) have an idea about how they think google "should" behave. Then you have people who know what they are talking about and philosophers who are unwilling to believe that they are wrong.
Finally, just because we see something happen doesn't mean we know what caused it.
-
Thanks for the replies,
I would never go down this route, as both of you have said the time/money spent would be better spent on white hat for my own site, plus I just don't agree with it.
But the question had to be asked for my own knowledge as a lot of people state it doesn't have an impact. A lot say the only way to be hit is by linking out to bad websites, which is obv not true.
-
Of course below is just my opinion... But it seems highly plausible...
Everything we do leaves a footprint, that footprint is analyzed by the algorithm - The algorithm has flags both ways with unnatural links. Either done by you - or against you...
I think this has always been one of Google's biggest challenges,not always necessarily how to penalize site owners and SEO's who are actually using Black hat - but how do you filter that against having black hat done against them algorithmically ?
The reason some claim it work, is I am sure there ARE ways to do it... But as ipositions **excellently ** points out.. This money could be much better spent employing strategies that not only help your search positioning, but your overall brand perception and marketing in general. Opposed to just hurting someone else to make yourself look better (sounds like politics!)
Shane
-
"And if one was so inclined to build bad backlinks to a competitor it would have a negative effect"
There is a whole branch called Negative SEO specialised in destroying your competitor' SERPS and though you will find loads of sites promoting that they do this in a "Completeley legal" I urge you not to succumb to the temptation of trying it.
The time and money you would spend trying to negatively impact others would be better spent on optimizing your own site, and think about it: If suddenly anyone above you starts dropping in rankings and your site is the only one that ascends don't you think someone is going to wonder why?
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
-
SEO traffic + backlinks question
Let's say I want to write a guest post for a website that is relevant to my website. Should i guest post on a website with high traffic but the traffic country is not mine? (eg// My website sells products in Canada only, should i guest post on a high traffic site from India?) Or would it be better to find a lower traffic website to guest post on but their organic traffic comes from Canada? Thanks!
Link Building | | chrisjordan0i10 -
Test my website
I have a website. I need to test this onpage. I do not know where to start. Please help me! My web site: United Airlines Thanks you!
Link Building | | tunguyen1108940 -
Network of websites
Hello, A client has an "umbrella" website which links to 4 other websites which all rank well. However, she wants to bring them all under the one website to save running costs. Do you think that is a good idea? I believe that she will lose al the benefits of having 4 successful websites linking and all the benfits that brings. Thanks
Link Building | | AL123al0 -
Struggling to re-rank website
A client of ours - www.helenbattphotography.com - was ranking well for local keywords. However, the rankings started to drop as of January this year (slowly) and quite considerably since May. We have not had any Google penalties. To date we have gone through backlinks and removed a few low quality/dubious links that were built around 5 years ago by another agency the client was using and also disavowed some others. This was done around 2 months ago. No impact to date. The website is hovering around page 4 and 5 for the keywords that it used to rank for on page 1 for. We are really struggling to increase the rankings for this client. We have introduced good, unqiue content to the site - not that this was ever really a problem on the site - but this has also made little difference. Would be great to get some feedback on the site and any obvious pointers that we might be missing here - a case of not being able to see the wood through the trees. Thanks
Link Building | | piperis0 -
2 backlinking questions
I've got 2 questions regarding backlinking. 1 - I recently watched a webinar saying I should never get backlinks from any sites lower than a PR 3. However, I have found some relevant websites to our niche that are lower than that. We have recently set-up a new website that currently has a PR 0. Bearing that in mind do you think it was still be good for SEO to try and get links from the lower PR sites to build up our own PR? 2 - Has anyone found out what Google thinks of gaining links from domains hosted in other countries? For example, our websites are hosted in the UK, does it look suspicious to search engines if we have links from USA or other countries? Thanks
Link Building | | AAttias0 -
Website not appearing in top 100
A few months ago, we launched the website www.gunnersdirect.com. The main keyword target for this website was "arsenal shirts", which you can see is at the very start of the page title. In fairness, limited work has been done to the link building, etc due to time constaints so I would not expect it to rank at the top. However, it does not appear to rank even in the top 100. This gives me major cause for concern, as surely Google should at least recognise the website, albeit in a lowly position? Does this point to some underlying coding issue or penalty? What would you recommend we do to turn round it's fortunes?
Link Building | | ukss19840 -
Links from Google Place to Website
If you have a business with multiple locations, is it better to link you Google Place pages to the home page (IE homepage.com) or directly to one of the location's pages. (IE homepage.com/location) ? Thank you
Link Building | | caseyp0 -
Website dissapeared out of Google
Hi Everyone, About 2 months ago i launched a website called http://spelenroulette.nl, i did some linkbuilding for this website in the meantime with other roulette/gaming related websites and the website got a bit up in Google. But when i was checking my rankings today the frontpage of this website doesn't show up on the first 80 pages? Only some subpages are still on the same positions. Could this be for a rank-update like these happens all the time and your site dissapears from Google for several days, or could this be because of wrong/too many backlinks or something completely different? Regards, Yannick
Link Building | | iwebdevnl0