How should I go about cleaning up link spam from an acquired domain?
-
I recently acquired a domain and the previous owners practiced some very shady link practices. The current backlink profile is flooded with link spam with foreign anchor text, amongst links from spam directories.
What are some good practices to help clean up the backlink profile of this domain so it will not hurt me in the long run?
-
Hi Rob
Do you mind me asking where you got the link profile breakdown from?
I've been using link detective and it doesn't seem to be anywhere near as concise or informative as your list.
thanks
Justin
-
OK I see, still i would wait to see if you get a un-natural liink warning in GWMT, if not i would not worry.
-
It was a two letter domain and we acquired it for branding purposes, not for the links.
-
Why did you aquire it? for the links?
i cant see why yopu would 301 it to your domain, if not for the links.
-
No, but we acquired this domain and 301'd it to our main domain and acquired all of it's link spam in the process. It's made our link profile look like this:
- Foreign Character Spam: 69%
- Natural Links: 7%
- Tag/archive links: 6%
- Other: 6%
- Feeds: 5%
- Affiliate: 4%
- Guest Post: 3%
There's been very minimal cases of link farms, but the link profile is what is worrying me.
-
Are you getting a warnming in GWMT? If not i would not be too concerned, directore will not hurt you, they may not give you any value but not harm you.
Have a look for signs of link farms, such as links on blogs post that dont seem to be natural.
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
-
If I use links intag instead of "ahref" tag can Google read links inside div tag?
Hi All, Need a suggestion on it. For buttons, I am using links in tag instead of "ahref". Do you know that can Google read links inside "div" tag? Does it pass rank juice? It will be great if you can provide any reference if possible.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pujan.bikroy0 -
Any idea why Google Search Console stopped showing "Internal Links" and "Links to your site"
Our default eCommerce property (https://www.pure-elegance.com) used to show several dozen External Links and several thousand Internal Links on Google Search Console. As of this Friday both those links are showing "No Data Available". I checked other related properties (https://pure-elegance.com, http:pure-elegance.com and http://www.pure-elegance.com) and all of them are showing the same. Our other statistics (like Search Analytics etc.) remain unchanged. Any idea what might have caused this and how to resolve this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SudipG0 -
Domains and Domain Authority
Looking for some advice 🙂 I have a domain that has been registered since 1999 and currently hosts my website - the problem is that my business has moved in a different direction and my URL is no longer associated with my main product offering. For example in the past I was xyzgarden.com however now something like xyzhomedecor.com is much more appropriate. How should I handle this so that I am not at a disadvantage for SEO. thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MainstreamMktg0 -
Domain Factors
Now that Page Rank seems to have been 'put out to graze' by Google with no further PR update planned, what would you say is the 'main factor' when looking at a domain? Is it Moz DA? or Moz Links? or Majestic TrustFlow? Or none of the above or is it a combination of the above?! Many thanks Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomKing0 -
301 many smaller domains to a new, large domain
Hi all, I have a question regarding permanently redirecting many small websites into one, large new one. During the past 9 years I have created many small websites, all focusing on hotel reservations in one specific city. This has served me beautifully in the past, but I have come to the conclusion that it is no longer a sustainable model and therefore I am in the process of creating one large, worldwide hotel reservations website. To not loose any benefit of my hard work the past 9 years, I want to permanently redirect the smaller websites to the correct section of my new website. I know that if it is only a few websites, that this strategy is perfectly acceptable, but since I am talking about 50 to 100 websites, I am not so sure and would like to have your input. Here is what I would like to do: (the domain names are not mine, just an example) Old website: londonhotels.com 301 to newdomain.com/london/ Old website: berlinhotels.com 301 to newdomain.com/berlin/ Old website: amsterdamhotels.com 301 to newdomain.com/amsterdam/ Etc., etc. My plan is to do this for 50 to 100 websites and would like to have your thoughts on if this is an acceptable strategy or not. Just to be clear, I am talking about redirecting only my websites that are in good standing, i.e. none of the websites I am thinking about 301'ing have been penalized. Thanks for your thoughts on this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tfbpa0 -
Root domain or sub domain? WWW. or NOT WWW......
I am a little confused! I use vidahost whom I have to say I find very helpful. I currently have the domains www.fentonit.co.uk and www.fentonit.com, now the websites was set up using the www.fentonit.com and I have www.fentonit.co.uk as a parked domain pointed to the www.fentonit.com. Confused yet? Now because I wanted the website to show www.fentonit.co.uk I added some code I was given by the guys to the .hta access file and viola up it comes as the .co.uk which is what I wanted. So if your still here and havent A: Killed yourself yet or B: Went to the Pub Then my questions are: 1. Is there going to be an issue from an SEO point of view having my site set up this way and if so how do I resolve it? 2. Would I be better using the root domain fentonit.co.uk (I think this is the root domain, although it iscurrently parked and pointed) as opposed to the sub www domain?.......and finally.......? 3. If it is set up as I stated what exactly would be my root domain, would it be the .co.uk or the .com? Sorry and I completely understand if your not interested in answering it but if you do.....Thanks in advance and I'll take you to the pub...lol Craig www.fentonit.co.uk ( i think)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | craigyboy1 -
Linking to bad sites
Hi, I just have a quick question. Is it very negative to link to "bad" sites, such as online pharmacies, dating, adult sites, that sort of stuff? How much does linking to a "bad" site negatively affect a "good" site? Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | salvyy0 -
Should I remove paid links?
I recently added about 20 paid links from directories but have since seen a 10% drop in traffic. I did also delete about 1000 pages of content that had no inbound links and were duplicated on other sites on the web and replaced the content with new content supplied by a client but still duplicated on other sites on the web, old URLs no longer valid or linked to, new content on new URLs. Assuming the drop in traffic had nothing to do with the content change mentioned above, should I remove the paid links in an attempt to recover? I don't think the old content was bringing in much traffic as it appeared elsewhere on more authoritive sites than mine.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mulith0