Are these links bad for my results?
-
In the past we have requested links on multiple directories. Since we have seen a mayor drop (60% in traffic) in results around the pinquin update 24-26th of April. Our results have been slowly getting lower and lower in Google.
Is it possible to tell if these links are in fact doing my site harm? Before the 26th of April it was easy to see that the results where benefiting from the submission to those directories.
We did not have any messages in webmaster tools and reconsideration says "no manual spam action taken". What would be the best strategy to turn this around and go up again?
A selection of the requested links can be found below.
<colgroup><col width="266"></colgroup>
| www.thesquat.org |
| www.directmylink.com |
| www.thegreatdirectory.org |
| www.submission4u.com |
| www.urlmoz.com |
| www.basoti.org |
| www.iwebdirectory.co.uk |
| www.freeinternetwebdirectory.com |
| addsite-submitfree.com |
| opendirectorys.com |
| www.xennobb.com |
| mdwerks.com |
| www.directoryfire.com |
| www.rssbuffet.com |To give a good view on the problem: The requested links anchors are mostly not in the native language of the directories.
Thanks!
-
No problem
Let me know if you need any further questions answering.
Andy
-
Thanks for your help Andy! i will look into it.
-
Google+ can help with identifying who you are as an organisation and owner of content on your site. Might not help with this particular problem, but worth doing all the same.
If you are 100% sure that it is Penguin, then I would start with manually contacting some of the sites where you have questionable links and ask for them to be removed. If this doesn't work, or if links wont be removed, then it might be that you should look at using the Disavow tool and just get rid of anything that might be causing you problems.
After you do that, if can take a number of weeks for Google to get round to spidering all those sites to see you are no longer there.
Another blog post of mine on the Disavow tool with video from Matt Cutts and links to help pages on Google as well.
Andy
-
No, unfortunately we are still unable to point out what exactly the problem is. We think it must have been penguin because of the date and the amount of keywords it affected.
No we dont have Google+ yet. Does it makes a lot of difference in this case?
We did try to improve all the different aspects of the site. We added a better canonical structure, reduced the amount of keywords and links on a page and rewrote a lot of text to make it more user friendly instead of google friendly.
Unfortunately we did not noticed a turnover in results and getting somehow desperate on what to try next. If we look at our direct competitors (who do better in results) i can not see why they are not affected.
Thanks for the link to your article. I will surely go and read it.
-
Unless you get a warning from Google in WMT, don't worry about trying to Disavow them - just don't try and create any more
If you are after a little inspiration on what to do, I wrote a bit of a link-building 101 that could give you some ideas?
Do you have Google+ setup and Authorship on your site? have you identified what it is that caused you to get hit? Panda / Penguin / Page Quality, etc.
Andy
-
Thanks for your reply Andy! I know the listed directories are not doing any good for my results.
The question still remains if it would be worth the trouble to let them all removed. In our niche we now have contacted blogs and more sensible directories to get us listed and we see that as a continuous process. I have to mention that before the update in April we did experienced a climbing line wish is all gone now.
We are now 6 months away from pinquin and still we having low results. That is the reason why i'm searching for other possible solutions.
Thanks again!
-
Just looking at the names of some of those directories, I can tell you they are worthless - The Great Directory? i Web Directory?
I would be searching for sites that will benefit from what you have to offer and contact them - steer clear of directories of this kind. However, find a directory that is dedicated to your niche, and that is acceptable.
Andy
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
-
How long Google will take to Disavow a link?
Just want to know how long will Google take to Disavow a link? I uploaded my file on 18 Dec 2020 and today is 5th January 2021 and still, that link is appearing in my Search Console in Top linking domains. Anyone who recently done this practice and how long it took? I mentioned the domain name below and hopefully, it will disavow all the links [subdomain+www+without www] coming from that domain. domain:abcd.com Help me out, please...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | seotoolsland.com0 -
Buying links - where is the line drawn?
I apologise in advance if this has been discussed before, but I'm a bit confused by this whole buying links/outreach scenario. Example.. High ranking PR site (PR 85) has people advertising they can get you links from that site in exchange for money.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | nick-name123
You would give them an article and it would look natural and a link - branded or keyword - links back to you. This is not new to people here who know of this. Obviously there is a difference between a link farm (crap site just selling links) and one of these highly recognised sites where you can obtain a link from. I'm sure a goody 2 shoes will now tell me 'i should do everything natural not be tempted', but I actually dont know where the line is drawn between the same site giving a natural link to me and someone selling a link from the same site. Google isnt going to downgrade the site I'm sure but how do they combat this or even do they combat it? Do we have to accept that buying links is still a normal process and if done in moderation and discretely, you can get away with it?1 -
Can image links help improve my backlinking profile?
I recently spent some time looking at the backlink profile of a leading UK food & clothing retailer and noticed that a high number of their backlinks for very competitive search phrase's consisted entirely of image backlinks. 50% of the links contained no alt text and other 50% contained a mix of just the targeted keyword or a phase containig one mention of the targeted keyword. Has anyone had any experiance of this type of marketing producing any positive effect on SEO or search engine rankings?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BigJonOne0 -
Off-page SEO and link building
Hi everyone! I work for a marketing company; for one of our clients' sites, we are working with an independent SEO consultant for on-page help (it's a large site) as well as off-page SEO. Following a meeting with the consultant, I had a few red flags with his off-page practices – however, I'm not sure if I'm just inexperienced and this is just "how it works" or if we should shy away from these methods. He plans to: guest blog do press release marketing comment on blogs He does not plan to consult with us in advance regarding the content that is produced, or where it is posted. In addition, he doesn't plan on producing a report of what was posted where. When I asked about these things, he told me they haven't encountered any problems before. I'm not saying it was spam-my, but I'm more not sure if these methods are leaning in the direction of "growing out of date," or the direction of "black-hat, run away, dude." Any thoughts on this would be crazy appreciated! Thanks, Casey
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CaseyDaline0 -
Link idea? good or bad?
OK so my website ranks fairly well for keywords i would say 50-60 % are ranking in the top 3 my DA is 15 and PA is 28 I have a few other sites that i blog on that i own they have a DA of 11 and PA of 20 i was thinking of just guest posting on those using a keyword Anchor text that im not ranking for and seeing what that would do. I was thinking of creating a few other sites and just blog about random stuff for 3-6 months generate traffic and start guest posting redirecting links back towards me. Is this bad?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | gslc0 -
Negative SEO impacting client rankings - How to combat negative linking?
I have a client which have been losing rankings for the key term "sell gold" in Google AU. However, while doing some investigating I realized that we have been receiving links from bad neighborhoods such as porn, bogus .edu sites as well as some pharmaceutical sites. We have identified this as negative SEO and have moved forward to disavow the links in Google. However, I would like to know what other measures can be taken to combat this type of negative SEO linking? Any suggestions would be appreciated!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | dancape0 -
Blogger Reviews w/ Links - Considered a Paid Link?
As part of my daily routine, I checked out inbound.org and stumbled upon an article about Grey Hat SEO techniques. One of the techniques mentioned was sending product to a blogger for review. My question is whether these types of links are really considered paid links. Why shouldn't an e-commerce company evangelize its product by sending to bloggers whose readership is the demographic the company is trying to target? In pre e-commerce marketing, it was very typical for a start-up company to send samples for review. Additionally, as far as flow of commerce is concerned, it makes sense for a product review to direct the reader to the company, whether by including a contact phone number, a mailing address, or in today's e-commerce world, a link to their website. I understand the gaming potential here (as with most SEO techniques, black-hat is usually an extreme implementation), but backlinks from honest product reviews shouldn't have a tinge of black, thus keeping it white-hat. Am I wrong here? Are these types of links really grey? Any help or insight is much appreciated!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | b40040400 -
Linking Profile Gone Bad?!
Recently, I was looking over the linking profile for one of our large clients, and I noticed that a ton of spammy links were appearing. I have never purchase any links or done anything shady that would contribute to this large increase in bad links. It appears as though someone is trying to hijack the SEO of this company, and I don't know how to proceed. Currently, they have not been penalized by Google, but I would not be surprised if a penalty is on its way due to the obvious link spam. Is there any way to report this to Google to ensure that no penalties occer? Any advice on the issue is much welcomed! Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | tqinet0