Question on starting again after being penalised for bad links
-
Hi, in a scenario where you have been heavily penalised for bad links but the quality of your site is good, If you put the exact same version of your penalised site on a new domain (with no redirects), would Google recognise it and penalise it again, or would that give it a completely fresh start?
Any advice or experience with this would be much appreciated.
Thanks.
-
I would second this, it is a very last ditch approach but in a worst case scenario, what else can you do?
Has anyone actually done this? Any other considerations? Would you think it would be worth noindexing the original site first to get it out of the index before launching on a new domain?
I am actually working with a few companies and upon reviewing the link profile, it is like 99% junk so in this instance, starting again with some outreach to the few good links is certainly a more attractive prospect but I would be interested to hear any feedback from folks that have done this.
-
That should only be done as a last resort if your site is completely nuked. Or unless it was a relatively new site to begin with and all the links are bad anyway and there is nothing good pointing to you.
If your site is well established, good PR and some good links and time put into it, I would work on removing the bad links and going through the reconsideration process.
-
** If you put the exact same version of your penalised site on a new domain (with no redirects), would Google recognise it and penalise it again, or would that give it a completely fresh start?**
That would be a fresh start.
The preferred method of resolving the manipulative link issue is to run a campaign and remove the bad links. Such a campaign is time consuming and costly, but yields the best results.
If you cannot afford such a campaign, you can run away from the problem by changing domains in the manner you described. If you do such, it would be best if you can try to identify your good links and work with the publishing site to update the link to the new site.
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
-
Links
Hi 64% of our links come from a .com website and only 30% from .co.uk. We only do business in the UK should I continue with the .com links as they are easier to source. Does this hurt my SEO efforts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Caffeine_Marketing0 -
Value of no-follow links
I'm curious to understand roughly how much % of value a no-follow link has in building authority relative to a do-follow link? I understand that Google seems consistently and growingly focused on value - ie. is the link valuable in growing the business, irregardless of SEO - and perhaps therefore the no-follow / do-follow distinction is becoming a more unnecessary dichotomy. How does Google look at do-follow vs no-follow links? And how much weight now is really given to one compared to the other?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gavo0 -
HTTP to HTTPS Question
Hello, I have a question regarding SSL Certificates I think I know the answer to but wanted to make sure. One of our clients’ site uses http for their pages but when they started creating Registration forms they created a full duplicate site on https (so now there are two versions of all of the pages). I know due to duplicate concerns this could be an issue and needs to resolved (as well as the pros and cons of both) but if they are already set up with https does it make sense to just move everything there or in some instances would it pay to keep some pages http (using canonical tags, redirects, htccess…etc)? – Most of the information I found related to making the decision prior to having both or describing the process but I couldn’t find anything that specifically related to if both are already present. I thought that the best approach because everything’s already set up is to just move everything over to the more secure one but was curious if anybody had any insight? Thank you in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ben-R0 -
Client Question
Client Question - How much time this keyword takes to rank? Is there any tool or any calculation to find out the estimate time for a particular keyword?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | marknorman1 -
How hard would it be to take a well-linked site, completely change the subject matter & still retain link authority?
So, this would be taking a domain with a domain authority of 50 (200 root domains, 3500 total links) and, for fictitious example, going from a subject matter like "Online Deals" to "The History Of Dentistry"... just totally unrelated new subject for the old/re-purposed domain. The old content goes away entirely. The domain name itself is a super vague .com name and has no exact match to anything either way. I'm wondering, if the DNS changed to different servers, it went from 1000 pages to a blog, ownership/contacts stayed the same, the missing pages were 301'd to the homepage, how would that fare in Google for the new homepage focus and over what time frame? Assume the new terms are a reasonable match to the old domain authority and compete U.S.-wide... not local or international. Bonus points for answers from folks who have actually done this. Thanks... Darcy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Create a link or redirect?
We have 60 demo movie pages on our site. We no longer link to these movie pages internally, because they are outdated; however, a lot of our partner companies are still linking to these pages. Some of these pages will have 10-15 linking root domains and a page authority of 30+... so pretty decent authority. These pages only include a movie on the pages, no links. I am trying to pass some of the link juice from these pages to other pages on our site. I am wondering if I should: A)Include transcripts on these pages, then link back to our current product page or solution pages? B)Set up redirects from these pages to a product or solution page? C)Set up a redirect to our homepage? Any advice? Thanks, Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mike.Goracke0 -
Best Link Solicitation Email Structure - Link Building
Hello, What is the best thing to say when soliciting a link for link building. Say you're contacting a site with a resource section where your competitors are listed. What would you say to be the most persuasive. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
Have I been penalised?
I recently set up a site (3 months ago). After a couple of months I was on page 1/2/3 for all my main keywords. However on friday all the keywords except for 3 dropped out of the SERPS. Today only 1 keyword remains in the SERPS! I'm an amatuer SEO and remember with my 1st site I worked on (this new one is only my second) that it occassionally dissapeared from the SERPS for a few days and came back. It's now been 4 days though and I'm beginning to think I may have been penaslised. This second site is more of an affiliate site but I do try to include lots of relevant unique content even so. Could it be because it's an affiliate site? All the affiliate links are no follow.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamCUK0