How to proceed? Older ecommerce site, unnatural link warning 2013, disavow, now what?
-
Hello all,
I have a small, older ecommerce site. It has been around since 2002. It ranked very well until a few years ago. It currently does rank for some terms, but not many. (I am trying to say that it is not completely off the map.)
-
Our domain authority is 36.
-
Our Spam Score in Open Site Explorer is a 2/10.
-
We received a notice in GWT in May 2013 re: unnatural links. That notice has since cleared from our account. I assume that it has expired.
-
We were working with an SEO consultant when we received the notice from Google in 2013. He started working on cleaning up our link profile at that point. He submitted a disavowal file to Google with all of the domains that he was not able to get cleaned up manually. He kept working and updated the file again in June 2014. He told me that we did not have to file a reconsideration request.
-
He did find that an SEO company that I hired in the past had gotten me a lot of spammy links. We got these taken down. There are still some spammy links that seem to keep cropping up.
-
I have started going through Open Site Explorer to again contact some of these spammy sites to ask them to take our links down. Of course, the emails immediately bounce back to me. I am documenting everything.
I feel like I am in a hole and can't dig out. What am a doing wrong? Should I disavow again? Should we have filed a reconsideration request a year or two ago? At this point, is it too late to do so as the penalty no longer shows up in my GWT account?
How should I proceed?
I prefer not to post my URL, but I would be happy to PM it to anyone who can offer advice.
Thanks in advance.
Melissa
-
-
Patrick,
Sorry. I am a newbie and can't find you on the PM username list. I sent an email to the address in your profile.
Thanks again.
Melissa
-
Patrick,
Thanks for your response.
My GWT account currently shows "No new messages or recent critical issues"
Does this mean that the penalty has expired? Or is it still lingering from 2013? How would I know?
I will PM you my URL in a sec.
I appreciate your help.
Melissa
-
Hi there
They told you you don't need to file a reconsideration request? Did they remove the penalty or not? If they didn't, yes, you need to file another reconsideration request - it's not a one and done deal.
It sounds like you are doing everything right - you should also check out these resources from Moz:
Ultimate Guide to Google Penalty Removal (Moz)
Your Start-to-Finish Guide to Using Google's Disavow Tool (Moz)If you want to send your website via PM, please feel free, I'd like to take a look. But these things do take time, but I can't understand why your SEO company would tell you you don't need to file another reconsideration request - Google wants to know you are doing to remedy your issues.
Make sure you get links from Google Webmaster Tools and Majestic as well, as OSE only gives you one angle of links.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
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
-
So many links from single site?
this guy is ranking on all high volume keywords and has low quality content, he has 1600 ref domains check the attachment how did he get so many links from single site is he gonna be penalized YD2BvQ0
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SIMON-CULL0 -
Should I revive the old domain or just redirect all the juicy links to my new site?
I'm about to acquire a domain with a lot of great/highly authoritative backlinks. The links pointing to the domain are quite powerful and the domain is an exact match TLD. I have two options (that I know of 😞 1. I could redirect all the links to their new home(s) on my new site which offers the same resources the old site used to offer. or 2. I could rebuild the tools/content on this site. Ideally, I'd transfer to my new site as all those powerful links could help all my rankings. However, I'm worried that some of the powerful links will de-link once they see the site redirects elsewhere, even though it's offering the same content. Also, option one isn't an exact match domain. Which, I know, shouldn't make a difference now-a-days but regardless of what people say, it still seems to help out some sites in less competitive niches. One more thing to note: The domain that I'm purchasing is about 25 years old. I'm leaning toward option one. I want to make sure I put my best foot forward on this investment and thought it wise to consult the SEO gods.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ninel_P0 -
My wordpress site generating bad links
Hello Everyone, I have wordpress site Which is from last 20 days generating links like For Example http://www.domainname.com/game/965/wiki/キャラクター図鑑_レアリティ(★★★)_【ID:675】ワッツ・ステップニー htttp://www.domainname.com/nkpghfu_13356_gvgjq_tfjhnkt_jsj_296_82566_673_567_245 This is screenshot of webmaster tools http://prnt.sc/ccwh0e can please any expert check & Tell How this Link i am getting, Also What are steps i need take for removing this Errors, As it is harming my sites Flow As well As Rankings. Thanx in Advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | innovativekrishna10 -
Disavow first (and link removal outreach second) as tactic?
I need to remove/disavow hundreds of domains due to an algorithmic penalty. Has anyone disavowed first and done the outreach thing second as a tactic? The reason why I was considering this was as follows: Most of the websites are from spammy websites and unlikely to have monitored accounts/available contact details. My business is incredibly seasonal, only being easily profitable for half of the year. The season starts from next month so the window of opportunity to get it done is small. If there's a Penguin update before I get it done, then it could be very bad news. Any thoughts would be much appreciated. (Incidentally, if you are interested in, I also posted here about it: http://moz.com/community/q/honest-thoughts-needed-about-link-building-removal)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Coraltoes770 -
New site now links disappearing in Open Site Explorer and GWT
We launched a new site at the beginning of December 2012 and carefully 301'd all URLs from the old site to the new (custom CMS on old site wordpress on new). Our rankings have slipped quite badly but the most worrying thing is that we used to have about 1200 backlinks according to GWT/OSE before the new site launched and now we're down to about 30. Can anyone help shed some light on this please? The site is www.littleoneslondon.co.uk A few things that might help: 1. We were getting a lot of links through our job feeds (it's a nanny recruitment site) on indeed and trovitt, for some reason no new ones from these have appeared in site explorer and all the old jobs are gone completely. 2. We had 1000s of not found errors in google webmaster tools and once these were redirected and marked as fixed this is when the links disappeared. 3. We are getting quite a few 504 errors on the site due to an old proxy redirect (/blog was hosted on a different server on the old site and has not been removed yet), this will be fixed tomorrow but could this be a factor? 4. The developer seems to have redirected all the links through wordpress directly some how (I don't see any redirect plugins but there are lots of pages called 'redirect'). There are no references in the htaccess file for any redirects other than from the /blog folder that the wordpress instance sits in. Sorry for the long post, I hope I've given any details you'd need and I really appreciate any help anyone can give. Thanks, Karl
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bdig0 -
Google Webmaster Now Shows YourMost Recent Links
I just saw this story today about a new Google Webmaster feature which lets you download a file of the most recent links. http://searchengineland.com/google-now-shows-you-your-most-recent-links-127903 I downloaded the file today and I already discovered a major site issue. Our site blog was completely duplicated on a secondary domain we own and Google was showing that site as recent links. I already emailed the dev team to fix this pronto. Anybody else using this new feature and perhaps can share if it helps you in any way.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | irvingw1 -
My site was number 1 for competetive keyword on Google now completely gone- what should I do?
WHat is the best way to determine if I have somehow been delisted from Google?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TBKO0 -
Should I change site link structure? Will that make things worse?
I've got an Exact Match Domain that has just started to do well in Google for say the past year. I've always received good rankings from Bing and Yahoo but I love the traffic levels that Google sends. Long story short on the 25th according to webmaster tools, my impressions on their search engine have been destroyed. No problems, not de-indexed, just not showing my site anymore. I like this site and have been careful, built some links and the anchor text is suspect but also not suspect because its the same as the domain. What I feel the problem may be is the site structure. I set it up a long time ago like this: Exact-Match-keyword. com/ Exact-match-keyword.php/state I thought it looked kinda spammy at the time but also thought it may help. Now I'm wondering if I shorten all the page titles to the state name and 301 the old links if I will regain rankings, or if I may lose some from other search engines. I used to think Penguins were cute......
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TEGS1