Can bad traffic by association ever be a good thing?
-
Back in May, my client's website www.mfcomm.co.uk was hacked. Pages were added to the site which instantly received backlinks & traffic. The secuirty flaw was plugged & offending pages deleted within the following weeks. I also created 301 redirects for the most popular pages because the domain appeared to be affected by the increase in 404 errors.
Reviewing stats & Moz reports, I notice fresh backlinks - one from http://forum.kolodec.info/. By association to the spurious page that was created as part of the security breach, should I distance the domain with any traffic from all referring sites?
Reviewing http://forum.kolodec.info/ in Open Site Explorer it only gets spam score = 4
So my question is, should I count all traffic by association as bad traffic & blacklist the domain or be more lenient? More the point, what would Google think?
Regards, Terry
-
I think that you should check is this real visit or fake one. Check HTTP access logs about such referrer and see in Analytics (or other website analytics software that you used). Also visit URL where backlink should be. Then:
- In case of link to hacked pages - disavow ASAP. Bad guys make backlinks to hacked webpages to get higher position in SERP. But this could change your linking profile. And in some situation you may face Penguin algo filter.
- In case of link to other pages and source look shady - disavow ASAP. This could be even revenge for removed hack. Also can bring Penguin.
- In case of link to non-existing link i.e. bot traffic - leave. This is case when bot make "fake visit" tricking Analytics to count it. And webmasters go to inspect source. This is "curiosity driven visit", but messing your Analytics statistics.
- In case of regular link that is relevant - keep it. Example - i have link from Pakisanian forum about people discussing something like type X vs. type Y. And someone share link from mine site explaining "here is difference between them" in article that is exactly about their discussion.
So until you didn't see original source can be anything. Also please check question and answers here:
https://mza.seotoolninja.com/community/q/is-there-value-in-disavowing-links-if-you-there-is-no-google-penalty
so disavowing isn't tool that you only use in case of penalty. You can use it even w/o penalty to make link profile clean as possible.
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
-
Can a company group have reciprocal links on their company websites without being penalised by Google?
A client which is part of a group of businesses all within one industry but have different purposes has come to us aith a "brilliant idea" that they all have a blog on their website that links to every business within their group. We are pretty sure that this will be seen as "black hat" by Google, but just wanted to see what you all thought? Thanks!
Link Building | | RedAntSolutions0 -
Are Side Bar Links Bad For SEO?
I'm thinking about adding a sidebar on the right side of my blog post with links to other pages. Is have a sidebar with links to other pages good or bad for SEO.
Link Building | | WilCross0 -
Good start to campaign but suddenly getting nowhere fast
As an amatuer SEO I was really please with the results when I optimised my pages and starting link building. I've managed to get myself to the bottom of page one for almost all my main keywords over a 6 month period. However since then I've been building links for the last couple of months and have seen very little movement in my SERPS positions at all! I expected it to be harder on page one but not this hard! According to SEO Moz campaign tools my on page results are all A so I dont think I can optimise any more. I'm beginning to think it's not links I need and I'm missing something like not enough social media mentions etc however many of my competitors on page one don't appear to engage with social media much at all. I'm at a loss really as to wether to just keep building links through guest posts, articles, forums, directories or try a different approach. i wonder if some of you more experienced SEO's could take a look and offer any ideas. My site is http://www.musicliveuk.com and I'm trying to rank for Entertainment Agency Entertainment Agencies Wedding Band Wedding Singer Function Band Cover Band (I have optimised pages for each of these keywords in the footer) I've also noticed that a lot of my competitors have links on lots of blogs that I can't seem to get links on. I would normally contact them and offer to guest post but I can find any contact details. I'm beginning to think my competitors have set these sites up as well for link building purposes. Is that ethical? Please help!
Link Building | | SamCUK1 -
How to detect which is a bad link ?
Hi.. Our Link Builders at office collects the lists for directories, social bookmarking websites and press releases, article directories. But Im not sure, which all are good links, etc, since I dont get time to check. Is there a way, I can train them to know, which is a bad link, so they can just ignore that link ?
Link Building | | qubesys0 -
Can I use canonical links outside of the head section?
I been implementing a Joomla site and my site has different ways of accessing several links therefore I need to use the canonical tag. Now I'm using Joomla 1.6, and most of the extensions that I've seen until now don't provide me the expected or they do other things that I just don't want. Therefore other than modifying the code or creating an extension myself I've decided to look into placing the canonical elements in the page.
Link Building | | jcmoreno0 -
Is a no follow comment section good or bad?
I have a photography blog that I'm really trying to promote solid commenting. What is everyone's opinion on nofollow vs do follow comments?
Link Building | | JBPhotography0 -
How can I get listed in DMOZ.org
I was listed in DMOZ for over 10 years. Then suddenly my listing dropped out (I suspect a competitor is an editor and bumped us) and my rankings have dropped a bit. I have resubmitted my site repeatedly, but with no luck. Do you have any idea how I can get relisted? Lisa Rioni http://www.wholesalecentral.com
Link Building | | lrioni0 -
Can a reciprocal link turn into a one way if you no-follow?
If you create a list of links to top blogs in your industry but no-follow all the links, and they link to your list, will that count as a reciprical link or a one-way link by search engines?
Link Building | | SparkplugDigital0