Spam signals from old company site are hurting new company site, but we can't undo the redirect.
-
My client was forced to change its domain name last year (long story). We were largely able to regain our organic rankings via 301-redirects.
Recently, the rankings for the new domain have begun to plummet. Nothing specific took place that could have caused any ranking declines on the new site.
However, when we analyze links to the OLD site, we are seeing a lot of link spam being built to that old domain over recent weeks and months. We have no idea where these are coming from but they appear to be negatively impacting our new site.
We cannot dismantle the redirects as the old site has hundreds, if not thousands, of quality links pointing to it, and many customers are accustomed to going to that home page. So those redirects need to stay in place.
We have already disavowed all the spam we have found on the old Search Console. We are continuing to do so as we find new spam links. But what are we supposed to do about this spam negatively impacting our new site?
FYI we have not received any messages in the search console.
-
Hi,
It is hard to advice if not having all detailed facts.
Said this. What about sending those affected pages with a 301 to a new page "site.com/redirect" with a noindex.nofollow? That way, you "tell the crawlers" those spam are not important nor relevant to your website.I implemented twice already; so far so good. The websites have recovered SERPs positions almost instantly, as well as the DA has slowly improved.
Some complete redirects from http to https, or to a new domain have unexpected "secondary effects".
Although, I noticed that only the Moz Link Research & Back Link Checker have noticed and showed the spam links.
Despite Google almost ban the website, vanished from all SERPs, the console never showed the issues at all! Please, update whenever you have news.
Mª Verónica B.
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
-
Our forum links are redirecting to high spammy & NSFW sites: Any impact on main website?
Hi all, We have a discussion forum like subdomain.website.com. Some spammers have created many links with our subdomain URL which are redirecting to high spammy and NSFW sites (Not sure how they did). We are trying to stop the redirects. So far many visitors and bots have recorded visits to these spammy sites with our URL. Will this impact our website anyhow ? I noticed that our website spam score has been increased and not sure if this is coincidental or penalized. Ranking even dropped without manual actions. I wonder how much of this subdomain activity will impact main website? Please advise.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vtmoz1 -
'SEO Footers'
We have an internal debate going on right now about the use of a link list of SEO pages in the footer. My stance is that they serve no purpose to people (heatmaps consistently show near zero activity), therefore they shouldn't be used. I believe that if something on a website is user-facing, then it should also beneficial to a user - not solely there for bots. There are much better ways to get bots to those pages, and for those people who didn't enter through an SEO page, internal linking where appropriate will be much more effective at getting them there. However, I have some opposition to this theory and wanted to get some community feedback on the topic. Anyone have thoughts, experience, or data to share on this subject?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | LoganRay1 -
Should I 301 redirect my old site are just add a link to my new site
I used to offer design and web services on a site that is current blank (no content, no links). My questions is should I add a little bit of content, maybe a brief explanation with a link to my new site. Or should I just add 301 redirect. This is purely a question of what is better for SEO and ranking for my new site (not a branding question).
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Tyrell0 -
How to 301 redirect from old domain and their pages to new domain and pages?
Hi i am a real newbie to this and i hope for a guide on how to do this. I seen a few moz post and is quiet confusing hopefully somebody able to explain it in layman terms to me. I would like to 301 redirect this way, both website contain the same niche. oldwebsite.com > newwebsite.com and also its pages..... oldwebsite.com/test >newwebsite.com/test So my question here is i would like to host my old domain and its pages in my new website hosting in order to redirect to my new domain and its pages how do i do that? would my previous page link overwrite my new page link? or it add on the juice link? Do i need to host the whole old domain website into my new hosting in order to redirect the old pages? really confusing here, thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | andzon0 -
Can I report competitor for asking to guest post?
I just had an email from one of my least preferred competitor's SEO company asking about guest posting. They are already totally dominating the SERPs where they have no natural reason for being. Is there anywhere to bring this to the attention of the search engines?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Cornwall0 -
Attacked with spam links.
Our website was hit with the "Pharma hack", "Google Cloaking Hack", or "Blackhat SEO Spam". and Google showed in the results this website may be compromised. After cleaning out the hack from the website I chacked with the Seomoz tool Open Site Explorer and I found that they hacked 1000 of other websites and created links to my website. They were building a few 1000 links to the website with the clickable text "buy cheap online pharmacy". and more like that. This website www.washington23.com has been hacked and gives over 200 links to your website for pharmacy items. And Google considers this from your impotent links as i can see in webmasters. What can I do about it?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Joseph-Green-SEO0 -
Have I created link spam.....
Howdy fellow Mozzers.... Since Googles Penguin Update I am overly cautious when reviewing our link profile. I spotted 2 domains linking to us yesterday, 80+ links from each domain to our homepage. This looked superstitious, site wide links effectively. At first inspection I couldn't spot the links....they turned out to be two individual comments, but as the site had a plugin with "most recent comments", 1 link became 80. The link is an exact match of the individuals name who made the comment. And is a result of filling out the comment form. Name: Website: Comment: By filling out the name and website the name becomes the anchor text for the link to the website. Long story short...do you think this is penguin esq. link spam? Is it not? Or is it just not worth the risk and remove them anyway???
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RobertChapman0 -
301 Redirect ASP code
Hi I have a script detailed below, that 301 redirects based upon different queries --- """"<%if (Request("offset") = "") Then%> <% if Request("keywords") = "" AND Request("s") <> "" AND Request("j") <> "" then'Sector and Location NOT NULL%> <% if (Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_X_REQUEST_URI")) <> "/" & LCase(SEOFriend(replaces.Fields.Item("JBCategoryLabel"))) & "-jobs-in-" & LCase(SEOFriend(replacej.Fields.Item("JBLocation"))) Then Response.Status="301 Moved Permanently" Response.AddHeader "Location", "/" & LCase(SEOFriend(replaces.Fields.Item("JBCategoryLabel"))) & "-jobs-in-" & LCase(SEOFriend(replacej.Fields.Item("JBLocation"))) Response.End End If %> <%End if%> <% if Request("keywords") = "" AND Request("s") <> "" AND Request("j") = "" then'Sector NOT NULL and Location NULL %> <% if (Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_X_REQUEST_URI")) <> "/" & LCase(SEOFriend(replaces.Fields.Item("JBCategoryLabel"))) & "-jobs-in-" & LCase(SEOFriend(SiteDetails.Fields.Item("JBSRegion"))) Then Response.Status="301 Moved Permanently" Response.AddHeader "Location", "/" & LCase(SEOFriend(replaces.Fields.Item("JBCategoryLabel"))) & "-jobs-in-" & LCase(SEOFriend(SiteDetails.Fields.Item("JBSRegion"))) Response.End End If %> <%End if%> <% if Request("keywords") = "" AND Request("s") = "" AND Request("j") <> "" then'Sector NULL and Location NOT NULL %> <% if (Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_X_REQUEST_URI")) <> "/jobs-in-" & LCase(SEOFriend(replacej.Fields.Item("JBLocation"))) Then Response.Status="301 Moved Permanently" Response.AddHeader "Location", "/jobs-in-" & LCase(SEOFriend(replacej.Fields.Item("JBLocation"))) Response.End End If %> <%End if%> <%End if%>"""" But this still allows for both the www and non www versions of these pages to render in the browser, which is resulting in duplicate content. On my home page I use -- <% If InStr(Request.ServerVariables("SERVER_NAME"),"www") = 0 Then Response.Status="301 Moved Permanently" Response.AddHeader "Location","http://www." & Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_HOST") & "/" Response.End End if %> `Is there a good way to combine these, so that I still get all of the rules of the first script whilst also redirecting any non www versions to the www version? in other words
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TwoPints
domain.com/jobs-in-" & LCase(SEOFriend(replacej.Fields.Item("JBLocation")))
Eould redirect to
www.domain.com/jobs-in-" & LCase(SEOFriend(replacej.Fields.Item("JBLocation"))) Thanks in advance`0