How to remove bad link to your site?
-
Hello,
Our website www.footballshirtblog.co.uk recently suffered a major Google penalty, wiping out 6 months of hard work. We went from getting 6000-10000 hits a day to absolutely nothing from Google. We have been baffled by the penalty as we couldn't think of anything we've done wrong.
After some analysis of Open Site Explorer, it seems I may have found the answer. There is a ton of bad links pointing to us. A few example domains are:
This is nothing to do with us and so I can only assume some competitor has done this. As we were only about 4-5 months old, I guess Google has punished us.
What do we do now? This is not a situation I have experienced before and would really appreciate your expert advice.
-
The best way to go is to continue building quality links. These links you've 'kindly' acquired from a competitor have clearly made your link profile look worse than it should be. The fact you've got nearly 450k links coming from less than 100 domains will look a tad suspicious to G.
If you continue to build quality links, google will see that you're not getting your links from spammy sources and the other links you've been given could easily turn from having a negative effect to having a positive effect.
As it's a new site, this is the time when your link profile is watched carefully, so although it's unfortunate to have got these links, it's not the end of the world by any means. Try and get some links from sites with a high MozRank using white hat tactics.
-
If it was the competitor's bad links that triggered a penalty, you can try a Google Reconsideration Request and explain what happened.
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35843
-
Assuming that you didn't use any questionable linking practices to get your site where it was before the penalty, I would submit the site for a manual review.
If you were using some gray hat tactics, you'll have a much better chance of getting rid of those links than the ones that were so generously pointed your way. So, you time would be better spent getting rid of the links you wouldn't want them to see that you actually built vs. trying to eliminate the ones that were likely sent by a competitor. The other alternative is to blame all of the bad links on the competitor...again, assuming that you built some links you don't want Google to see.
The other option, although more painful, is to wait it out. I've seen several sites get clobbered by competitor's nasty link building tactics and after a few months they all the sudden popped back into the SERPs higher than they were before hand.
The other thing I would suggest is to make sure those links are the source of your problem, i.e. how's your anchor text? Is it over optimized? How about on-site? And how could we forget good ole Panda and it's many, many revisions. Are you certain that it didn't get hit in the 2.14x update? (I'm kidding about the numbers...it just seems like Panda is never-ending.)
-
Since you have no control over those other websites, you can't really do anything to get them to remove the links. But because of this, incoming links to your site will never penalize your site. If they did, you're right, a competitor could get sites penalized on purpose and point lots of links from them to your site.
What else could have caused your site to get penalized? Could one of the Panda updates have caused it? Check out the time line here and see if it lines up to when your site lost its traffic: http://www.seomoz.org/google-algorithm-change.
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
-
Site migration/ CMS/domain site structure change-no access to search console
Hi everyone, We are migrating an old site under a bigger umbrella (our main domain). As mentioned in the title, We'll perform CMS migration, domain change, and site structure change. Now, the major problem is that we can't get into google search console for the old site. The site still has old GA code, so google search console verification using this method is not possible, also there is no way developers will be able to add GTM or edit DNS setting (not to bother you with the reason why). Now, my dilemma is : 1. Do we need access to old search console to notify Google about the domain name change or this could be done from our main site (old site will become a part of) search console 2. We are setting up 301 redirects from old to the new domain (not perfect 1:1 redirect ). Once migration is done does anything else needs to be done with the old domain (it will become obsolete)? 3.The main site, Site-map... Should I create a new sitemap with newly added pages or update the current one. 4. if you have anything else please add:) Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bgvsiteadmin0 -
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 -
Site wide links - should they be nofollow or followed links
Hi We have a retail site and a blog that goes along with the site. The blog is very popular and the MD wanted a link from the blog back to the main retail site. However as this is a site wide link on the blog, am I right in thinking this really should be no follow link. The link is at the top of every page. Thanks in advance for any help
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Andy-Halliday0 -
Why is my m-dot site outranking my main site in SERPs?
My client has a WP site and a Duda mobile site that we inherited. For some reason their m-dot site is ranking on P1 of Google for their top KWs instead of the main site which is much more robust. The main site might rank beyond page 5 when the generic home page for their m-dot site appears on P1. Does anyone have any idea why this might be happening?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Etna0 -
3 Wordpress sites 1 Tumblr site coming under 1domain(4subdomains) WPMU: Proper Redirect?
Hey Guys, witnessSF.org (WP), witnessLA.org(Tumblr), witnessTO.com(WP), witnessHK.com(WP), and witnessSEOUL.com(new site no redirects needed) are being moved over to sf.ourwitness.com, la.ourwitness.com and so forth. All under on large Wordpress MU instance. Some have hundreds of articles/links others a bit less. What is the best method to take, I understand there are easy redirects, and the complete fully manual one link at a time approach. Even the WP to WP the permalinks are changing from domain.com/date/post-name to domain.com/post-name? Here are some options: Just redirect all previous witinessla.org/* to la.ourwitness.org/ (automatic direct all pages to home page deal) (easiest not the best)2) Download Google Analytics top redirected domains about 50 urls have significant ranking and traffic (in LA's sample) and just redirect those to custom links. (most bang for the buck for the articles that rank manually set up to the correct place) 3) Best of the both worlds may be possible? Automated perhaps?I prefer working with .htaccess vs a redirect plugin for speed issues. Please advise. Thanks guys!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vmialik0 -
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.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | em_welsby1 -
Google giving me only partial site links?
Hi Guys, My site is #1 ranked for the term "waiting till marriage," but Google only gives me partial site links. See "Forums - Articles - Questions - Videos" links in attached screenshot. How do I get the full, page-dominating, mini-description-having site links? Any suggestions? Note: I've got a ton of content and decent traffic, but I haven't put much time into developing back links yet. I'm a php developer, but I'm new to professional-level SEO. Any help would be hugely appreciated. Also, sorry about the inflammatory nature of the site. It's not a preachy site; it's just a support group. Hope it doesn't offend. partial-sitelinks.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MikeAM270 -
Best way to find broken links on a large site?
I've tried using Xenu, but this is a bit time consuming because it only tells you if the link sin't found & doesn't tell you which pages link to the 404'd page. Webmaster tools seems a bit dated & unreliable. Several of the links it lists as broken aren't. Does anyone have any other suggestions for compiling a list of broken links on a large site>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline1