Our stage site got crawled and we got an unnatural inbound links warning. What now?
-
live site: www.mybarnwoodframes.com
stage site: www.methodseo.net
We recently finished a redesign of our site to improve our navigation. Our developer insisted on hosting the stage site on her own server with a separate domain while she worked on it. However, somebody left the site turned on one day and Google crawled the entire thing. Now we have 4,320 pages of 100% identical duplicate content with this other site. We were upset but didn't think that it would have any serious repercussions until we got two orders from customers from the stage site one day. Turns out that the second site was ranking pretty decently for a duplicate site with 0 links, the worst was yet to come however.
During the 3 months of the redesign our rankings on our live site dropped and we suffered a 60% drop in organic search traffic. On May 22, 2013 day of the Penguin 2.0 release we received an unnatural inbound links warning. Google webmaster tools shows 4,320 of our 8,000 links coming from the stage site domain to our live site, we figure that was the cause of the warning.
We finished the redesign around May 14th and we took down the stage site, but it is still showing up in the search results and the 4,320 links are still showing up in our webmaster tools.
1. Are we correct to assume that it was the stage site that caused the unnatural links warning?
2. Do you think that it was the stage site that caused the drop in traffic? After doing a link audit I can't find any large amount of horrendously bad links coming to the site.
3. Now that the stage site has been taken down, how do we get it out of Google's indexes? Will it be taken out over time or do we need to do something on our end for it to be delisted?
4. Once it's delisted the links coming from it should go away, in the meantime however, should we disavow all of the links from the stage site? Do we need to file a reconsideration request or should we just be patient and let them go away naturally?
5. Do you think that our rankings will ever recover?
-
Hi,
Indeed the stage site is still out there .. http://screencast.com/t/ZbmvsYE7njYv
Again, that's easy to fix - if you want to - as you just need to verify the site in Web master tools and then use the removal tool.
For the main site - your visibility is low now -> http://screencast.com/t/PQzdxTih
Can you identify in this graph when the stage site was pushed into the index ? (in order to see if that was the reason for any drops in visibility / rankings)
Anyway - the main site was not very stabile even before .. the link profile is not strong enough to set it on a stabile course.
-
I edited the post and included links to both the live site and the stage site. Wondered if you have any more feedback after seeing taking a look at the backlinks to the site?
-
Hi,
1. Are we correct to assume that it was the stage site that caused the unnatural links warning?
** I don't think this is the case. However - if you post the url someone here can have a look.
2. Do you think that it was the stage site that caused the drop in traffic? After doing a link audit I can't find any large amount of horrendously bad links coming to the site.
** It can be the case - but if the test site will be removed and that was the case for the drop then you should get back on track very fast.
3. Now that the stage site has been taken down, how do we get it out of Google's indexes? Will it be taken out over time or do we need to do something on our end for it to be delisted?
** Verify the stage site in Google Web master Tools and then use site removal tool there and you will get the site out in one single move. (if tjis is really what you want).
4. Once it's delisted the links coming from it should go away, in the meantime however, should we disavow all of the links from the stage site? Do we need to file a reconsideration request or should we just be patient and let them go away naturally?
** You can disovow but is better to remove them
- see #3.
You should send a reconsideration request after you remove the stage site and explain. If you will get a response that you are still in violation of the guidelines and they still see un natural links that means the stage site was not the reason
5. Do you think that our rankings will ever recover?
** Hard to tell without seeing the domain name. If the stage site was the issue and you solve it (remove it) then yes - although I doubt that - at least based on the information available so far.
Hope it helps.
Cheers.
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
-
Spammers created bad links to old hacked domain, now redirected to our new domain. Advice?
My client had an old site hacked (let's call it "myolddomain.com") and the hackers created many links in other hacked sites with links such as http://myolddomain.com/styless.asp?jordan-12-taxi-kids-cheap-T8927.html The old myolddomain.com site was redirected to a different new site since then, but we still see over a thousand spam links showing up in the new site's Search Console 404 crawl errors report. Also, using the links: operator in google search, we see many results of spam links. Should we be worried about these bad links pointing to our old site and redirecting to 404s on the new site? What is the best recommendation to clean them up? Ignore? 410s? Other? I'm seeing conflicting advice out there. The old site is hosted by the client's previous web developer who doesn't want to clean anything up on their end without an ongoing hosting contract. So beyond turning redirects on or off, the client doesn't want to pay for any additional hosting. So we don't have much control over anything related to "myolddomain.com". 😞 Thanks in advance for any assistance!
Technical SEO | | usDragons0 -
Off-site company blog linking to company site or blog incorporated into the company site?
Kind of a SEO newbie, so be gentle. I'm a beginner content strategist at a small design firm. Currently, I'm working with a client on a website redesign. Their current website is a single page dud with a page authority of 5. The client has a word press blog with a solid URL name, a domain authority of 100 and page authority of 30. My question is this: would it be better for my client from an SEO perspective to: Re-skin their existing blog and link to the new company website with it, hopefully passing on some of its "Google Juice,"or... Create a new blog on their new website (and maybe do a 301 redirect from the old blog)? Or are there better options that I'm not thinking of? Thanks for whatever help you can give a newbie. I just want to take good care of my client.
Technical SEO | | TheKatzMeow0 -
"One Page With Two Links To Same Page; We Counted The First Link" Is this true?
I read this to day http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-one-page-two-links-page-counted-first-link-192718 I thought to myself, yep, thats what I been reading in Moz for years ( pitty Matt could not confirm that still the case for 2014) But reading though the comments Michael Martinez of http://www.seo-theory.com/ pointed out that Mat says "...the last time I checked, was 2009, and back then -- uh, we might, for example, only have selected one of the links from a given page."
Technical SEO | | PaddyDisplays
Which would imply that is does not not mean it always the first link. Michael goes on to say "Back in 2008 when Rand WRONGLY claimed that Google was only counting the first link (I shared results of a test where it passed anchor text from TWO links on the same page)" then goes on to say " In practice the search engine sometimes skipped over links and took anchor text from a second or third link down the page." For me this is significant. I know people that have had "SEO experts" recommend that they should have a blog attached to there e-commence site and post blog posts (with no real interest for readers) with anchor text links to you landing pages. I thought that posting blog post just for anchor text link was a waste of time if you are already linking to the landing page with in a main navigation as google would see that link first. But if Michael is correct then these type of blog posts anchor text link blog posts would have value But who is' right Rand or Michael?0 -
No follow links from ban sites
Hello boys and girls. I'm auditing my link profile and came across links pointing to my sites, from a ban site (site: domain.com gives back no result).yet the links are no follow. should i try to remove them all? i know no follow should be enough, yet my links are set in a bad neighborhood. what would you recommend??
Technical SEO | | Tit0 -
Some pages on my site are not linked - should I add a Visual SiteMap?
Hello, I have a site that does not have a blog feed.
Technical SEO | | NikitaG
And unless it is done Manually there is no way to see the blog links.
www.MigrationLawyers.co.za Now, I submit the the Sitemap to google, but will it be a good Idea to include an actual sitemap of the site (for example in the footer of the site)
http://migrationlawyers.co.za/sitemap-immigration-south-africa and should i Make the "sitemap" link a follow or nofollow? Thanks so much in advance
Nikita0 -
Should I consider webmaster tools links and linked pages ratio to remove unnatural links?
I don't know this is a suitable place for post this question. Anyway I have done it. According to the Google webmaster tools, Links to your site page. My blog has considerable amount of links, from linked pages (from certain domain names). For an instance please refer following screenshot. When I am removing unnatural links, should I consider these, links from linked pages ratio? Almost all of these sites are social bookmarking sites. When I publish a new bookmark on those sites, they automatically add a homepage link. As a result of that, I got a huge number of home page links from linked pages. What is your recommendation? Thanks! webmaster.png web_master_tools.png
Technical SEO | | Godad0 -
Affiliate links
Is there a best practice for linking out to affiliates URLs post panda? I know some believe it can be a factor.
Technical SEO | | PeterM220 -
How can I get Google to crawl my site daily?
I was wndering if there was a trick to getting google to crawl my website daily?
Technical SEO | | labradoodlelocator0