Victim of Negative SEO - Can I Redirect the Attacked Page to an External Site?
-
My site has been a victim of Negative SEO. During the course of 3 weeks, I have received over 3000 new backlinks from 200 referring domains (based on Ahref report). All links are pointing to just 1 page (all other pages within the site are unaffected). I have already disavowed as many links as possible from Ahref report, but is that all I can do? What if I continue to receive bad backlinks?
I'm thinking of permanently redirecting the affected page to an external website (a dummy site), and hope that all the juice from the bad backlinks will be transferred to that site. Do you think this would be a good practice? I don't care much about keeping the affected page on my site, but I want to make sure the bad backlinks don't affect the entire site.
The bad backlinks started to come in around 3 weeks ago and the rankings haven't been affected yet. The backlinks are targeting one single keyword and are mostly comment backlinks and trackbacks.
Would appreciate any suggestions
Howard
-
First, don't freak out. What does the anchor text look like? Is it for a term you're trying to rank for on that page? Chances are actually pretty low that it's going to hurt you. Google has a few intent- and source-detection mechanisms built in that work relatively well.
If this is a high-value page that you're making a lot of money on or that is ranking well, don't move it and don't 410 or 404 it. It's Google's job to filter through spam and spam attacks, and they do an OK job. I don't think it's totally wrong to disavow the links, but my experience is that people generally over-react.
http://www.seroundtable.com/google-bad-links-disavow-17195.html
TL;DR this is all good advice, but don't drop or redirect a high-value page.
-
Thanks for all the responses!
-
410 / GONE
“Indicates that the resource requested is no longer available and will not be available again. This should be used when a resource has been intentionally removed and the resource should be purged. Upon receiving a 410 status code, the client should not request the resource again in the future. Clients such as search engines should remove the resource from their indices. Most use cases do not require clients and search engines to purge the resource, and a "404 Not Found" may be used instead.“ — wikipedia
“The requested resource is no longer available at the server and no forwarding address is known. This condition is expected to be considered permanent. Clients with link editing capabilities SHOULD delete references to the Request-URI after user approval. If the server does not know, or has no facility to determine, whether or not the condition is permanent, the status code 404 (Not Found) SHOULD be used instead. This response is cacheable unless indicated otherwise.
The 410 response is primarily intended to assist the task of web maintenance by notifying the recipient that the resource is intentionally unavailable and that the server owners desire that remote links to that resource be removed. Such an event is common for limited-time, promotional services and for resources belonging to individuals no longer working at the server's site. It is not necessary to mark all permanently unavailable resources as "gone" or to keep the mark for any length of time -- that is left to the discretion of the server owner.“ — ietf410 / CODE REFERENCE(S)Rails HTTP Status Symbol :gonehttp://httpstatus.es/410
-
A few options:
1. As david said make the page a 401 page.
2. Try to remove the links on scale, review why they are comming in i.e same IP address, same who is, request sites to remove them, if they don't remove add them to the disavow.
I wouldn't 301 pages this will just transfer the problem to a new websites, ive seen numerous cases where domains have been hit because of cross site 301's.
-
Return a 410 http status (page permanently gone, disregard links) on that URL, move the content to a new URL.
-
Are you positive that it wasn't anything you bought as a service, right?
Although Google's Matt Cutts claims that Negative SEO exists but it would take a lot of work to achieve and you could actually benefit the target instead, it has been proven over and over that it isn't that hard, see here: http://www.fulltraffic.net/blog/85062/is-negative-seo-becoming-a-mainstream-tactic-infographic/
As it is something you actually can't control, I would just go with trying to contact the owners of those pages where the links are and ask them politely to remove the link, as it will also help them too (usually the most affected side is the one selling the links, as there's no way to know who is buying them). Don't only go with an email, try social networks too, contact forms, etc.
But, considering that your rankings aren't affected, after contacting those Webmasters you shouldn't go as far as disavowing the links, you are not being penalized, you did the job on trying to remove the links (document your efforts!!), etc. IF, and only if you notice a ranking drop, an actual penalty, you should go ahead and disavow those links, and in case of a penalty, send a reconsideration request explaining them everything an showing the efforts you did to get rid of those links.
As Cutts told: it may actually benefit you...
Hope that helps!
-
Take the page the bad links are being sent to copy the content get rid of the old page make a new URL put your old pages content on a new URL. The 301 will hurt you.
If you want to try and find the person sending you the links use removeem.com
I hope I was of help,
thomas
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
-
SEO Links in Footer?
Hi, One of my clients uses a pretty powerful SEO tool, won't mention the name. They now have a "link equity" tool, which they are using on a lot of their client's sites, which include tons of fortune 500 companies. It involves add footer links to your site that change based on the content of the page they are on. The machine learning tries to figure out the most related pages and links to them with the heading tag of that page as the anchor text. Initially this sounds very spammy to me. But then, it seems a lot like "related products" tools that many companies use. The goal for this tool is to build up internal linking, especially for deeper pages on their site. They have over 10,000 currently. What are everyone's thoughts on this strategy?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vetofunk2 -
How do you deal with Scam-Type SEO businesses?
One of our potential clients is a limousine rental service. His current "Marketer" is going about his business in a seemingly sketchy way. I'm pretty new to having to compare myself to other SEO/Marketing competition. So, this guy has 100's of websites that are nearly identical. Quite a few have duplicate content, but all of them generally look the same. He leases these websites as lead generators: Think of it like this: he probably has 15-20 websites all geared for different parts of the DFW area. Denton Limo Service, Plano Limo Service, Dallas Limo Service, Etc. He also has a bunch of websites for other industries. Every "business" has its own phone number via a Google Number that he forwards to the actual business line. Every "business" has a Google My Business Listing setup as well with no address listed. When someone fills out the contact form on one of these sites, it is forwarded to the business who is leasing it. He also creates his own backlinks on his websites to all of his other websites. I imagine that eventually he will be caught, right? I mean, this has to be Black Hat SEO. Have any of you encountered an SEO/Marketer like this? If so, what do you do about it?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | roger2050 -
Page keeps dropping
Hello All, I have a page (http://www.caravanguard.co.uk/touring-caravan-insurance/) we have seen it drop a bit over recent months and now we have been appearing low on page two (Google UK) for the term "Caravan Insurance". Now I do not expect to rank above some of the big players in our market and the aggregators, but we do feel we have good content and have tried to act as white as we can in terms of SEO, link building and alike, but we are still slipping. My main issue is this - one minute we have the link appearing in the serps and then the next it drops from the serps altogether. At this point i often resubmit for indexing in webmaster tools and a few minutes later its back.... is this just likley something I am seeing local to me due search becoming more personal (I have toggle hide private results too) or is there a cause to its sudden disappearance and reappearance? Any insight would be greatly appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TimHolmes0 -
How do I know for sure if my site has been slapped?
I'm new to this SEO business - and I focus on inbound marketing. My client's site is www.SubconsciousMind.com. Just a few weeks ago it was showing in the top search results for several major keywords. Now, it has disappeared all together and there are competitors showing that have very little SEO (metatarsi not set up properly, etc.). So, I know there has to be an opportunity. Some obvious things:
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SoundsLikeJoy
There aren't a lot of links and the majority seem to be bad (bad linking farms)
Social media is set up by a robot
Articles are poorly written obviously ONLY for SEO My client hired a SEO company awhile back to get results, not understanding black hat / white hat and it worked for several years. Now - it is really hurting her. The sites she is linking to doesn't have any contact info to get the "unlinked." I've read I can use the disavow tool. I asked her if she got anything from Google about "being slapped". She doesn't even receive the emails to her site because she trusted someone else to set it all up. Should I rebuild from scratch? Any recommendations? We are funning adwords now as a quick fix.0 -
Why is a site that does all the wrong things dominating?
A site that is a competitor of ours is basically dominating the search results despite doing everything you're not supposed to do, including: Purchasing links Having content that is thin, templated, and duplicate - adds little value Owning half a dozen other sites for linking to each other (link wheel?) We spend a lot of time on our content and making it the most useful it can be for our visitors. Granted our site is newer but we avoid these gray/black hat practices and yet we're not ranking nearly as high. What gives?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Harbor_Compliance0 -
Negative SEO impacting client rankings - How to combat negative linking?
I have a client which have been losing rankings for the key term "sell gold" in Google AU. However, while doing some investigating I realized that we have been receiving links from bad neighborhoods such as porn, bogus .edu sites as well as some pharmaceutical sites. We have identified this as negative SEO and have moved forward to disavow the links in Google. However, I would like to know what other measures can be taken to combat this type of negative SEO linking? Any suggestions would be appreciated!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | dancape0 -
Why is our site being penalized?
The rankings for our transcription site (gmr transcription) fell around Jul 19. Its been an uphill task to get the rankings back particularly for the keyword 'transcription services'. As per our opinion except for one competitor the rankings of the other top 4 makes no sense to us. We have tested our site and there seems to be no reason for it to be penalized. After a month of trial I am reaching out to the community for advise.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Sangeeta0 -
How Fast Can You Rank a New Domain?
How long would it take to get a 1 page ranking for a new site after Penguin? Thinking about starting fresh. New site would have fresh content and keyword in the domain.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | veed230