Negative SEO campaign just started against my site. What do I do?
-
As the question says, I have just got alerts of new links, being clearly a negative seo campaign against my site.
We are talking, lots of spammy, rude anchor text type keywords being used. Whilst I only have alerts of a small number (around 30), it has just happened and I know from the type of spammy links they are that more will be coming.
So, question is, should I disavow? Do I keep submitting new disavows every few days as more are discovered?
Any advice will be greatly be appreciated.
-
Andy - I am actually using cognitiveseo which incorporates all the links from places like moz, majestic and ahrefs. You can also import your webmaster tool links as well with a few clicks.
It then has a link browser, highlights unnatural links (which you can modify), and will create a disavow file for you. After the initial panic, when I wrote my first post here, I know feel quite comfortable with how I am dealing with it.
I think the stats update every couple of days, so its not instant like going to places like ahrefs and majestic direct, but as it collates all the data from all sites I can deal with that limitation.
-
this is the one thing I dread happening.
Apart from what you are doing there isn't a lot until it stops - I wish there was a button in web-master tools to tell Google that a competitor (and it usually is) is doing bad SEO to your site.
If you do try anything other, then please share. I am currently putting together an contingency plan in case it ever happens to the site I manage.
I can see this becoming more prevalent in future and a lot more companies using these tactics to get an SEO advance. I could even see some dodgy SEO agency's setting up to offer this type of service.
-
I have no idea who may have done it. I have just submitted my disavow file, with 130 domains. More than I thought.
So at least I can sleep easy now, and will just keep an eye on it over the next few weeks.
Thanks for the responses,... pretty much confirmed what I thought.
-
Jonathan - I would suggest doing the same thing that Lesley mentioned in order to make sure that you are only disavowing the spam links. You might also want to try dealing with the spammer directly, if possible.
If the links are coming primarily from the same source, you might be able to resolve the issue directly with the spammer. That might be far fetched, but we had a recent issue with spam links on a small scale, from a disgruntled customer of one of our clients. Unfortunately the customer never expressed any frustration to the client, and instead started posting negative reviews, links with negative anchor text, etc. We were actually able to contact the spammer directly, resolve their frustration with the client's product and the spammer actually started doing the complete opposite - changed negative reviews to positive, and it ended better than we could have anticipated.
This might not work for your particular situation, but just thought I would share.
-
Hi thanks.
Yeh, just signed up with cognitive seo which amalgamates from ahrefs and others. I have hundreds of spammy links.
Looks like I have my work cut out here. Will go through webmaster tools next.
Thanks
Jonathan
-
If it were me, this is what I would do. I would export all of your back links from google webmaster tools. You can do this by going to webmaster tools -> links to your site -> all domains and click to export table.
From there I would if possible go through the list and make a master list of "good" links. Take that list of good links and copy that column into a text file as and save it as a reference point of good quality links. Then every day I would go and download the latest links from webmaster tools, copy and put them in a text file as well. Then I would use beyond compare to see the new links to the site by comparing the "master good link file" to the daily generated files. If you have time, go through the different links and see if any of them are legitimate good quality links. If it is too many, I would just start disavowing them all until the attack is over.
I would also think about signing up to other services as well, like ahrefs and the others that have crawlers, because one crawler will not find all of the links more than likely and from experience GWT will not show you every link either.
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
-
Old subdomains - what to do SEO-wise?
Hello, I wanted the community's advice on how to handle old subdomains. We have https://www.yoursite.org. We also have two subdomains directly related to the main website: https://www.archive.yoursite.org and https://www.blog.yoursite.org. As these pages are not actively updated, they are triggering lots and lots of errors in the site crawl (missing meta descriptions, and much much more). We do not have particular intentions of keeping them up-to-date in terms of SEO. What do you guys think is the best option of handling these? I considered de-indexing, but content of these page is still relevant and may be useful - yet it is not up to date and it will never be anymore. Many thanks in advance.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | e.wel0 -
Negative seo by Shady SEO Firm?
Recently a former client of man called me up and said that his rankings for his Auto Repair Shop in Tacoma WA had dropped and he had his worst November in sales since they hired this new SEO firm to rebuild their website and provide SEO. Of course the first thing I did was check his back links and sure enough there are 22 links from Yellowbook.com all pointed to different cities I checked the SEO firms website and they and they had 4 links from YellowBook. The problem was the links from YellowBook were all optimized from different cities. I am pretty sure Google penalized my client for the unnatural back-links to YellowCrook.com. Does the community agree that these links caused the penalty? I included the links in pictures on my LinkedIn Profile. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/case-study-how-google-erased-60-percent-revenue-from-small-meshach?published=t Here are the links. <colgroup><col width="202"> <col width="545"></colgroup>
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | DavidMeshah
| http://www.yellowpages.com/seattle-wa/automotive |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/seattle-wa/auto-transmission | Auto Transmission in Seattle, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/kent-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Kent, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/seattle-wa/truck-service-repair | Truck Service Repair in Seattle, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/lower-queen-anne-seattle-wa/truck-service-repair | Truck Service Repair in Lower Queen Anne Seattle, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/bonney-lake-wa/mechanic | Mechanic in Bonney Lake, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/seattle-wa/auto-mechanics | Auto Mechanics in Seattle, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/shoreline-wa/auto-transmission | Auto Transmission in Shoreline, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/kent-wa/auto-repair | Auto Repair in Kent, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/lynnwood-wa/auto-transmission | Auto Transmission in Lynnwood, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/monroe-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Monroe, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/auburn-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Auburn, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/redmond-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Redmond, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/matthews-beach-seattle-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Matthews Beach Seattle, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/kent-wa/auto-transmission | Auto Transmission in Kent, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/monroe-wa/truck-service-repair | Truck Service Repair in Monroe, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/wilburton-bellevue-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Wilburton Bellevue, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/laurelhurst-seattle-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Laurelhurst Seattle, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/seattle-wa-98166/auto-oil-lube |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/gig-harbor-wa/auto-oil-lube | Auto Oil Lube in Gig Harbor, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/northeast-seattle-seattle-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Northeast Seattle Seattle, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/auburn-wa/auto-transmission |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/burien-wa/automotive | Automotive in Burien, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |0 -
More pages is good for SEO? Is this true?
Hi Guys I have a question, I was told the more pages I have the better for SEO, Is this true?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | edward-may0 -
Pleasing the Google Gods & Not DeIndexing my site.
Hey Mozzers, So plenty of you who follow these threads have come across my posts and have read bits and pieces of the strange dark dark gray hat webspace that I have found myself in. So I'm currently doing some research and I wanted all of your opinion too. Will Google always notify you before they stop indexing your website? Will Google always allow you back if you do get pulled? Does Google give a grace period where they say "fix in 30 days?"? What is every bodies experience with all of this?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | HashtagHustler0 -
Obscene anchor text linking to non-existent pages on my site
My website seems to be rapidly accumulating links from what seem to be reputable websites and which are going to non-existent pages on my website. The anchor text of many of these links is obscene. Here is the URL of one of the pages that is linking to me. I contacted the originating site a couple of weeks ago and they are looking into it but I've not heard back. I'm guessing the originating sites have been hacked. Should I be concerned? Why are they linking to pages on my site that don't exist? http://www.radicalartistsagency.com/htmlarea/language/0content_abo_utus.html Looking at the page source of this page reveals the hidden links.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MartinDS0 -
Help for a complete SEO newbie!
Hi all, I've just joined seomoz today to try and further my very young education on SEO. My major problem is i need my site to rank high in local search engines but feel that none of the customers read much of the content as i am a landscaper and feel they just search "landscaping in Newcastle" and are immediatly looking for a contact number to arrange a free estimate. I dont do any online sales, its just to generate leads. I've spent alot of time building a better site than my local competitors but they still out rank me on alot of keywords i.e. "Driveways in Gateshead" My question is do i keep adding more and more content hoping this will work long term or do i link build with anchor text etc or both? I cannot believe they still out rank me when i feel i have more links more anchor text and a load more origional content and images. I think it may be that my site is still under 1 year old. I feel i am boucing from content to link building then trying something else without any real knowlegde of what i really should be doing or what should be the priority at this young stage for my site. I have managed to get on page 1 of google for most of my keywords in local searches ( obviously not national) but still feel its been more down to luck and effort than actually knowing what i am doing when it comes to site and offsite optimization Any help, tips etc would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks John
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | totaldriveways0 -
SEO Experiment with Google Docs
Please check out this doc - https://docs.google.com/document/d/19VS4SnVvq6VJHQAIrB3CX7iL1ivZU4DH6fyfrHLsNFk/edit Any insights will be highly appreciated! Oleksiy
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | wcrfintl0 -
Campaign landing pages
Hi At our company we decided we wanted to reach out to a more global audience. So we bought a bank of domains for different countries, e.g. ".asia". Some are our company name, others are things like "barcelonaprivatejets.com." We then put up single page websites for each of these domains, which link to our main .com site. However, I don't know if this is good for our SEO or bad. I've seen so many different things written but I cannot find a definitive answer. The text will be different on all the pages, but being only one page, and the "design" being the same, will we get penalized in some way or another? I've also added links to 2/3 of them in the footer of our main site but now I'm reading that this is bad too - so should I remove these? If anyone also has any ideas of how better we could use these Country-specific domains I would be welcome to suggestions to that too! I am not an SEO person really, I'm a web developer, so this is all completely different to me. P.S My name is Michael not Andy.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | JetBookMike0