What happened to my ranking
-
Hi trying to rank for "liverpool wedding photographer" as my main keyword.
my profile is mainly wedding blogs and photography blog comments, a few "featured weddings" from wedding blogs , directory links and I have also a few guest post blogs.
Goy myself all excited in December by getting to 4th position and then followed that up by around 35 links in one week.
So expecting my ranking to stabilise or even go up I watched my site slowly sink to a current position of 7th,
over January, even as the new links kicked in.
a weird thing happened in this period as the following sites where I had left one comment on a blog post ended up giving me links from nearly all the other posts they had written:
http://www.richardbernabe.com/blog/2012/12/04/iceland-bound-again/
http://jnack.com/blog/2015/01/04/when-will-wearable-cameras-be-a-thing/
webmaster tools is indicating I have 374 links from the leica site, 174 links from the richardbernabe site and 77 from the njack one. They are all different blog posts!
I have disavowed all three domains.
Can anyone explain what has caused this multiplication of links from these particular sites?
Also could my link spree have caused a penalty?
Best wishes.
David.
http://jnack.com/blog/2015/01/04/when-will-wearable-cameras-be-a-thing/
-
Hi David,
The proliferation of links throughout the sites you left comments on is probably just a function of some weird trackback settings on their part - not a whole lot to be done besides disavow the links, which you've already done, although you might also try to delete the link from the original comment and see if that helps.
Your site sinking from 4th to 7th is not an indication of a penalty - if you'd been penalized, you wouldn't be anywhere near the first page (although I do think you are describing link building behavior that puts you at risk for a penalty - more on that in a minute). Instead, what I suspect happened is that the sudden influx of low-quality links has diluted your page's authority. Since a lower percentage of the total links pointing to the page are high quality, you have gone from sending the signal "great links, with some not-so-great ones too" to sending the signal "LOTS of not-so-great links, a few good ones" which sends a lower quality signal to Google.
Your question has a couple of big link building red flags in it, and I think it's likely you're at risk for a manual link penalty or a Penguin smackdown. Blog comments and directory links are classic examples of low-quality/spammy link sources. You have recently seen how blog comment links can result in a deluge of link spam to your site. Basically, anywhere that you can put a link on a site that you don't own, without a human person approving and curating the link, is going to be a link source that, at best, isn't valuable; at worst, it could actively work against you. I know that it's tempting to go out and grab these easy-to-get links, and sometimes it seems like it could be OK if the site is topically related to yours, but these are tactics that have been heavily abused by spammers and are beyond useless in modern SEO.
Instead, focus on getting higher-quality editorial links to your content. It takes a lot more work but is a much lower-risk strategy in the long term. These links have the added bonus of potentially being a source of converting referral traffic to your site as well. Here are some resources to get you started:
- https://mza.bundledseo.com/beginners-guide-to-link-building
- https://mza.bundledseo.com/blog/the-noob-guide-to-link-building
- https://mza.bundledseo.com/blog/targeted-link-building-in-2016
- https://mza.bundledseo.com/blog/case-study-how-we-gained-more-than-100-links-for-a-travel-website-via-content-marketing
Good luck!
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
-
What happens to your domain authority if you are forced to change your website name?
Out of curiosity if for legal reason you or a client were forced to change their domain name, what happens to all of your domain authority once you lose the old domain? While you still own the domain you can easily redirect any old links to your new website, but what happens if you no longer own that domain and someone else purchases it? Do they steal all of your domain authority? Or is it possible to keep those old links pointing toward your website?
Link Building | | SteveKettig0 -
What is the reason my ranking down?
Hey Guys, My name is Niraj Jaiswal from India! My website is that Rakhi Bazaar and my lots of keywords like send rakhi to the USA, send Rakhi to Canada, send Rakhi to the UK, send Rakhi to Dubai my previous ranking is better than now ranking. I do not understand what's going wrong. My domain name is "https://www.rakhibazaar.com/". What I do??
Link Building | | Packersmove1 -
Will feeding a blog through a widget onto a wix site help rankings?
I have a client I am writing blog content for, however his site was recently redesigned on wix html5. They offer no native blog. I have used a widget to embed blog from another site, however does this help seo in any way? When people share on social media, etc., it is linking the embedded page, not the clients site, right? So it would not be giving any link juice to site. It also doesn't help for organic search of content if it is embedded, is that right? I have been racking my brain trying to figure out how to overcome this issue. Would creating a "faux" blog on the Wix site work (as in multiple pages that I would then categorize and link to each other to navigate like a blog myself)? Wix looks like it has page length maximums too, so I'm not sure how I would get around that. It is also clunky to share on social media without a "share" button for viewer, but perhaps I am mistaken. Is that a ridiculous solution? What have other people done to deal with this issue and get better rankings with Wix platform? Thanks in advance for any input! I'm feeling a little frustrated with what to do.
Link Building | | Quill_Quotient0 -
Low quality links for Amazon product page=high rank?
I am wondering if there would be any benefit in using low cost link building gigs off of fiverr and seoclerks for specific Amazon product pages. The theory I have heard behind this is Amazon's authority is so high, that even the bad links pointing to the specific product page add to the SEO of the page. When google see's a product page on Amazon, they already assign it a high authority, so links help google see which page is the most popular in that niche, and ranks it. Amazon product pages already rank high in google search results, so the idea is this would give specific pages a little boost. Do you think this is a valid method for getting a specific amazon product page to rank high on google search? I understand this is not the normal type of question here, and it really only applies to Amazon product pages specifically, and not normal sites.
Link Building | | jmc5090 -
Multiple Links from High Ranking Site Vs. Links from Multiple Domains - What's More Important?
I understand it is important to get links from many quality domains. Currently, I do have links from top domains (PR, Trust) and it I can get more from (high rank) pages on these same domains. Would it be better to focus on expanding my reach (find additional domains to link from) or to continue to build links from the current domains I have a connection with? What is weighted more? I realize doing both is important, but trying to figure out how to best use my time. Thanks! David
Link Building | | DWill0 -
Page Rank, Domain Rank, Link Building....Oh my!
Hi Everyone, So I am looking into a couple of sites that we can use for press release distribution. Naturally, I am looking for sites that will improve our SEO (sites that have a high domain authority). I guess I am just trying to wrap my head around the whole domain/page authority and how it effects our SEO. So for example, I am looking at prlog.org. They have an overall domain authority of 91...sweet! Is this all I should be looking at when I am looking to place a press release, which will include targeted links using appropriate anchor text? If I drill down even further to the actual section that the press release will live on, which will be the security section of the site, the page authority is a 49. Is this what I should be looking at? Do I have to drill down even further and look at the page rank for the actual URL that my press release will actually live on? I am assuming since it will be a totally new page that the page authority will be very low. Is this correct? Should I be looking at a combination of the two? The page authority of 49 is pretty low but the domain authority is very high. What does this mean for my SEO and my links? In a nutshell I need to know what I should be looking at for SEO purposes, is it domain authority, is it page authority of the section the site will live on or is it the actual page that my press release lives on. Is it a combination? What would you do in this situation? Also, could you give me a little more insight into when a low domain/page authority can actually hurt you. What the threshold where you get no link juice or are actually penalized? Do you have any insight in the domain/page domain number that is considered not worth it? Thanks all! Pat
Link Building | | PatBausemer0 -
Forum doesnt rank
Hey, I have a site which ranks well for a certain term, lets say "books". I added a forum about 6 months ago. I'm optimizing it for "books forum". However, somehow it doesnt get to the top 10, although I placed some quality link to it. It ranks for some long tail keywords... We have daily new posts and use vbulletin + vbseo. The strange thing is that there a ranking really low-quality sites under the top 10. Hardly any content and low quality links... Any tips?
Link Building | | netminds0 -
Is there a way to tell if a directory is passing Page Rank or is devalued?
Hi Mozzers! I was wondering if there is a way to determine if a specific directory is passing Page Rank or if the links have been devalued by Google. Thanks!
Link Building | | SparkplugDigital0