Penalized for "Unnatural Links" on Webmaster Tools
-
Has anyone ever logged in to Google Webmaster tools and seen a message about them seeing unnatural links (as a warning)
Our homepage lost all its rankings. I will submit a reconsideration request. We don't engage in link buying practices (some directories, thats all.)
Any feedback, please?
Thanks
-
Thanks Robert. Yes, I believe we have a good link profile and work hard at it. This is really a shame. I don't see any reason to really waste more time and not submit a rec request to Google in the next few hours.
I will keep everyone posted and thanks for contributing.
-
I have just had the same issue on 9 of my blogs, deindexed, hardly any outgoing links, no interlinking at all. Google is getting ridiculous, it's the fact you don't know where you stand that's the worst of it.
-
Paul,
I am at a loss on this. The reason being that i don't see anything all that "unnaturaly:"You have some great high quality links to begin with.
Your anchor text is fairly diverse (Shopping cart software is what you do so..., and then the others around it are also fairly well used, etc.)TLD distribution is 74% .com with the rest spread out, about 1% .edu, etc.
Your first 20 linking root domains are ubiquitous, high DA sites.
So, I have a big, big, hmmmmm. IF yours is unnatural, then GoDaddy is the spawn of satan's links.....?????
I would still move slowly on the resubmission give yourself at least 24 hours to really survey all and then go for it with your ducks in a row.
Good luck, please let us know how it goes.
-
Yeah, I agree Paul, it is standard practice, but unfortunately that doesn't mean Google approves it. I haven't heard of Google penalizing shopping cart software footer links, however, I do know that Google has penalized sites who put their link in blog gadgets that they give away. And, really, there's not a lot of difference in the two. And if you've worked with Google much you'll know that Google isn't fair. It may be that you had a manual review and that manual reviewer gave you the ax, while another manual reviewer would not.
-
I am pretty new to SEO (or at least new to being serious about it), so use my advice at your own risk.
My guess is that this stems from situations like this:
Powered by FORTUNE3 • shopping cart software or the other keyword perfect variations of it at the bottom of your customer's sites. Would they have put that there if you didn't pre-code it into the software and charge them money to remove it?
The sites are also all unrelated. You might think they are related because they are your customers, but is ray bans, jeep parts, car covers, and homeowners rights manuals, gun lasers, and all the other sites related to shopping cart software? None of them has any other mention of shopping cart software on their whole site, except for the forced link.
Also, these are effectively paid links, since you put them into the software by default, and you charge people $50 to remove them. Thinking in reverse (sort of), you are paying $50 to them to keep the link. It's a forced, or paid link.
Think of it this way, if you offered to your customers to remove it for free, or gave them a way to do it easily and told them how (even for non-techies, like a check box in the admin panel they use for processing orders), what percentage would remove it.
I used to have a store on Big Commerce. They did the same thing, except I could remove it in the accessible code, and it is one of the first things I did right away. I really did not want to be forced to advertise for them.
Anyway, I am curious to see how this plays out, as I suspect you are not the only shopping cart provider with this situation.
By the way, here is another example of it, and it is sure to catch them too. Go Daddy Spammy Link Building
-
Hi Brian,
Thanks for your input. The fact of the matter is that THAT is standard practice with all shopping cart software companies. You can look through millions of websites and at the bottom you'll see Powered by or Ecommerce by...etc.
Design firms do this, etc. I don't believe that's the issue but that's something we may need to ask in our reconsideration request.
-
Hi Brian,
Thanks for your input. The fact of the matter is that THAT is standard practice with all shopping cart software companies. You can look through millions of websites and at the bottom you'll see Powered by or Ecommerce by...etc.
Design firms do this, etc. I don't believe that's the issue but that's something we may need to ask in our reconsideration request.
-
Pablo might it be the dofollow text links you're placing on your client's websites pointing back to you? Like the one in the footer of this page? http://www.belljewels.com/
-
this is for www.fortune3.com
we're a shopping cart software company so our link building comes from:
-Customer Websites
-Directories (Business.com and other authoritative directories)
-Blogs (our own mostly.)
-Press Releases
I did find www.aolstalker.com linking. ....what do you think?
-
Pablo, Wait. Do not submit for reconsideration yet. If you are missing something, you could create more problems than you solve. So,
Go through the site and see what is going on. If Google is questioning "unnatural links" look at all and see where they may be right. You want to try to fix this before you submit for reconsideration.
Is there any way for you to give us a domain name so that we can see what is there, that would really help with helping you. What % nofollow, how fast have you garnered the links, what directories? What paid directories, any link wheels or reciprocal links that you know of? Etc.
Hope this helps, be patient for a minute, it will help.
Best
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
-
Links to external site (hotels link)
Hello, I am currently designing the webpages of my website and I am wondering if I should link externally or if it going to hurt me ? I am in the travel industry and for example in the France in the Loire valley, I want to list hotels that people can stay at in pre and pods trip. Is it ok to link to maybe 10 of those hotels websites or can it hurt me ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Decreased organic traffic but increased Webmaster Tool Queries
We have a client who has had a significant decrease in organic traffic this last month (about 20%) but in Webmaster tools it tells me there was an increase in impressions and clicks. How can these both be accurate?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jfeitlinger0 -
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 -
How much does "overall site semantic theme" influence rankings?
OK. I've optimized sites before that are dedicated to 1, 2 or 3 products and or services. These sites inherently talk about one main thing - so the semantics of the content across the whole site reflect this. I get these ranked well on a local level. Now, take an e-commerce site - which I am working on - 2000 products, all of which are quite varied - cookware, diningware, art, decor, outdoor, appliances... there is a lot of different semantics throughout the site's different pages. Does this influence the ranking possibilities? Your opinion and time is appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs20100 -
RSS "fresh" content with static page
Hi SEOmoz members, Currently I am researching my competitor and noticed something what i dont really understand. They have hundreds of static pages that dont change, the content is already the same for over 6 months. Every time a customer orders a product they use their rss feed to publish: "Customer A just bought product 4" When i search in Google for product 4 in the last 24 hours, its always their with a new publishing date but the same old content. Is this a good SEO tactic to implant in my own site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MennoO0 -
Manage Ranking for " Out of Stock" pages
Hi, I own an e-commerce marketplace where the products are sold by 3rd party sellers and purchased by end users. My problem is that whenever a new product is added the search engine crawls the website and it ranks the new page on 4th page. when I start optimizing it to gain better rankings in search engines the product goes out of stock and the rankings drop to below 100. To counter that I started showing other related products on the "Out of Stock" pages but even then the rankings are dropping. Can someone help me with this problem?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RuchiPardal0 -
Proper use and coding of rel = "canonical" tag
I'm working on a site that has pages for many wedding vendors. There are essentially 3 variations of the page for each vendor with only slightly different content, so they're showing up as "duplicate content" in my SEOmoz Campaign. Here's an example of the 3 variations: http://www.weddingreportsma.com/MA-wedding.cfm/vendorID/4161 http://www.weddingreportsma.com/MA-wedding.cfm?vendorID=4161&action=messageWrite http://www.weddingreportsma.com/MA-wedding.cfm?vendorID=4161&action=writeReview Because of this, we placed a rel="canoncial" tag in the second 2 pages to try to fix the problem. However, the coding does not seem to validate in the w3 html validator. I can't say I understand html well enough to understand the error the validator is pointing out. We also added a the following to the second 2 types of pages <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> Am I employing this tag correctly in this case? Here is a snippet of the code below. <html> <head> <title>Reviews on Astonishing Event, Inc from Somerset MAtitle> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="[/includes/style.css](view-source:http://www.weddingreportsma.com/includes/style.css)"> <link href="[http://www.weddingreportsma.com/MA-wedding.cfm/vendorID/4161](view-source:http://www.weddingreportsma.com/MA-wedding.cfm/vendorID/4161)" rel="canonical" /> <meta name="robots" content="noindex">
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jeffreytrull1
<meta name="keywords" content="Astonishing Event, Inc, Somerset Massachusetts, Massachusetts Wedding Wedding Planners Directory, Massachusetts weddings, wedding Massachusetts ">
<meta name="description" content="Get information and read reviews on Astonishing Event, Inc from Somerset MA. Astonishing Event, Inc appears in the directory of Somerset MA wedding Wedding Planners on WeddingReportsMA.com."> <script src="[http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js](view-source:http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js)" type="text/javascript">script> <script type="text/javascript"> _uacct = "UA-173959-2"; urchinTracker(); script> head>0 -
Yoast meta description in ' ' instead of " " problem
Hi Guys this is really strange, i am using yoast seo for wordpress on two sites. On both sites i am seeing meta name='description' instead of meta name="description" And this is why google is probably not reading it correctly, on many other link submission sites which read your meta data automatically say site blocked. How to i fix this? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamBuck0