10,000 links in 2 minutes
-
Hey guys. A belated happy new year to everyone who reads this!
I had a strange experience yesterday with linking from a clients website footer.
Basically, the client currently has a serious duplicate content problem caused by a multiple language plug in. It has made Google believe that there are 10 different versions of the clients website online (one for each language). It is a real estate website and there are quite a few pages anyway, but with the error, I would suggest the page count is now around 10,000.
We are waiting for the developer who installed the plug in to repair the problem and without thinking it through really, yesterday, we made a text link to our home page in their footer.
Overnight, our rankings for the keyword we used for the text link have dropped from pos. 2 page 1 down to halfway down page 2.
Is this basically a sign that it is not good have this footer link from their site? I guess it is kind of like 10,000 weighted links being added in one day right?
For now we have removed the link, but any help would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers,
Mark
-
Yeah this is really strange. We have now dropped out of site for all of our main keywords. Weirder still, is that for some of the keywords the contact page on our site is ranking above the target landing page.
The thing I have noticed about the new hosting is that we no longer show for 'pages from the UK' and also the site speed on analytics seems quite a bit slower.
Do you think this could have all been caused by adding that one link?
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Our website is www.mysocialagency.com
-
A hosting change would not cause the drop. Especially given that is only one page. If there were a problem with hosting change, it would likely affect most or all.
If the plug in that was used is the problem, you won't need to change canonical.
-
Have the client use the cannonical tag so that the pages are not duplicated for every language! That would fix their problems as well as yours
-
You know actually Robert. We also changed the hosting of our website two days ago. Last time we did this, it made no difference at all and this time, it has made no difference to any other keyword phrases apart from the one that was the footer text link.
Do you find that swapping hosting sometimes causes drops? The new server should be faster.....
-
That is interesting. My gut says it likely did not impact you with a footer link to your page that quickly. Could have, but I am just not that convinced. Along with that, I will tell you that while early on we would link from client's footer to our site, we just don't do it anymore. One, footer links are of little value (and another reason I don't think that was the cause of the drop) and it is obvious if you host sites for clients that they are all on same server/C block.
I would go ahead with what you have done in removing the text link and see what happens over the next few days. Even if it pops right back up, it won't mean that was the cause. I have a site that was page one number 3 for a given quality keyword term that a month ago, dropped to page 5 number 9. Today (a month later) we are back at page one number 3. I cannot tell you why. (Google was SE).
Hope this helps
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
-
Spammy links
Hi I was reviewing a clients link profile and found a lot of the links they have pointed at their domain have the anchor text "Buy Viagra" or "buy viagra online" and similar. Now the website has absolutely nothing to do with this kind of business so no doubt these links are spammy. To my knowledge the website has not been penalised by Google so far. Is it best to disavow or just leave alone? Kind Regards
Link Building | | TheZenAgency0 -
Why am I getting links in my link report from sites that no longer exist?
So, I have a link report from Link Detox. And I'm going through all of them and considering what sites need to be removed. and trying to find emails and contact webmasters. There is just one odd thing i'm starting to see more of. A lot of links are on websites or webpages that no longer exist. The link no longer exists. Some of the domains are even available for purchase. Why are these links showing on the backlink report and are they really harming my website? Also, do I need to add these links into the disavow document that I will submit to Google?
Link Building | | lightwurx0 -
Link spam outranking me... how and why?!
Can anyone tell me why compertors doing this kind of spam is outranking me? http://boatingblog.discoverboating.com/dfennewald/archive/2009/08/31/discover-boating-becomes-a-chicago-sun-times-headliner.aspx One of my main competitors also has links in the footer of: http://www.cricketlinks.net/default.asp?country=SA This one competitor has nearly 2000 links coming from just 8 root domains. I've been avoiding this stuff like the plague but sometimes it makes you wonder...
Link Building | | SamCUK0 -
Old links
I am looking to remove some old directory links that now look spammy. Some years ago the site was redesigned. The links are all to the old pages url, which is 301 redirected to the new. If we remove the 301 and let the page 404, will that suffice in Googles eyes?
Link Building | | cottamg0 -
"Activating" Links - Do External Links Have to Be Clicked On to Really Have Value?
I heard an SEO talk about the concept of "activating" a link - meaning that if an external link to your site exists, but google doesn't detect that it has gotten any actual clicks, they will significantly discount or ignore the value of the link. Obviously between Chrome, toolbars, and GA, google does have a lot of ways to detect whether a link has gotten clicks. What is the SEOmoz take on this issue?
Link Building | | kbrake0 -
Is it a reciprocal Link ?
Hi, I found a great website and tought its content would be extremely interesting for our clients. I wrote about it on my blog (which has an URL with our website URL in it) , Facebook Page and even in Twitter. Meanwhile, I contacted them and offered to write an article about an interesting subject for them. They accepted and liked it so much that they decided to put 2 links for us on two of their pages. My questions are : Will this be a reciprocal link for Google? Did I make a mistake talking about them on my blog ? Did I «devaluate» the links they gave us?
Link Building | | Caru0 -
Link-Building
Hello, I have been doing link-building for my website since 2 of January. However those links are not in the Open Site Explorer. For example I have the DMOZ website pointing to my website and I cant see it in open site explorer! Why?? Tks in advance!
Link Building | | PedroM0 -
Looking at Page Authority of a link to our website... what Page Authority number should we use in deciding the link is junk?
What are the Page Authority ranges? 1. Excellent link 2. Moderate 3. Total junk link Of course you look at the anchor text you can use, how many links are on the site, how often it is cached. Thoughts?
Link Building | | RezStream80