Brand new domain with a lot of old links.
-
So I just bought http://penny-auctions.co/ a couple of days ago, ignore the fact it's not set up yet and generally just a mess, and something kept bugging me about why the domain authority kept showing as 25 in the SEOmoz toolbar.
Now initially I'd set it up as www. and with the trailing slash so the PA was 1, however after a bit of exploration it seems that someone has been building links to the non-www version of the domain for at least a year!
The site has never been owned before so I've now made the non-www version the default and have a 5 day old site with PA 35 and DA 25!
SEOmoz shows PA - 45 links, 20 domains and DA - 341 links, 113 domains.
Majestic Historic - 8598 links, 236 domains and Fresh - 160 links, 62 domains.
Brilliant! Except they're all spamtastic.
What do you think this will do for my future attempts at ranking?
Should I create pages that have links to them or just 301 them?
-
The FTC? Oh you crazy Americans
Yeah, might all go south, but meh, get nothing if you don't try : )
I'm just being an affiliate, not going to run one (even though there's a billion scripts to do so).
-
Based on what I've seen of how other penny auction sites work the spammy links probably aren't even going to hurt you. Being lumped into the penny auction category probably will, but that's another matter. Check out the backlink profile on domains like Zeekler, QuiBids,zBiddy, etc. and you'll probably see far worse. The majority of these operations make their cash through affiliate signups, which means a lot of relatively low value affiliate links as well (Zeekler especially has Google bombed every 'Zeekler + phrase' search result). You could probably stand out by doing 'good old fashioned seo' on it, I think Bidz.com is trying to go this route and they're one of the bigs.
Personal opinion here, not criticizing you: I think the penny is going to drop on these penny auction sites soon. The FTC hasn't said they're legal, hasn't said they're illegal, just that they're not covered by current laws, and the legislation may soon change to take care of that.
-
That's never going to happen, too many on clearly unmoderated sites.
If I was spamming myself (not that I'd ever advocate such behaviour) I'd just have kept up the velocity until I broke through but the fact they're a year or more old makes me wonder...
I'll probably sort the site out properly, add a bit of decent content and then decide whether to hammer it with more spam and/or build some decent links
-
If they weren't spammy links I'd say damn, you struck some SEO gold. That they're spammy, however, makes me think you're going to have a helluva time trying to pull rank. IMO It'd be worth the effort trying to get the backlinks removed.
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
-
Moving site to new domain without access to redirect from old to new. How can I do this with as little loss to SERP results as possible?
I've been hired to build a new site for a customer. They were duped by some shady characters at goglupe.com (If you can reach them, tell them they are rats--phone is disconnected, address is a comedy club on Mission in SF). Glupe owns the domain name and would not transfer or give FTP access prior to dropping off the face of the earth. The customer doesn't want to chase after them with lawyers, so we are moving on. New domain, new site with much of the same content as previous site. All that I have access to is the old wordpress site. I plan to build the new site, then remove all pages/posts from the old site. Is there anything I can do to salvage the current page 1 ranking? Obviously, the new domain will take some time to get back there. Just hoping to avoid any pitfalls or penalties if I can. If I had complete access, I would follow all the standard guidelines. But I don't. Any thoughts? Thanks! Chris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | c_estep_tcbguy0 -
Consolidating Multiple Domains into A Single Domain
I have a client who's website is an amalgamation of multiple domains. jacksonhole.net is the main domain but the site passes traffic back and forth from the following domains/sites. My questions is, would it it be better for SEO to consolidate all of these domains under the single high authority domain and 301 redirect the rest or is that a really bad idea? Thanks for your help. jacksonhole.net (Domain Authority 31) jackson-hole-rental-condos.com (Domain Authority 22) jackson-hole-rental-homes.com (Domain Authority 21) j acksonholehotelguide.com (Domain Authority 19)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dbaxa-2613381 -
To recover from Penguin update, shall i remove the links or disavow links?
Hi, One of our websites hit by Penguin update and I now know where the links are coming from. I have chance to remove the links from those incoming links but I am a little confused whether i should just remove the links from incoming links or disavow the links? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rubix0 -
Using Webmaster Tools to Redirect Domain to Specific Page on Another Domain
Hey Everyone, we redirected an entire domain to a specific URL on another domain (not the homepage). We used a 301 Redirect, but I'm also wondering if I should use the Google Webmaster Tools "Change of Address" section to redirect. There is no option to redirect the old domain to the specific URL on the new domain within the "Change of Address" section. Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | M_D_Golden_Peak0 -
Should sitewise links always be branded
Hello, A client has 8 sitewide links with the same anchor text - their main keyword. They have 84 linking root domains total. 3 of the 8 are his own sites. 4 of the sitewide links are in the footer (all 3 of his own sites interlink in the footer) In the last 5 months, rankings for the the top 2 short-tail keywords have dropped even though they should rank higher. In a few days they're going to do some major rearranging with one of the 8, adding nofollows sitewide because of a partnership disagreement. Would there be any negative consequences, do you think, to right away changing all of the footer links of the 3 sites that the site owner owns to branded anchor text (domain.com)? Should we change all the sitewides to branded anchor text? There have been no problems in GWT.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
Should i continue linking the old page after a redirect 301?
hi everybody, i'm trying to understand why my page http://poltronafraubrescia.zenucchi.it isn't ranked for the keyword poltrona frau brescia even if is indexed on google. the page gets authority and traffic from the page www.zenucchi.it/ITA/poltrona-frau-brescia.html that is already ranked in fourth position for that keyword. should i continue linking the previous or the new page to increase the page authority? i don't know if is a good way to link a page not ranked despite a ranked one.. Please help me.... thanks a lot
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | guidoboem0 -
Approximate linking root domains we need based on these metrics
Our top 4 competitors for a single term we're targeting has the following metrics: PA 45, DA 89, 6 linking root domains to page, 40,000 linking root domains to domain PA 53, DA 100, 3 linking root domains to page, 1.6 million to domain PA 32 DA 37, 4 linking root domains to page, 200 to domain PA 55 DA 66, 6 linking root domains to page, 3300 to domain All other optimization is about the same, except in (2) they have half of the keyword phrase in the domain and the whole keyword phrase in the URL. Also everybody else has title and meta description with the plural form, and the singular is what I typed in. We have the whole keyword phrase in the domain. The above 4 sites were internal pages, ours is a home page rank. Our metrics: PA 33, DA 22, 30 linking root domains to page, 43 linking root domains to site How tough will it be for us to compete? How many strong linking root domains will it take?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
301 redirects from old to new pages whit a lot of changes
Hello all, We are going to restyle and change CMS so all the urls will change. We are also updating content, adding much more content to the old pages trying to be more user and SEO friendly. My doubt is about doing 301 redirects from old to new pages when the content has changed a lot. Does it will mantain the ranking of the page or will crawlers thought that is a total diferent page. For example: one page new page will change from the old one the url, title, headers, meta description, content text and images. Should i maintain old content and do the CMS change with the 301 redirects and later change the content, that means a lot of work, or do it all at once? Thanks in advance Tomas
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tomas.guemes0