Unnatural Link Warning - What to Do??
-
I just want to ask your advice or suggestions, my new client site received a link warning from Google regarding unnatural link, as I've checked his site backlinks using Seomoz site explorer there are almost 4000+ backlinks and almost 3/4 of the total links are from forum profile spam and blog comment spam. I know it is impossible to remove all those links totally. I would like to ask your advice if what's the best thing to do? Setting up a brand new site and domain or doing a cleanup. Thanks in advance.
-
Thanks for the additional advice.
-
Wait! Before you go "creating new quality links", make sure you are not making things worse!
If you've got a manual penalty, and that coincided with a traffic drop then this means that you are not going to recover until someone at Google manually looks at a reconsideration request and determines that you have done your best to clean up the link spam.
What I have found, however, is that many website owners cannot be objective when it comes to cleaning up their link profile. They look at a link and say, "Well, that's a good link - it's from a related directory." Or, it's in the blogroll of a niche website - it can't be considered spam.
The quality guidelines say this:
"Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank."
So, when you are thinking of "creating new quality links", whatever you do, don't go doing more of the same but simply replace anchor text with your domain url!!! This is something that may work for sites that have been affected by Penguin. We think that if the algorithm looks at your backlinks and sees that the vast majority are url links as opposed to anchor texted keyword links then you will be ok. But, it's a different story for manual unnatural links warnings.
As mentioned by others, you've got to address every single link that was self created with the purpose of improving your website's SERPS. You've got to make a good attempt to get the link removed or nofollowed. (Document that you contacted the email on site, used a contact form on site, and/or used the email in the whois info.) In your reinclusion request send copies of all of the emails you have sent and received. Tell Google that you realize you went against the quality guidelines and that you are committed to following them from this point out. Do this and you should get the penalty removed.
-
Thanks Donnie, I really appreciate your response
-
Yes new links will help out. However if you follow the article I mentioned it has a great 6 month plan to regaining trust.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-6-month-link-building-plan-for-an-established-website
I would highly recommend using this article as your 6 month plan it has everything you need in it and in detail.
-
Okay thanks for the response
-
Massive drop..you really need to remove those links then.
Create the spreadsheet of all the links that are spam (this is most time consuming), then use one of the tools I mentioned or Donnie mentioned or others. And just maintain those campaigns by sending notices every week or two. This would help you take down as many as you can but of course you have to make the list of all of the spam links.
Make sure to keep these documents on a spreadsheet and then show Google, Google will take into good faith because they understand some webmasters aren't available or will not respond.
-
Yeah, massive drop-down of traffic. By the way thanks for the suggestion, really appreciate it
-
Yes, that would help. But to be reconsidered, you should try your best to remove as many as you can.
So keep building links but on make sure to send notices to these sites to have these links taken down. 4000+ is A LOT of links and hopefully you can take at least 50% off with notices.
As Donnie mentioned, you should make sure that you are negatively effected by these links. Did traffic drop when or around the time you got the notice?
-
Thanks for the response. How about just continue building good quality links and forget the bad links, do you think it will help?
-
Do you think creating some new link (quality links) will help out?
-
I've heard many opinions on this matter, to start off Google sent these warnings to many people and also mentioned to not worry: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/googles-unnatural-links-warnings.
Some people say to just start building good links and forget the bad links.
However, some people say to clean them up using:
Since you are working on an existing site I recommend reading this article:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-6-month-link-building-plan-for-an-established-website
-
Depends how was the site ranking before hand.
I was recently suggested by others to use LinkDelete.com and other sites like Rmoov.com can help remove some of these links. However, it can be almost futile with so many links. You have to look at how the site was ranking before and if removing the links will help you and the amount of resources that need to be used.
Best ways is to extract the links from OSE and GWT, and then use some tools like the above links and send out mass takedown notices. But 4000 is a lot!
Weigh out your options and resources and come to what would best benefit the site and company. If your online presences is vital, it might not be a good idea to start a new domain etc.
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 sub pages
Hi, if I am building links to pages outside of my home page, is that link still a referring domain. Also, does that link also help the SEO of the keywords targeted on the home page. Most of our links are home page targeted and we need to start ranking on subpages but need to know if these links only help the page they are aimed at
Link Building | | Caffeine_Marketing0 -
Value of Outbound Links
I have read through the information on Link Building and I understand the importance of Inbound Links. Turning it on it head, how useful is it to provide outbound links on my web pages? And, do links from domains with higher domain authority get weighted higher? I have thousands of pages that I could add new articles to which I think would add value, but I want to know whether it will help for SEO.
Link Building | | troller0 -
Internal Links - How to Increase them, Categories not being considered as Internal Links
Hi All: As per my understanding, Internal Equity Passing Links is a metric defining PA. Now my website has around 65 internal links while few of my competitors have more than 180 links. I am unable to understand how to increase the internal links passing equity on my website, because I can see, more number of links on my website than my competitors but opensiteexplorer does not show that. I am really confused. Please help out if anyone knows something about this issue. Thanks in advance.
Link Building | | sidjain4you0 -
Link building during link removal
We were advised by out outsourced link removal vendor not to build any links while they are removing links pointing to our site. I am worried that our site will lose significant traffic if we dont build any new links while waiting for them to remove links that caused our site to be penalized. What are your thoughts?
Link Building | | WizardOfMoz0 -
Link Building
I noticed another SEO builds backlinks (tons) on a social media profile that then has a link to his client's site. Another site he builds backlinks are a bitly account that 301's to the clients account. Why would you do this? Is it that you can build links indiscriminately to build a page up in PR to 3-4-5 PR, then pass that higher PR to your site (safe). Is that PR building method better than placing 100's of smaller PR links on your site? It seems logical that if you passed in a tremendous amount of juice to juice a site up to PR4, you won't make your main site PR4 by JUST that link. You would need to build a lot of PR4 sites to make your site PR4. Why not just put all the backlinks on the main page instead of building up secondary social profiles etc... Please reveal this secret. I know a lot of SEOs are using this method. Help 🙂
Link Building | | JML11790 -
Are the following considered bad links for Link Building.
I've been doing a lot of research lately on link building & I've read a lot about having a diverse amount of links. Social links, Blog links, comment links, footer links, No follow links, Directory links as well as links with Anchor text URL match, brand match, partial brand match, non-descriptive, and with keywords. But there is a lot of talk of removing those links that look like a site that's built just for link building purposes.... but Directories are basically built for link building are they not? I'm wondering if anyone can tell me if they feel links from the following directories would be bad links. (Non-Paid) http://www.yoganza.com http://www.wkool.com http://www.wee-directory.com http://www.voicelet.com www.hotfrog.ca http://www.webdirectorieslist.com http://multiplelistingboard.com http://mozdirectory.net http://freedirectorypr.info Industry specific below: http://bestautolinks .com http://automotivedome.com http://automobilebuzz.com http://craigsautolinks.com Thanks so much for the help!
Link Building | | DCochrane0 -
Whats with these links
I have a competitor
Link Building | | AlanMosley
that has shot up lately taking number one spot for various keywords when I look
at his links in Open Site Explorer I find many links that are links to downloadable
objects, not web pages. A few
examples, if you click on them, do not open who knows what they are. But what
the story, how are these links to his site, anyone know anything about this. Thanks http://wolfet.co.uk/etmain/mitchelldown.pk3 http://www2.dupont.com/Tyvek_Weatherization/en_US/assets/downloads/cad_fluidapplied/FA-S-201.dwg?Action=livre_or&start=24750&forum=alainfrancois http://mobile.earthcam.com/download/EarthCam%20Mobile%20v4.0.msi?faq&page=39560 -
Link Churn - where have all my links gone?
I am sure most of you have asked yourself the question I'm asking right now.. Where have all my links gone? I am starting to get twitchy now. I would estimate we have lost around 60% of our links in the past 3 weeks. Does anyone have any comeback stories? Feel like I am back to the start again. I have made a number of changes on the site not least removing a reciprical link page.. that had over 200 links on it but from reading one of Rand's tweets is it true that linking out could be good again?
Link Building | | robertrRSwalters0