Google Change of Address with Questionable Backlink Profile
-
We have a .com domain where we are 301-ing the .co.uk site into it before shutting it down - the client no longer has an office in the UK and wants to focus on the .com.
The .com is a nice domain with good trust indicators. I've just redesigned the site, added a wad of healthy structured markup, had the duplicate content mostly rewritten - still finishing off this job but I think we got most of it with Copyscape.
The site has not so many backlinks, but we're working on this too and the ones it does have are natural, varied and from trustworthy sites. We also have a little feature on the redesign coming up in .Net magazine early next year, so that will help.
The .co.uk on the other hand has a fair few backlinks - 1489 showing in Open Site Explorer - and I spent a good amount of time matching the .co.uk pages to similar content on the .com so that the redirects would hopefully pass some pagerank.
However, approximately a year later, we are struggling to grow organic traffic to the .com site. It feels like we are driving with the handbrake on.
I went and did some research into the backlink profile of the .co.uk, and it is mostly made up of article submissions, a few on 'quality' (not in my opinion) article sites such as ezine, and the majority on godawful and broken spammy article sites and old blogs bought for seo purposes.
So my question is, in light of the fact that the SEO company that 'built' these shoddy links will not reply to my questions as to whether they received a penalty notification or noticed a Penguin penalty, and the fact that they have also deleted the Google Analytics profiles for the site, how should I proceed?
**To my mind I have 3 options. **
1. Ignore the bad majority in the .co.uk backlink profile, keep up the change of address and 301's, and hope that we can just drown out the shoddy links by building new quality ones - to the .com. Hopefully the crufty links will fade into insignificance over time.. I'm not too keen on this course of action.
2. Use the disavow tool for every suspect link pointing to the .co.uk site (no way I will be able to get the links removed manually) - and the advice I've seen also suggests submitting a reinclusion request afterwards- but this seems pointless considering we are just 301-ing to the new (.com) site.
3. Disassociate ourselves completely from the .co.uk site - forget about the few quality links to it and cut our losses. Remove the change of address request in GWT and possibly remove the site altogether and return 410 headers for it just to force the issue. Clean slate in the post.
What say you mozzers? Please help, working myself blue in the face to fix the organic traffic issues for this client and not getting very far as yet.
-
Thanks Ryan, that's definitely where our focus is, especially given that resources are limited for the time being.
-
IMO there are only 2 reasons anyone should use the disavow tool:
1. You have been given a manual warning of unnatural links in WMT.
(If you're not sure if you've got a manual warning then submit a reconsideration request. You'll either get a message back saying there is no warning or they'll tell you what the warning is.)
2. You are certain that you have been affected by Penguin. This usually means equating a large drop in rankings and traffic with the date of a known Penguin update (Apr 24, May 25, Oct 5)
It's going to be hard in your situation though to know if you've got a Penguin issue if you don't have access to the analytics from before. BUT, you mentioned you did the 301s over a year ago so I'm thinking this means you have access to a year's worth of analytics. All of Penguin happened in the last year so you should be able to figure out if Penguin affected you.
If you go disavowing a bunch of links you could do more harm than good. Plus, if you HAVE been affected by Penguin you can make a pile of changes and you're not going to see an improvement until there has been another Penguin refresh.
The best option would be to have someone experienced with Penguin have a look at your backlink profile and analytics and advise you from there.
Another option would be to remove the 301 and see what happens. There's a good chance that you'll see a drop in rankings if there are any good links in the mix. But it's possible that you could see no drop and then when Penguin refreshes see an improvement.
Personally, if the old backlink profile seems to be entirely spam I would remove the 301s because Penguin is going to continue to get more and more effective at devaluing spam tactics. So, even if you weren't being affected by Penguin now, it could happen in the future. I would only keep the 301s if there were some really good links that I knew were natural. In this case, I might consider 301ing and using the disavow on the bad links. But if you're going to do this you really need to know what you're doing.
And one final thought - it may be worthwhile to have someone evaluate the links that you are getting to the new site. I have seen a lot of people think they are building good quality links when really they're using tactics that no longer work. It could be that your methods of growing the traffic just aren't affective and maybe there is no penalty after all!
-
If you have clear indications of what back links are spammy I would suggest going through the disavow tool. The obvious ones you mention that stick out are the article submission links and broken links on shoddy websites.
You always have to be very careful with the disavow tool though. But if you are seeing clear spammy links get rid.
In terms of a penalty, what do your keyword rankings look like? a penalty will more than likely come parallel to a rankings drop. Did you see big dips in ranking drops? Are you link building properly for the new site?
You may be finding that pagerank just isn't being passed over as well as you would have expected from the .co.uk. Doing some good quality content marketing and link building on the .com site will more than probably help.
-
Sounds like a decent plan, but the main focus shouldn't be on disavowing, but rather getting the new, good, quality links earned back to your site. At least in my opinion. Best of luck
-
Thanks Ryan, I was gravitating towards disavowing the real garbage pointing to the .co.uk site - there are a few links I think I'll keep.
I'm wary of the risk of using the tool in light of how it has been presented - with big warning labels - but at the same time the .co.uk is not our focus, just a secondary site we hoped to get some residual PR and redirect referrals from - so if things go wrong with the disavow tool it's probably not a total train smash.
-
If you see your rankings dropping, chances are you have some backlinks working against you. I wouldn't go hog wild and disavow everything, as the link profile could have some spots that help you. I can't be specific without looking at it.
The best thing you can do, in my opinion, is spread the good news about the new site and redesign, and not "build" links from it, but "earn" links. Share your awesome new content and get people to like it so much that you earn some new traffic and links. You are on the right track by learning how to do it right (versus the old, shoddy SEO company that didn't do much good), but now you have to put the work in and do it right.
There are plenty of good methods that work for getting you some good, organic, quality traffic that will help your SERPs. If you feel you are over your head, there are plenty of people on here that would be more than willing to help you out.
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
-
Google Not Picking Up Posts
I am trying to work out why from March 4th Google is not seeing my posts. Our google impressions have dropped from 8,000 to 40. If you put in the full article name with speach marks it does not find it, and instead shows the home page in google. We have not had any warnings. We did have work done on our site but nothing else i could think of to cause this. Can anyone let me know what may have caused this. All articles are original
Technical SEO | | headlinesplus0 -
Google News problem
Hello to all. The latest Google algorithm changes have had a big impact on the way that Google news features stories, at least in my country. I've been featured heavily in Google News until about 6th of october, when the changes had the biggest impact, but since then, I haven't been featured at all. Prior to this, I would be featured for keywords on almost any article, not necessarily on the 1st position, but I was almost always there. Posts still show up in the dedicated News category, but not in the main search pages. I've seen a lot of websites being impacted, but some with lower ranks than mine still show up there. I haven't done any changes prior to the 6th of october, and I haven't done any link building campaings, just getting links from higher ranking news sites in my country, for articles I wrote. What I'd like to know is if there were any major changes for Google News and I'm not complying with any of them, or If i could check to see if there are any other problems. I don't have any penalties disclosed by Google, and no new errors in the Webmasters console, I'm just baffled by the fact that overnight the website was completely cut off from being featured in Google News. And one other strange thing, I'm now ranking better for searches that are kind of opposite to my website's main theme. Think about mainly writing about BMW, and less about AUDI, but ranking a lot better for the latter, and a lot less for the other. Thank you.
Technical SEO | | thefrost0 -
Changing the Title Tag But It Does Not Reflect In Google Results
I have changed the page title for www.finanscaddesi.com to read as "Finans Caddesi | Paranın Pusulası" (as you can see from the source code) But Google still shows the old version. I have checked Google's guidelines regarding page titles. They say if we find a reference anchor text that is linking to the page (such as a DMOZ entry) we may use the anchor text as page title. I wonder whether there is a method I can follow to change the title tag to appear as "Finans Caddesi | Paranın Pusulası" in Google search results. Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | merkal20130 -
Importance of WMT change of address and problem doing it
Hi, How important is it to submit a change of address in WMT? I say that because I am having problems doing it so wondered if it was worth the hassle in trying to fix it. I am getting the error: "We couldn't verify website.co.uk. To submit a change of address, website.co.uk must be verified using the same method as www.website.co.uk. Add website.co.uk to your account and verify ownership, then try again." I have looked on the web to try and find an answer and have come across 2 suggestions: You might have lost the verification with the redirect. If you used a metatag on the home page, the home page is now redirecting. If you had uploaded a verification text file, that file is probably now gone and redirecting as well. You probably need to re-verify the site. Either re-upload the text file and configure it not to redirect (may be difficult) or use the DNS server verification method. You need to verify the non www. version of the website because that's the way Google like it. Not sure why solution 2 would be necessary but it does seem to be what WMT are getting. Because the site already redirects, 1 would then come in to play. Is it worth persevering with because IT will be getting a long list of stuff to do from me as it is.... Thanks all
Technical SEO | | Houses0 -
Why are Google search results different if you are log'd into Google or not?
I get different results when I'm log'd into my Google account associated with my website than if I'm not. The same country is occurring. So how can I rely on the google results I'm seeing? For instance my site is page 1 with the improvements I made based on SEOMOZ if I'm log'd in. Yet I'm not on the first 25 pages if I'm not logged in.
Technical SEO | | Romana0 -
I was googling the word "best web hosting" and i notice the 1st and 3rd result were results with google plus. Does Google plus now play a role in improving ranking for the website?
I was googling the word "best web hosting" and i notice the 1st and 3rd result were results with google plus. Does Google plus now play a role in improving ranking for the website?I see a person's name next to the website too
Technical SEO | | mainguy0 -
My Old Domain is Not Changing in Google
I have taken over the following domain www.choice-cottages.co.uk, part of the contract was to re-direct the old site www.choicecottages.info to the new site. Unfortunately I am only a middle man in the arrangement as the website is hosted with another company. The switch was done well over 4 weeks ago, the re-direct itself is working fine. However if you google choice cottages you will see the first listing is www.choicecottages.info, then I have my new site below for a few listings. Google is definitely updating something as before the old domain had lots of site links but this has reduced to a few. Does anyone know anything on this, as in the past it only takes a couple of days to update. Many thanks Andy
Technical SEO | | iprosoftware0 -
Sitemap question
My sitemap includes www.example.com and www.example.com/index.html, they are both the same page, will this have any negative effects, or can I remove the www.example.com/index.html?
Technical SEO | | Aftermath_SEO0