Please help me find unnatural links
-
My URL is: http://bit.ly/hBJAG4
Just been hit with an unnatural imbound links penalty and don't know what to do. I haven't done any link building work for the last 3 years other then creating an infographic at Christmas that was incredibly popular: http://bit.ly/14lao4G
I have 0 paid links and I have never spammed a blog or forum.
The only thing I can think of is back in 2006/2007 I was directory crazy - I got listed in all of the (what I thought at the time) were good quality paid directories - could this have come back to haunt me?
Why do you think I have just been penalized now when these directory links have been there for years?
Should I start getting rid of the directory links? - they did cost me a lot of cash.
Can any of you spot any other links that could be seen as unnatural?
Thanks to anyone who can help in advance
-
and thanks for the good advice, I never looked at it that way
-
NP
-
"Unnatural" does not always have to mean "paid". The problem that I see is not with the infographic, but with the embed code. You are asking people to embed the infographic and include your desired anchor text. Now, the debatable thing here is that the anchor text is your brand...but it could also be interpreted as an attempt to manipulate the search engine results for "SEO Company".
Unnatural links warnings are all about breaking the quality guidelines. Under link schemes there are a few things that could apply to infographics. They say "Any links intended to manipulate a site's ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme."
Matt Cutts put out a webmaster video a few months ago about infographics and the gist of it was that they are ok, but you should not be trying to do it with the intention of manipulating search results. If people choose to imbed your infographic and decide to link to you then that's great. But, when you start dictating what anchor text then it gets iffy.
I'd likely start off with the directory listings first though and you can always go after the infographic links as a last resort.
BTW...if you pass your reconsideration without removing your infographic links, can you let me know? It will help me in knowing how to advise others in this situation.
-
Hi Marie, I hear most of what you are saying and will try removing some of the worst directory links, but I don't understand what you mean when you say the infographic links could be penalized - none of those links were paid for, I submitted to a few free infographic blogs and the rest are 100% natural
-
If you got a manual warning like this it's often because a competitor has filed a spam report on you. At that point, it doesn't matter when links were acquired...What Google wants to see is that you get rid of (or make attempts to get rid of) the vast majority of the links that were not naturally earned.
In working with sites with unnatural links penalties I have seen a couple that were penalized (I believe) because of widespread directory links. I see on your ahrefs profile that you've got 90 backlinks using the anchor text "search engine optimization". That type of pattern doesn't happen naturally.
What's going to be difficult is deciding whether all of your links have to be addressed or whether you can save some. You could take the tactic of addressing one type of link at a time and reconsidering. But my guess is that the infographic links as well as the directory links are going to have to go. I see that you have some guest blogs too...these are debatable. If you've got lots of them and they are using anchor text Google may want to see them gone as well before they lift the penalty.
-
Did you pull your link profile from webmaster tools, opensiteexplorer, majestic, or ahrefs? I would start with pulling your profile from as many of these as you can. Are you sure a competitor didn't hit you with some negative SEO?
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
-
Ran a backlink competitor analysis and found that the competitor has their links coming from various linkedin and youtube posts but my client does the same thing and im not seeing any links coming from those sources for them?
Ran a backlink competitor analysis and found that the competitor has their links coming from various linkedin and youtube posts but my client does the same thing and im not seeing any links coming from those sources for them?
Link Building | | Stongex0 -
Effects of a bad link linking to a image
i am getting a lot of links from wallpapers sites.. One person has created 1000's of similar sites that are linking back to my images. My guess is images do not pass link value positive or negative. But I am not sure what the potential effects would be. Does anyone know who linking to images might effect SEO especially when there coming from horribly low quality auto generated sites.
Link Building | | KentH0 -
Xyz links
I have a lot of backlinks ending with .xyz, around 20%, and they look very suspicious. Should I disavow these? Here are a few: yourrelicsbargains.xyz fantasticsiteinfo.xyz yourvintagelifestyle.xyz usefuldiscount4u.xyz bestdealsaction.xyz bestmemorabilialifestyle.xyz 59177.net lovecollectorsbargains.xyz
Link Building | | moon-boots0 -
Links
Hi, im wondering if links that is not exact anchor links gives any boost for rankings? Example if lets say somebody links to my site http://domain.com/category/article with anchor: domainname or url link.
Link Building | | Rob_I0 -
I could use some help with Link Building Post Panda
I am new to Internet Marketing world and want to become a great SEO. My biggest challenge is How To of Back linking. Not the reason and theory behind back linking. But more the actual hands on Back linking strategy. I feel that a lot of the back linking information out there is so mixed.Rand did a White board Friday lesson on the new link building strategies. When searching for back linking strategies it is filled with all the old link building tactics. What I wanted to ask is all the experienced back link people is, Have you changed your back linking strategy. Or just parts of your strategies. It all seems very confusing for a newbie when it seems the industry it self is still uncertain. Any advice on where a newbie should be starting their new back linking strategy. And any good resources on learning to do the actual hands-on of the back linking. Thanks in advanced
Link Building | | CurtCarroll1 -
What is the difference between external followed links and internal followed links.
I have almost 3,000 external links followed and only a tiny amount of internal followed links. My website is doing really badly on google at the mo. I am also an SEO beginner and learning new stuff every day, but am not sure exactly what the difference is! Thanks!
Link Building | | heleni0 -
Help me strategize!
Hoping for some guidance here. I am trying to place anywhere on page 1 in google organic search for my targeted term "Philadelphia wedding photographers." My blog posts rank very well for their own keywords/long-tails, but I'm having trouble ranking my homepage for my main aforementioned keyword. The frustrating part is that my SEOmoz domain/page authority should easily place me near the top of page 1, but instead I'm at the top of page 3 (down from page 2 last week). Bartlett Pair Photography Potential issues that I am aware of: #1 backlink anchor text is non-branded (branded is 2nd highest..I am working to fix this over time) Homepage itself is bare content due to nature of photography niche (though, my title tag and header focus on keyword and brand). I'm sure everyone will recommend that I increase homepage content, but virtually all competitors have a similar lack of homepage content so I don't understand how I rank so low given my page/domain authority. I've received 1 unnatural link notice from Google on March 22, 2012, but this is the only time, and really had no visible impact on my traffic. I have no local listing. I will remedy this in about 2 months when I have a physical location. Regardless, organic (non-local) listings are important to me because my physical location is 30 minutes outside city center. Is there a specific way that my website and Facebook page need to be connected in order to receive social graph juice? Currently, my website has some social plugins to like/share/tweet my content...and my FB page has a link to my website in the About section. (They also both use the same brand name). Most of my social activity (likes/shares) is directly on my Facebook fan page, and not on my website. Thank you in advance for any advice you may have! I'm hoping that someone is able to point out a strategy other than 1) more (branded) backlinks and 2) more homepage content!
Link Building | | bartlettpair-3287420 -
.edu links
Hi mozzers, I've had some great success reaching out to many .edu webmasters. Often they are professors and such. My question is, i'm guessing during the summer holiday period, reaching out to these webmasters won't be so fruitful. I'm not in the US and was wondering when the US Summer holidays are for universities over there? Also, does anyone have experience outreaching to these webmasters over the holidays? Peter
Link Building | | PeterM221