Not sure if I should disavow these links or not
-
I am on the marketing team for CandyGalaxy.com we are an online candy store that specializes in bulk candy for events. Were just about a year and a half old and i'm running into some SEO strategy road blocks lately. When we started the company we used an oversee's seo company. For the first few months results were great then things took a massive dive as google began rolling out updates early and mid last year. After that point we started taking things in house and have been trying to create content and begin content marketing. We launched a blog @ blog.candygalaxy.com and also launched and educational resource at candybuffet101.com -
However the question i'm up against now is what to do with those bad old links? Are they actually hurting us? Or just neutral?
I'm also trying to decided what to do about the links in my footer? We put those there because those are truly our most popular products and we wanted customers to have easy access, but are those links potentially harmful?
I'm questioning these issues because I feel like there is something holding back some of my pages from ranking. For example "blue candy" is a very popular section of our website. We have worked on a lot of content for the blog related to blue candy, made videos, photo shoots ect. We have customer reviews on page and unique category content. According to open site explorer our DA and PA are around the range of most of the sites in the 8-12 serp position. But we have more social activity then all but the top 2-3 spots. However the page almost impossible to find via search. Its not in the first 300 results and surely the page is more relevant then an entry about quilts.. Similar situations like this have led me to think that maybe there is a technical underlying issues that I have not addressed. ? The content is definitely there because if i type in a line from the content directly to google it is the first result. So the site seems indexed properly..
Would love to hear any feedback from similar experiences or ideas.
Thanks!
-
No, don't nofollow internal links, especially for pages you want to rank. That doesn't work well anymore, and will ultimately hurt you.
I see about 190 links in the primary nav. Can those all really be equally important to users and search engines? I'd be really surprised if scrolling through a list of brands hunting for the right one is the best user experience. Don't take my word for it: run some tests and see how people respond to a simplified menus along the top or side. Generally we want to pick a few terms (e.g. brands or candies) to prioritize, and otherwise work on a hierarchy/nav that users intuitively understand.
-
Hi Carson,
Thanks for taking the time to really respond to this! I really appreciate it.
The problem i've run into consistently is that the Nav menu's were not meant for excessive links, but were designed so that customers could legitimately navigate through the site fully from just the first page. But perhaps that goal is to ambitious for 2000 products. We've also implemented a script that is supposed to be taking those links off of the home page and effectively hiding them, but maybe thats no longer working properly....
As far as the "site wide" footer links, those also were initially intended for navigation as well? Would reducing them to no follow be sufficient? Or potentially just fully removing them be better?
I also took that advice on the internal linked and connected those two pages!
Thanks again for your time and insight
-
When it comes to links, the advice you've received is pretty good: it's all about the ratios. If many of your links are spammy with exact-match anchor text, it's possible that they're hurting you. A warning in Google's Webmaster Tools would confirm it, but I think it's fairly likely that you're being affected by Penguin. I see an awfully high number of links with anchor text that is overly-targeted.
I'd start by trying to remove the worst site-wide anchor text links, and then disavow if that doesn't work. At the same time, it will probably help more to think of ways to generate legitimate visibility and interest.
I don't see tons of legitimate links pointing to the site right now. Even if Google is just ignoring the links now and not counting them against you, I wouldn't expect the site to do amazingly well. There are a ton of links on each page, so the link equity you do have is being split many ways.
It's extremely unlikely that you're being penalized for internal links, but it might be best to focus link equity on key pages rather than spreading it so thin. With something like 168 links in the menu, you probably want to downsize. Does Christmas candy really need a link in May? Is there a better way to organize brands? You can't rank for every term - prioritize some pages that you rank moderately well for with high search interest.
And finally, watch out for keyword cannibalization. I don't think this is a huge issue on your site, but you should probably link to http://www.candygalaxy.com/blue-candy/ from within the content on http://www.candygalaxy.com/blue-candy-buffets/ as an example.
-
I wouldn't be worried about links like this, there are so many out there I think Google understands they can't penalize every site that has one of these. Every site on the internet would be hit
Keep an eye on those directory sites. I know in my first hit from Penguin 1.0 I found tons of directory links that were just spammy.
When you click on the "Submit Link" see if you can pay for the links. If you can then get rid of those links asap. Many of these directories are hard to get a hold of someone so I have had to disavow many of these links. I have a link of a text file that I add too of spammy directories I have found and I continue to add to it.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2659865/spammydirectories.txt
Directories while many may be safe, this late in the game of Penguin you are better of without them IMO.
Only a handful are safe:
Go to webmaster tools and find all those directories...
-
We are basing this on what research and real life example here? Has he been hit with a warning of any sorts? Was the website's rankings being dropped in any relation to this? Also, doing anything out of the ordinary when things are currently working perfectly is a straight path to problems in any aspect in life, but from what I know from personal experience so it is with optimization as well.
Here's a checklist I go through when these matters come in hand:
1. When did the links get indexed by Google?
2. How much time has passed?
3. Was the site hit by any of the recent algorithm updates?
4. Did my website drop severely in rankings?
5. Am I doing the best to keep healthy and authoritative links creation in check?If you haven't been hit by anything, your rankings are there, your healthy link building is there, unique content being created and natural links pointing to the site itself, why would you waste time and money on something you clearly did not do, do not control and hasn't affected you yet? His example may be somewhat different, but basically fixing something that ain't broke is really not the go to way here.
If and when his website does get hit by a penalty, do something. Make the list of links, anchor texts, create a contact list for the administrators of that website, keep a disavow tool list in check, but use it when you need to do so. Thanks!
-
I wouldn't agree that you don't need to worry about bad links built 18 months ago. Google are always refining their algorithm so you shouldn't just hope that your links won't be seen and penalised.
-
Hello! It means that spammy link that just links to your site without anchor text and it's a nofollow links does not value the same as something with straight keyword name anchor text in the link itself. So page you have shown us here is probably devalued with Google it doesn't pose any real value or threat to your site, however you wanna put it. How are your anchor texts spread out through the link profile?
-
Here is an example of one of the links
-
Hi thanks for your insight. What do you mean by "link profile introduction" I didn't mean to leave relevant information out of the question?
Thanks!
-
Hi Jonathan,
Lets deal with the disavow-ing first. I'd do a backlink analysis of the website and find ALL the links that look irrelevant and spammy and try and get them taken down first, if that fails then use the disavow tool but only if you are 100% sure they are doing you harm. It's a tricky thing the disavow tool but Google does urge you to try and get them removed before using it.
In terms of the website and the products in the footer...Why not create a section in the main body of the website such as "Customer Favourites" or "Most Popular". The reason for this is because, I'm not sure if users would scroll to the footer whereas if it is in the main body of the website, your customers are more likely to see it.
-
Hello! Honestly you shouldn't worry about any bad links created two years ago. If they were hurting your website, it would of been seen a year or so ago, not now. One simple aspect of driving more traffic (but not directly) would be social media profiles created specifically for that phrase and thus allowing a lot more people to visit your website. Talking offhand about what's the cause of your issues without the link profile introduction is really unprofessional and thus if you want a more straightforward answer, some insights on the number of links, link profile looks and such would be useful. Thanks!
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
-
Linking from purchased businesses to my own
Hi All, An SEO and Google guidelines question. We've recently purchased several local businesses that have websites. Legally, we've put a disclaimer saying we've purchased those businesses, the question is whether we should link from those sites to our main site. Will this bring a manual action from Google? It's legitimate that we'd like the visitors from those websites come to our main site because those business no longer named the way they were. So, is it OK to link from these sites to ours? Will this violate Google's guidelines regarding backlinking? Should we even link and if so add the rel:nofollow tag? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | OrendaLtd2 -
Removing Bad Links
Hi all, I am in the process of conducting a Link Audit and I am faced with quite a lot of seemingly poor quality examples, such as; http://gotogetaways.com/tag/cunard/ http://jobhiringlocalandabroad.blogspot.com/p/job-hiring-for-cruise-liner-orchestra.html http://lumukixu.xlx.pl/p-o-cruises-aurora.php To me these should be removed \ disavowed but I am getting a little resistence from stakeholders regarding the amount of links I am seeking to rid ourselves of - all are of a similar quality to my examples above... Just so that I know that I am not being 'over eager' with my audit, I welcome your opinions Thanks Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomKing0 -
Uncontrollable Spammy Backlinks - Disavow or Not?
Hey Mozzers, I have ran a few different backlink reports, and I noticed that one of my sites has an incredible amount of spammy backlinks. These were not done by a prior SEO, they are simmply spammy links that were scraped and inserted on terrible sites, forums, directories, etc. 100% uncontrollable. The anchor text includes anything from the domain to "live sex" and "victoria's secret coupons". There are probably close to 700 or so of these backlinks from around 150-200 domains. I have read that one should contact the webmaster, and use disavow as a last resort, but I am not sure if that advice is for spammy link building techniques, which we have no history of doing. Is this normal? What is the best way to handle this? Is it likely that these are affecting this site's ranking at the moment? The number of spammy links drastically affects the ratio of quality backlinks to spammy backlinks. This is so frustrating...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | evan890 -
Links how long do they show?
How long do links show for in software such as Majestic ect once the link has been removed.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
To Many Links On Page Problem
Hello My Moz report is showing I have an error for too many links on my sitemap and blog. The links on both pages are relevant and I'm not sure if this has to be sorted out, as I would have thought Google would expect sitemaps and blogs to have lots of links. If I were to reduce the number of links how much of a positive affect would it have on my site? If any of you feel it is best practice to reduce number of links on these particular pages, do you have any suggestions on how I can tackle this? http://www.dradept.com/blog.php http://www.dradept.com/sitemap.php Thank you Christina
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ChristinaRadisic0 -
Should We Link To Our News?
We just started an "In the News" section on our webpage. We are not sure what would be the best for SEO purposes. Should we link to the news websites that have the stories about our company, even if they have no link bank? Or should we just take screenshots of the news article and only link to articles that link back to us (this is what we a currently doing)? Here is our news page, http://www.buyautoparts.com/News/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | joebuilder0 -
Is this splitting my authority or link juice?
Hi Using seomoz i am getting told that a 302 temporary redirect is occurring on some of my pages for instance. http://www.eco-environments.co.uk/solar-power/ Then redirects here http://www.eco-environments.co.uk/solar-power/default.phuse is this splitting my page authority because of the temporary redirect? I just want to make sure i have fully understood what's happening before i go to the company who designed and developed our site as i am convinced this is hurting my rankings. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Nickhoyle10 -
Image Links Vs. Text Links, Questions About PR & Anchor Text Value
I am searching for testing results to find out the value of text links versus image links with alt text. Do any of you have testing results that can answer or discuss these questions? If 2 separate pages on the same domain were to have the same Page Authority, same amount of internal and external links and virtually carry the same strength and the location of the image or text link is in the same spot on both pages, in the middle of the body within paragraphs. Would an image link with alt text pass the same amount of Page Authority and PR as a text link? Would an image link with alt text pass the same amount of textual value as a text link? For example, if the alt text on the image on one page said "nike shoes" and the text link on the other page said "nike shoes" would both pass the same value to drive up the rankings of the page for "nike shoes"? Would a link wrapped around an image and text phrase be better than creating 2 links, one around the image and one around the text pointing to the same page? The following questions have to do with when you have an image and text link on a page right next to each other, like when you link a compelling graphic image to a category page and then list a text link underneath it to pass text link value to the linked-to page. If the image link displays before the text link pointing to a page, would first link priority use the alt text and not even apply the anchor text phrase to the linked page? Would it be best to link the image and text phrase together pointing to the product page to decrease the link count on the page, thus allowing for more page rank and page authority to pass to other pages that are being linked to on the page? And would this also pass anchor text value to the link-to page since the link would include an image and text? I know that the questions sound a bit repetitive, so please let me know if you need any further clarification. I'd like to solve these to further look into ways to improve some user experience aspects while optimizing the link strength on each page at the same time. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | abernhardt
Andrew0