Help! Unnatural Linking Partial Manual Penalty
-
A friend was hit with a manual penalty for unnatural links-impacts links. (see attached) I'm thinking it may be because they copied their entire wordpress.com site over to site.org/blog. (without redirecting it, so they have duplicate content as well) Out of 76+k links, nearly 11,000 are from their wordpress.com blog. If that's the case is the problem solved by upgrading within wordpress.com to redirect to site.org/blog? (then making a reconsideration request?) Or do I risk negatively affecting their site somehow? They saw a significant increase in traffic when they moved the content over but I'm thinking that was more a matter of increasing content on their site than increasing backlinks. The .org site ranks relatively well, whereas the wordpress.com blog doesn't really rank at all.Worth noting: it's a partial match, not a sitewide match. Does that negate my theory about the wordpress.com blog being the cause in any way? Since many of the links from it are sitewide? The wordpress.com blog has a header link to the .org homepage, plus individual links to it in posts. There are also three links in the header to pages on their .com website which redirects to three corresponding pages on the main .org site (the whole .com redirects). There are 23 footer links from the blog to the targeted .org pages as well. In the attached screenshot of who links most from Google Webmaster Tools, note that martindale.com links most, but it's a lawyer's site so they naturally have referring content there. Could that be a problem?Thanks everyone! M8JVEI6.jpg?1 M6gYE90.jpg
-
Kim,
Thanks for the update. Most people just do what ever they decide to do and never report back. So, thanks!
I'm glad you were able to get the penalty removed. I actually was just helping someone out who got a penalty and saw something similar, a bunch of blog sites that were nondescript with a ridiculously wide range of topics and even languages, which screams private link network to me. The client said they weren't responsible. It seems that negative SEO is something being done more often.
Thanks again.
Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com -
For anyone still out there reading this,here is a brief update: I took the gentle path and followed Google's advice exactly. I used the recent links from Google Webmaster Tools, instead of all the other link info out there. I checked everything leading up to the penalty, and ended up finding a network of 'bad' sites with unnatural links pointing at us. After requesting link, removal I submitted a reconsideration request, being sure to point out the link network, of course, and Google moved the manual penalty.
The plan moving forward is to keep a watch out for bad links and remove them. (which I'm sure is part of Google's master plan - other than ruling the Universe, naturally) They keep appearing, which indicates that lawyers are a target for spam and/or negative SEO!
-
One more thing...I guess I will check the anchor text again, especially as the domain is an exact match domain. I'll see why martindale.com is linking so much, too. I'm sure the firm's partners are all listed there in multiple categories, but I don't see how that disproportionately high ratio of backlinks from martindale.com can be helpful. To be clear, that site is a legal site (with lawyer listings), not an individual lawyer's site.(Thanks Jesse.)
-
Thank all of you for your helpful responses! I used the trial version of link detox from linkresearchtools.com to help me get my bearings, then moved on to ahrefs and majestic seo. There are definitely shady links that exist so I will be trying to get these removed, then disavow them with Google's disavow tool, then request a review/removal of the penalty. I understand that Google may just be ignoring them, but I'm going to play it safe. One site in particular was hiding the backlink. I could only find it by hovering over a 'more links' area and the page's content and surrounding links were totally irrelevant. Other sites were useless directories with no Page Rank and just lists of location-specific law links (like Atlanta Bankruptcy Law, Baltimore Bankruptcy Law, and so on.) The one in particular I found with Link Detox was not even indexed, a sign of a Google penalty (if not total infancy, in a best-case scenario).
I had to put the time in and manually visit the links pulled from Webmaster Tools to discover these. I guess I will try to clean up the worst of them and perhaps leave the 'gray' ones with Page Rank because I'm not sure if they are hurting and I don't want to do more harm than good. Any other advice?
It's a learning process, for sure.
Thanks Again!
-
Yeah I'd have to agree with Marie or at the very least that other domain bringing in 60,000 of your 75,000 links.. why wouldn't that be a factor? Just because it's a "lawyer's site?" What does a lawyer need 60,000 referring links for? That's pretty intense...
Still I'd look closely at your anchor text profile and do a full audit as Marie is suggesting here.
-
I would think that it would be extremely unlikely that links from one wordpress blog would cause a site to get a manual review and a partial match warning message. Any time I've reviewed a site with one of these messages the cause is always a large number of domains linking unnaturally.
-
Great point.
-
Interesting Kurt, thanks for sharing.
Yes I'm sure it can go either way that makes sense as it's basically what the message says. Something along the lines of "some rankings/keywords/pages may be affected," right? I guess if your ranking is affected though you'll be all over this.
Like I said though it's always a good idea to clean up your link profile. Even if no manual action has been taken you may be surprised what sort of improvements you could make escaping any algorithmic penalties.
-
Jesse,
I think it depends on the situation. Matt Cutts has even said what you are saying, that in some cases you don't need to do anything because Google has just taken action against those links. I have, however, seen a situation where dealing with the links that caused a partial manual action did help to improve rankings. In that case, it appeared that Google had no only disavowed the suspect links, but had also penalized the specific keywords (or possibly pages) that were being targeted. There was a clear and quick drop in rankings for specific keywords, but not all the keywords the site ranked for. Once the suspect links were dealt with, the rankings for those keywords improved.
Unless it's a huge pain to deal with the links, I'd take care of them just in case.
-
Yes I was going to say pretty much exactly what ChilyDigital here is saying. Check your anchor text disparity using ahrefs.com or OSE.
The thing about these partial match penalty warnings that I've found is that while it is good to try and address the root of the problem so as to avoid further problems in the future, Google doesn't really seem to be asking much of you. I'm 99% certain what happens in these situations is Google decides to "disavow" the links in question from their end and not pay any attention to them going forward.
Now if these types of links continue to get built in a major way, then you might be facing a larger site-wide penalty. But so far the "penalty" is doing nothing more than discrediting the poison-links it has identified. This is my current theory anyway based on experience with the same message.
When I got this message, I never saw any ranking or traffic fluctuations. I did some more work removing links and cleaning up my link profile and it went away.. "KIND OF." It was weird, the message still existed but when you clicked it no text was present so I'm assuming the message got bugged but either way I never had any actual noticeable/tangible penalties.
Hope this helps..
-
Hi Kimberly, The links on the wordpress.com blog may be an issue. Are there many exact match anchor text links on it pointing to the site.org domain? Do you have any other backlinks on other sites other that the wordpress.com blog that may be 'unnatural'? It sounds like a link audit might be necessary to investigate further why you've received a warning from Google.
-
It sounds like you should either redirect the old Wordpress site or delete it. Redirects are the better SEO solution, but I don't know what Wordpress charges for that, so you'd have to make that financial decision.
As to whether that would solve your problem or not, I don't know. The manual action didn't have any sample links to indicate what the issue was and I haven't reviewed your link profile. There could be other issues.
Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com
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
Hi 64% of our links come from a .com website and only 30% from .co.uk. We only do business in the UK should I continue with the .com links as they are easier to source. Does this hurt my SEO efforts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Caffeine_Marketing0 -
How Do You Do Link Building??
I am starting to use the Moz pro tools like optimizing on page SEO for keywords and looking for opportunities. I know link building is a huge part for getting rankings on keywords in google search. Where do I start and how do I do the link building process for specific keywords I can rank for?? Thank you in advance for your help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wickerparadise1 -
Anchor text penalties and indexed links
Hi! I'm working on a site that got hit by a manual penalty some time ago. I got that removed, cleaned up a bunch of links and disavowed the rest. That was about six months ago. Rankings improved, but the big money terms still aren't doing great. I recently ran a Searchmetrics anchor text report though, and it said that direct match anchors still made up the largest part of the overall portfolio. However, when I started looking at individual links with direct anchors, nearly every one had been removed or disavowed. My question is, could an anchor text penalty be in place because these removed links have not been reindexed? If so, what are my options? We've waited for this to happen naturally, but it hasn't occurred after quite a few months. I could ping them - could this have any impact? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Blink-SEO0 -
Will a Google manual action affect all new links, too?
I have had a Google manual action (Unnatural links to your site; affects: all) that was spurred on by a PRWeb press release where publishers took it upon themselves to remove the embedded "nofollow" tags on links. I have been spending the past few weeks cleaning things up and have submitted a second pass at a reconsideration request. In the meantime, I have been creating new content, boosting social activity, guest blogging and working with other publishers to generate more natural inbound links. My question is this: knowing that this manual action affects "all," are the new links that I am building being negatively tainted as well? When the penalty is lifted, will they regain their strength? Is there any hope of my rankings improving while the penalty is in effect?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | barberm1 -
Unnatural Inbound Links Warning in GWT
Hi all, A bit of a long questions so apologies in advance but please bear with me... My client has received an 'Unnatural Inbound Links' warning and it is now my task to try and resolve through a process of; Highlighting the unnatural links Requesting that the links be removed (via webmaster requests) Possibly using the Disavow Tool Submitting a Reconsideration Request So I downloaded my clients link profile from both OSE and GWT in CSV format and compared - the amount of links returned was considerably more in GWT than it was in OSE...? So I set about going through the links, first filtering into order so that I could see blocks of links from the same URL - I highlighted in colours; Red - Definitely need to be removed Orange - Suspect, need to investigate further Yellow - Seem to be ok but may revisit Green - Happy with the link, no further action So to my question which relates to, is it 'black & white' - is it a case of 'good link v 'bad link' or could there be some middle ground? (am I making this process even more confusing than it actually is?) As an example, here are some 'Orange' URL's; http://www.24searchengines.com/ (not exact URL as it goes to the travel section which is my clients niche) - this to me looks spammy and I would normally 'paint it red' and look to remove, however, when I go to the 'contact us' page; (http://www.24searchengines.com/texis/open/allthru?area=contactus) and follow the link to remove from directory, it takes me here; http://www.dmoz.org/docs/en/help/update.html DMOZ??? My clients has a 'whole heap' of these type of links; http://www.25searchengines.com/ http://www.26searchengines.com/ http://www.27searchengines.com/ http://www.28searchengines.com/ ...and many many more!! Here is another example; http://foodys.eu/ http://foodys.eu/2007/01/04/the-smoke-ring-bbq-community/ ...plus many more... My client is in the 'cruise niche' and as there is a 'cruise' section on the site I'm not sure whether this constitutes a good, bad or indifferent link! Finally, prior to me working with this client (1 month) they moved their site from a .co.uk to a .com domain and redirected all links from the .co.uk to the .com (according to GWT, over 16k have been redirected) - a lot of these 'spammy' links were to the .co.uk and have thus been redirected, should I even consider removing the redirection or will that have severe consequences? Apologies for the long (long) post, I know I'm heading in the right direction but some assurance wouldn't go amiss! 🙂 Many thanks Andy <colgroup><col width="1317"></colgroup>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomKing
| |0 -
How to promote some links on google
Hi our site is http://www.mycarhelpline.com If people search on our site in Google by typing - Mycarhelpline they see links - why mycarhelpline, contact us and about us how can we put some other key pages by replacing above pages
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Modi0 -
301 redirect help
Hey guys, I normally work in WordPress and just use a 301 redirect plugin. I bought a site and rather than maintain two similar ones have decided to redirect one to the other. I am having trouble with the .htaccess file. Here is an example. These are two redirects: redirect 301 /category/models/next/2
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DanDeceuster
redirect 301 /category/models I want both of these URLs to redirect to the same URL of the new site. However, the /category/models is the only one working. It redirects to the new page just fine. The /category/models/next/2 is redirecting to nearly the same URL on the new site, only it is adding /next/2 to the end and that is bringing up a 404. Why is it adding /next/2 to the new URL? How can I fix this? There are several doing this. Help appreciated!0 -
Sitewide blog link and Article links
Hi Guys I just wanted to give you all a heads up on something I adjusted recently that worked really well and wanted to ask for your own experiences on this. 1. We have a blog that adds regular content and within the blog we link from the keyword we are targeting. Standard stuff right ! We were struggling for movement on a keyword so I removed the links from the articles and added a link on the site wide blogroll. The link on the blogroll included the keyword but was a longer descriptive link. Low and behold we got a first page listing when the changed it.The change in ranking was made a few days later. I have always been given the impression that site wide isn't that great ? So explain this one . Of course there are many other factors etc 🙂 What are your experiences and thoughts on what happened here ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | onlinemediadirect0