How do I know for sure if my site has been slapped?
-
I'm new to this SEO business - and I focus on inbound marketing. My client's site is www.SubconsciousMind.com. Just a few weeks ago it was showing in the top search results for several major keywords. Now, it has disappeared all together and there are competitors showing that have very little SEO (metatarsi not set up properly, etc.). So, I know there has to be an opportunity.
Some obvious things:
There aren't a lot of links and the majority seem to be bad (bad linking farms)
Social media is set up by a robot
Articles are poorly written obviously ONLY for SEOMy client hired a SEO company awhile back to get results, not understanding black hat / white hat and it worked for several years. Now - it is really hurting her. The sites she is linking to doesn't have any contact info to get the "unlinked." I've read I can use the disavow tool.
I asked her if she got anything from Google about "being slapped". She doesn't even receive the emails to her site because she trusted someone else to set it all up.
Should I rebuild from scratch? Any recommendations? We are funning adwords now as a quick fix.
-
If you feel like you have done everything within your power to try and get the links removed, but there's just no way, then you should disavow the URL or domain. You should attempt to reach the owners of the domain 2-3 times before giving up. During my link removals, there have been a decent number of webmasters that finally responded on my 2nd or 3rd attempt.
As for disavowing URL or domain, if the entire domain is something you'd never want a link from, disavow the entire domain. Even if you only have ONE link from the entire site. Still, disavow the domain. Only disavow the URL if you think the site in general is good quality but you happen to be on 1 particular spammy page for some reason.
-
Hi Philipp,
I checked with Google Webmasters and there is no penalty - good news! I've also attempted to contact those sites with spammy links and I am getting no response. So - would you recommend at this point that I simply go through the disavow at this point?
Thanks in advance,
Joeaux
-
Happy to help
And I took a quick look at the backlink profile for subconsciouschange.com... definitely spammy. A nice cleanse will get you on the right track!
-
Thank you so much for your input... yes, you are all correct - I had the wrong URL. It is actually www.SubconsciousChange.com
I so appreciate your input and will start working right away on those bad links.
-
Is it really www.SubconsciousMind.com ? PR 0 and listed at domainnamesales ?
-
Philip gives good advise, I would add, that if there is no manual penalty, then the algorithm will be dismissing links at best, it would not be penalizing you for them. not for links anyhow
but as Philip said, the domain seems to be parked
-
How to see if your site has received a manual penalty from Google? Sign up for Google Webmaster Tools (http://www.google.com/webmasters).
From within there you will be able to see if the website has received a manual penalty from Google. Once you've got the account setup and verified, look on the left menu for "Search Traffic" and then "Manual Actions". If there is a MANUAL penalty imposed, you'll see it there. It will either be "partial" or "site-wide". The former means that only some pages are affected. The latter means that all pages are affected.
If you have a manual penalty, you will NEED to do outreach to get links removed, and THEN you submit a disavow for the ones you were unable to remove. You're right, most spam sites won't have contact info, but you can check http://www.who.is and find an email address in most cases. You will more than likely not get the result you're looking to get if you forego the link removal process and skip straight to a disavow.
One last note, if there's no manual penalty in Google Webmaster Tools, then the site may be penalized algorithmically. If you know there are spammy links in place, you should act as if you were penalized manually, with the only difference being that you won't be submitting a reconsideration request to Google. If the site quality is poor, you will want to research Panda recovery options.
By the way, www.SubconsciousMind.com doesn't seem to exist. So either you typo'd the name, or you have an ever bigger problem on your hands now
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
-
Old Press Release sites - Which ones do you Disavow and leave alone
Hi Mozers! I need your help. I'm in the final stages of a huge link audit and press releases are a big concern. As you know, press release distribution sites up until 2012 had "follow" links, giving webmasters a delight of having their keyword anchor texts a big boost in rankings. These are the websites that are troubling me today so i would appreciate your input on my strategy below as most of these websites are asking for money to remove them: 1. Press Release sites that are on the same C-class - Disavow 2. Not so authoritative press release websites that just follow my www domain only (no anchor texts) - I leave it alone 3. Not so authoritative press release websites but have anchor texts that are followed - Disavow 4. Post 2012 press release websites that have "followed" anchor text keywords - Request to remove, then disavow 5. Post 2012 press release websites that just follow my www domain only (no anchor texts) - leave it alone #2 and #5 are my biggest concern. Now more than ever I would appreciate your follow ups. I will respond quickly and apply "good answers" to the one's that make the most sense as my appreciation to you. God bless you all.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Shawn1240 -
WP Datar site shady linking to my site
Hello, I have done some research on this but cannot find a solid answer to my question. After recently reviewing my "not found" errors in webmaster tools, I see that a site called "WP Datar" has linked to a number of our pages that actually do not exist. I am wondering first, if this will harm our site, and second, what is the best way to get those links from their site taken down? I tried emailing, but of course, the email address listed on the site did not work. 🙂 Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | lfrazer0 -
Suspicious external links to site have 302 redirects
Hi, I have been asked to look at a site where I suspect some questionable SEO work, particularly link building. The site does seem to be performing very poorly in Google since January 2014, although there are no messages in WMT. Using WMT, OPenSiteExplorer, Majestic & NetPeak, I have analysed inbound links and found a group of links which although are listed in WMT, etc appear to 302 redirect to a directory in China (therefore the actual linking domain is not visible). It looks like a crude type of link farm, but I cant understand why they would use 302s not 301s. The domains are not visible due to redirects. Should I request a disavow or ignore? The linking domains are listed below: http://www.basalts.cn/
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | crescentdigital
http://www.chinamarbles.com.cn/
http://www.china-slate.com.cn/
http://www.granitecountertop.com.cn/
http://www.granite-exporter.com/
http://www.sandstones.biz/
http://www.stone-2.com/
http://www.stonebuild.cn/
http://www.stonecompany.com.cn/
http://www.stonecontact.cn/
http://www.stonecrate.com/
http://www.stonedesk.com/
http://www.stonedvd.com/
http://www.stonepark.cn/
http://www.stonetool.com.cn/
http://www.stonewebsite.com/ Thanks Steve0 -
If our site hasn't been hit with the Phantom Update, are we clear?
Our SEO provider created a bunch of "unique url" websites that have direct match domain names. The content is pretty much the same for over 130 websites (city name is different) that link directly to our main site. For me this was a huge red flag, but when I questioned them and they said it was fine. We haven't seen a drop in traffic, but concerned that Google just hasn't gotten to us. DA for each of these sites are 1 after several months. Should we be worried? I think yes, but I am an SEO newbie.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Buddys0 -
When clients slap 3rd party benners on their website...
Ciao from Latitude 53.92705600 Longitude -1.38481600 Ive got a naughty cluster of clients who are slapping third banner ads on their home pages for reasons that only marketing executives understand. So here i am on the SEO side Ive added _balnks and no do follows on the rogue banners but i'm looking for a plausible argument to sh@t a client up into not doing this. So my question is please:
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Nightwing
"What is the number 1 reason why a client should not place third party banners pointing too non relevant sites (eg a web site focused on furniture placing a bed fred banner on their home page)" Let the games begin!
Ciao,
David0 -
Site being targeted by hardcore porn links
We noticed recently a huge amount of referral traffic coming to a client's site from various hard cord porn sites. One of the sites has become the 4th largest referrer and there are maybe 20 other sites sending traffic. I did a Whois look up on some of the sites and they're all registered to various people & companies, most of them are pretty shady looking. I don't know if the sites have been hacked or are deliberately sending traffic to my client's site, but it's obviously a concern. The client's site was compromised a few months ago and had a bunch of spam links inserted into the homepage code. Has anyone else seen this before? Any ideas why someone would do this, what the risks are and how we fix it? All help & suggestions greatly appreciated, many thanks in advance. MB.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MattBarker0 -
My site has disapeared from the serps. Could someone take a look at it for me and see if they can find a reason why?
my site has disappeared from the serps. Could someone take a look at it for me and see if they can find a reason why? It used to rank around 4 for the search "austin wedding venues" and it still ranks number three for this search on Bing. I haven't done any SEO work on it in a while so i don't think i did anything to make Google mad but now it doesn't even rank anywhere in the top 160 results. Here's the link: http://austinweddingvenues.org Thanks in advance Mozzers! Ron
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Ron100 -
If a site is punished by google like -30, or -60, are the link from that site efficient?
Like this way, if I build a blog and in some situation, the blog is punished by google as some reason I don't know, all the rank dropped and got the -30 punishment. If I put a outbound link on the sidebar, or footer position. what it'll be for that link? A is punished, a link is put on the A website and link to B website what that link means to B punished got many ways Thank you
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | yifang01230