Should I work with current site or start a new site with more keywords?
-
I have been working with my site for some time. Sadly, I am moving lower and lower in ranking. I am wondering if I should just transfer my site to a new URL (this time including keywords). I don't understand the whole disavow link thing. I hired someone about 2 years ago, when I lost my ranking due to malicious software. Well, it turns out that, she submitted my link to weird sites that I don't even know what they are. It is like sites with thousands of websites just listed. Things have never been half of what they were and I am really just growing frustrated. I understand that having an a URL for awhile is helpful, but I appear to have lost many of my good linking sites. Any thoughts?
-
It sounds like part of the reason for your question is frustration and uncertainty about what to do next. I often feel exactly the same.
So you may want to read this post which helps you work out where to start and puts the issues with disavowing well down the line
http://savvypanda.com/blog/guide-how-to-use-google-disavow-tool.html
In a nutshell
- Use google webmaster tools to figure out where most of the links are coming from
- Work down the list in order and email the websites to ask them them to remove the links
- Once you hit diminishing returns start using the disavow tool.
This is a good approach as it makes the problem manageable and you can then be systematic about moving forward. If it's like everything else I've ever done - 20% of the sites will be responsible for 80% of the links and at least some of them will be nice and take stuff down. That will give you a nice morale boost when they do it, and then another one when you get some rankings benefits.
And then you will be over the hump and it will just be another task you have to undertake
Hope that this helps
Denis
-
Always an awkward one. First of all, don't rush to kill off the domain. I have done a lot of these and everything can be pulled back. That question of 'if' it should or not though, is only something you can answer.
If you want to know a little about what state your links are in, go to Open Site Explorer, enter your URL and look at the Anchor Text that is used to come back to you. Are most of these 'money' phrases? Is your brand used much?
Look at the Linking Domains. Do you have many that are coming from sites with high Domain Authority? Do you have sites that are linking back to you from more than one page?
When you look at the overview of your site, what does it tell you for your stats? Is everything very low?
Of course, this is only a short peek at what's going on. If you are still unsure, drop me a message and I'll be happy to do it for you.
-Andy
-
I would suggest 2 things:
- Hire someone to do an audit of inbound links for your website, or have someone in-house perform the audit. While it may be beneficial in some regards to move your site to a blank slate, your domain age (how long your site's existed) will be lost - that being a factor in SEO.
- Never hire anyone without knowing their tactics and requesting to look at prior projects they've worked on for your own edification. From what you've said, it sounds like the person you hired 2 years ago used some black-hat (risky cheat) tactics. It's great to have help, but unless you're informed about whomever's helping you, it will always have the potential to backfire.
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
-
New Penguin
I just read that a new Penguin might be coming up. My question is : Can you rank if you have good content but bad links ? In other words does the content quality take over the link quality or will google penalize you for the quality of your links even though your content is great and deserves to rank ? Thank you,
Link Building | | seoanalytics0 -
Will our website traffic be adversely affected by Google by allowiing other sites to post our content on their sites?
Hi, We're a radio station posting original content each day. We belong to a sector of similar radio stations. It's been proposed that we all contribute content to this group
Link Building | | Hope-Media
so any radio station can grab this content and post it on their own websites. As the site with the most content and web traffic, could this potentially harm us?1 -
Creating your own blog for back linking to your site
Our competitor seems to be linked to a blog that they have created themselves. From an SEO perspective is it worthwhile creating a blog that is related to your particular industry and then only including links back to your site. Also is there any way to upload ,articles etc automatically to the blog to cut down on the people hours involved in updating content?
Link Building | | Hardley10 -
Linking to a site in the US from a site in the UK - Good, bad or not important?
Would linking to a site in the US from the UK do harm or good if the site being linked to is industry related? i.e. a UK web design company linking to a US web design career site.
Link Building | | Tone_Agency0 -
Do these strategies still work?
Hey SEOmoz members, I've been out of the SEO game for quite a while now... grew up years ago getting by with directory blasts, article marketing, social bookmarking, etc... I'm currently in the process of starting a few new campaigns. After burning the midnight oil on this site soaking up all the information I can, I realize the game has changed. It's not as simple as it used to be. So for these new campaigns, killer content, social integration, and guest blogging are going to be my main long term strategies. If I'm not mistaken, relevancy should be a key part of the link building strategy. So I guess my question is... article marketing, social bookmarking, web 2.0 creation... can these still be a viable source for high quality links? I do realize that without great content these are all dead ends. But when used correctly and in moderation, can these strategies still produce results? And if so... what are some good resources for finding high quality sites that will positively impact my campaigns? Are there any good article directories out there, or have they all been devalued? Do linkwheels still carry any weight?
Link Building | | SergeantJoe0 -
Links from Domain Portfolio Advertising Sites
I recently purchased a domain from a someone with a large portfolio and my site's link is still found on thousands of his one page/low quality sites. I find these links on Open Site Explorer but not in WT. Should I ask the portfolio owner to remove the link from his low quality domain advertising sites?
Link Building | | mj7750 -
Photography Site ranking!
Hi I am working on a photography site: www.daffodilwaves.co.uk now there isn't many pages nor is the that much text. However you will see that they have a blog (poorly designed one which we are addressing) Now blog posts I feel can be really good as there is generally alot of naturally written text which I don't feel I need to influence. Also generally people will comment so I also believe that is good for rankings too. However I find that the blog ranks higher than the actual website and I dont want that to occur the website is the one that generates the bookings. So can you give me some ideas to transfer the ranking from the blog to the website? I was thinking that within the article I could simply link back to the homepage - would you think that is a good idea? If so would you suggest I use particular anchor text? such as "Wedding Photographer" or "Comtemporary wedding Photographer" Thanks
Link Building | | Springnik0 -
Why aren't links to my site showing up in open site explorer?
My site is http://www.thesquarefoot.com Google analytics shows many more (though more than a handful of links that we have gotten recently still don't show up there). Definite newbie here so please be kind... Thanks!
Link Building | | TheSquareFoot0