Too Many Links?
-
Search Term is Indianapolis Wedding Photographers.
Site is http://www.tallandsmallphotography.com/
Their metrics are through the roof compared to everyone else's. They've dropped from 27 in May to 40 Now. 'A' Grade on-site optimization.
Either there's too many links, or there's some bad links involved... I don't know which it is...
-
I liked your article. You had a lot of really good points. I think that a lot of non-SEO savvy people are still trying to build links by leaving comments, so it's good to advise people not to do that!
I still think you should go looking for Panda issues for this particular client though. Yes, it's good to get rid of the unnatural links. But, if Penguin was the only issue for this site then you really should have seen your drop at the time of a Penguin update and there was no Penguin update in May of 2014.
-
And... as it turns out, I was part of the problem. I had a DoFollow directory on my site that people could use for a little Blog Love action.
There was also a thread on a photography group that has been going on since 2009, that I encouraged people to use over the years.I've written a blog post here http://flauntyoursite.com/jig-is-up/ denouncing the practice. I have a bit of clout in the photography communities, so hopefully this spreads out there.
Marie, if you wouldn't mind reading this and letting me know if there's anything you think should be added, I'd appreciate it.
I let people down big time. I hope the word can get out there and fix this thing.
-
Thanks Marie,
I will shoot you an email. Most of my clients are photographers (I do custom website design as well as SEO), so if this is something that's happening more and more, it'd be good to have a solution for them.
-
Thanks very much for the recommendation EGOL.
William, I have seen a lot of photographers that have been affected by Penguin. With that being said, your backlink profile doesn't look typical of most Penguin hit sites that I see. The first thing I'd check is whether you have a manual unnatural linking penalty. This is different than Penguin that is an algorithmic issue and not a manual penalty.
If you've traded links with a lot of other photographers than a manual penalty is possible. To check go to Webmaster Tools then Search Traffic and then Manual Actions.
If you see "no manual webspam actions found" then that's not it.
I see a lot of sites that go on a link pruning crusade when really their problem has nothing to do with links. A lot of these sites have issues with the Panda algorithm which really is not a link based algorithm at all, but rather, deals with on site problems.
If you'd like me to have a more detailed look, feel free to contact me via the email on my Moz profile and I can give you a few options.
-
Marie Haynes.
Check out all of these link penalty articles on SearchEngineWatch. http://searchenginewatch.com/author/2779/marie-haynes
Another list of link penalty articles published here on Moz. http://moz.com/community/users/308135
Her site and book are here. http://www.hiswebmarketing.com/unnatural-links-recovery/
Those are just some of what she has published.
-
Thanks EGOL,
I spent a little time investigating to rule out other issues. I didn't want to rush to a conclusion. But I'm fairly positive we're looking at Penguin now.
Since Penguin isn't really my area of expertise, do you have recommendations for good services that are skilled in determining which links would be causing problems?
Thanks!
-
And EGOL, what is it that bothers you about the links to other sites?
The blog looks like a link factory. Are these being sold? Are they being traded? Simply by volume there will be links in there to other websites that have been penalized by Google. Inbound or outbound links can cause a site to have a problem with Google's Penguin algorithm.
Site-wide links in the footer have been a known method of google manipulation for about ten years. If Prophoto and NetRivet have dozens or hundreds of other sites giving them site-wide links in the footer that could cause a problem. I would get rid of those links if this was my website. They are not necessary. The site will look better without these advertising links.
**Most photographers actually do use commenting as a means to up their DA/PA. **
That statement proves an observation that I have made.
I look at Moz Q&A every day and pay attention to sites that see rankings drops. Photographers are waaayyy overrepresented in the sites that post here with problems. If you do a few searches of Q&A you will find lots of photographers in here cryin' because their sites have great metrics but apparently weak competitors are beating them.
**Most photographers do this as a way to promote vendors that were at the wedding. **
Photographers link to other wedding vendors and other wedding vendors link back to photographers... they do this every week. Over and over for hundreds of weddings. It creates a pattern that is easy to spot and looks like manipulation. They, or their agents, have also spent countless hours finding open photography blogs where they can place a ten word comment and get a link or two.
Their metrics are through the roof compared to everyone else's. They've dropped from 27 in May to 40 Now. 'A' Grade on-site optimization.
This sounds exactly like a site that has been penalized for link spam. Great moz grading, great link metrics, rankings lower than expected in Google.
Just offering what I would do if this was my site. No guarantees.
.
-
Thanks Chris and EGOL,
Most photographers actually do use commenting as a means to up their DA/PA. They occasionally get posts from wedding blogs as features with links back to them. But the majority of the industry uses comments. Plenty of sites have maintained rankings with that link strategy (I'm not saying if it's good/bad or even sustainable over the long term, just saying what has worked for years).
Could this just be a situation where having hundreds of more links than your competitors could cause the problems?Also, are there any tools that you'd recommend that could start to actually figure out if the links truly are bad?
And EGOL, what is it that bothers you about the links to other sites? Most photographers do this as a way to promote vendors that were at the wedding. Reading it I admit it's a bit link heavy in the amount of text they have on each post, but is there anything inherently wrong with 5-10 outbound links on posts?
Thanks guys.
William -
I'm not sure there is such a thing as too many good links, which leaves just the bad-links side of your equation. If by "take a sharp ax to what's currently out there," EGOL means to start disavowing those low quality links, I'd agree. Moz's metrics don't really count spammy stuff against you, which can lead to to believe that your ranking factors are through the roof. It might be good idea to bone-up on your knowledge of link valuations.
-
A lot of the links fit the pattern of the examples below. Google probably sees this and thinks that the only reason these links exist is because someone deliberately spent a lot of time finding a couple hundred photography blog posts where they could type less than ten words and obtain a link, or two, or three. They would call it blog spamming because the links were manufactured - not given on merit.
Three examples....
http://paperphotographs.com/blog/2012/04/02/columbus-senior-portraits-carly-whetstone-park-of-roses/
http://alexmillerweddings.co.uk/blog/benjamin-arrives/
http://www.jackchauvel.com/the-year-that-was-2013/
If this was my site I would get rid of the site-wide footer links to ProPhoto and NetRivet. If they are being paid for their service then linking to them is probably not a requirement. If it is a requirement and I am paying I would leave them simply on principle.
Another thing that bothers me is that the blog posts each have a load of links out to other sites. This, I would think, is unnecessary. I would stop doing this and take a sharp ax to what is currently out there.
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
-
disavow link more than 100,000 lines
I recieved a huge amount of spamy link (most of them has spam score 100) Currently my disavow link is arround 85.000 lines but at least i have 100.000 more domain which i should add them. All of them are domains and i don't have any backlink in my file. My Problem is that google dosen't accept disavow link which are more than 2MB and showes this message : File too big: Maximum file size is 100,000 lines and 2MB What should i do now?
Technical SEO | | sforoughi0 -
Google UK and the slog of Link building
Background:
Technical SEO | | Brinley
I have a number of sites built using the open eCommerce software zen cart. One of these sites was penalised by the original Penguin algorithm back in April 24, 2012. The reason for the panalty was that two ecommerce sites in Hong kong had a link to the above site in the footer of their 2000 & 4000 product website. I have no idea why the site had these links and even though I did contact them a few months before the Penguin massacre asking them to remove the footer link I was technically unaware of the ticking time bomb that they presented. The result, as is now engrained in SEO history, was that the site was moved to sit alongside Googles equivalent of the restaurant at the end of the universe and stayed there for 2 years until April 2014.
As I had never indulged in link building for the simple reason that I found it laborious I was obviously infuriated with the resulting loss of revenue but that was balanced with an understanding that I had not kept pace with the changing landscape of SEO according to Google. The quest I am now on is to increase my 3 sites profile on the web without getting another spanking from Google in the near future. The problem I have is that white hat today may well be black hat tomorrow. (I can recall the days when Google said links are good and everyone went out and asked other websites to link with them and look where that led.) So do I ignore actively cultivating links as some suggest and look to produce good content (which is quite difficult when you make mugs and candles by the way.) or do you go out and look to intentionally build links by studying competitors links, reviewing link opportunity or get bloggers to review products. For a small lifestyle entrepreneur like myself, the ever changing seo landscape and the amount of time & effort it requires is slowly and inevitably pushing us back out to that restaurant mentioned earlier. If only Google had a little brother that was designed purely for small businesses - like it was in the good old days before the dinosaur that is big business grunt and thought hmmm! whats that?
And if there were such a thing I would add a caveat that it would be illegal to generate pointless amount of cyber content because the web is becoming something akin to a landfill. Which leaves me nowhere really - but I think I am okay with that. Waiter !!0 -
Why my external links are zero
What could be the possibility that my Moz crawler showing zero external link for my website http://ultimatecharter.com, i have build many links from different website and when i click them it goes to the website. My website is multi language and the landing page is http://ultimatecharter.com/en/home can this be a possible issue? regards Aqeel
Technical SEO | | Aqeel0 -
Webmaster internal links issue
Hi All, In webmaster > Internal links https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/internal-links?hl=en&siteUrl= I get counts as in the image http://imgur.com/9bO5H0f is this logical and ok or should i work on finding why so many links and reduce them? Thanks Martin
Technical SEO | | mtthompsons0 -
Too Many Page Links
I have 8 niche websites for golf clubs. This was done to carve out tight niches for specific types of clubs then only broadens each club by type - i.e. better player, game improvement, max game improvement. So far, for fairly young sites, <1 year, they are doing fairly well as I build content. Running campaigns has alerted me to one problem - too many on-page links. And because I use Wordpress those links are on each page in the right sidebar and lead to the other sites. Even though visitors arrive via organic search in most cases they tend to eventually exit to one of the other sites or they click on a product (Ebay) and venture off to hopefully make a purchase. Ex: Drivers site will have a picture link for each of the other 7 sites. Question: If I have one stie (like a splash page) used as one link to that page listing all the sites with a brief explanation of each site will this cause visitors to bounce off because they will have one click, than the list and other clicks depending on what other club/site they would like to go to. The links all open in new windows. This would cut down on the number of links per page of each site but will it cause too much work for visitors and cause them to leave?
Technical SEO | | NicheGuy0 -
How do I remove Links to my website???
Hi Guys, Please can anyone help!! Can anyone tell me how on earth I can remove links to my website? My website has been hit by the new penguin update and the company that was doing my SEO seems to have built a lot of spammy links!! How can I remove these links??? Please can anyone help Thanks Gareth
Technical SEO | | GAZ090 -
Rel=nofollow for affiliate links?
Hi, For a holiday/travel website including hotels and holiday packages from affiliates I am currently using the rel="nofollow" attribute to link out to the affiliate's website and wanted to know if this is the right way? To be more precise: there are distinct pages for each city and on a city specific page there are ~50 available hotels listed with some other information such as price and address, etc. Each of these hotels have an outlink to the affiliate's hotel website which uses private branding and as such is running on a subdomain hotels.mytraveldomain.tld. So in order not to pass on the link juice to the affiliate's website I thought I would simply use rel="nofollow". Would you also use nofollow? or are there any other opinions out there about that?
Technical SEO | | socialtowards1 -
Drop down navigation and link juice
Hi! We are desperately needing to overhaul our site navigation setup, and we have so many categories that we think our site could really benefit from a drop down navigation similar to what these sites have: http://www.paychex.com/ http://www.bmc.com/ We've held off doing this type of navigation in the past because we were only seeing people use flash to create it and we knew that it wouldn't be good for link juice. But these two sites are using HTML and CSS - which seems like a much better style and good for SEO. Do you agree? We want to make the switch but are worried about losing linking power by nesting our navigation in 's and CSS styling.
Technical SEO | | sciway0