Huge amount of backlinks detected - what to do ?
-
The websites that use Yotpo review solution can display product galleries like this //imgur.com/4dHUh7O - orginal source page: http://skibox.fr/fr/veste-de-pluie-dynastar-long-shell.html
Every product in the gallery generates a link to https://yotpo.com such as https://yotpo.com/go/eAaQNjJh
This generate a huge amount of links detected in Google Search Console (GWMT) of yotpo.com
And every of those links redirects 301 to a page of the website using Yotpo review solution. Example: https://yotpo.com/go/eAaQNjJh redirects to http://skibox.fr/fr/batons-de-ski-leki-worldcup-lite-slalom-4683.html?#.VymNdr5_TwY
It seems to be similar to shorten URL links (that are legitimate), but I am not about the influence of this, what do you think ?
- Is this really influencing (in bad) the (potential) rankings of https://www.yotpo.com subdomain pages?
- What would you recommend to do?
-
Hi YotpoKaiser,
Thanks for the question. I think this brings up a really good point when it comes to the review platform space.
As you mentioned - it appears that Yotpo is doing this to track clicks back to you (that's why they 301 redirect).
If I were in your shoes, I would take one of 3 approaches (from least to most risk-averse):
- Don't worry about the links - There are plenty of websites out there that spin up copies of your website that the engineers at Google are brilliant enough to filter those out of your Google Webmaster Tools (GWT), they'll eventually get these Yotpo ones as well.
- Email the support team at Yotpo and see if they can "no-index, no-follow" the 301 redirect links that go back to your website. This is happening to you and it's happening to everyone else who is using the system. If they really want to provide a long-term review solution, this is INVALUABLE feedback that they can get.
- Disavow the links. As Eric and Deacyde above mentioned - you can go through a full analysis of the links and disavow them or disavow the entire domain.
I like taking a data-driven approach, so here's how I would decide:
-
Look at the impression data in GWT from Before/After you started using Yotpo. Look at a few of your best performing pages, that also have reviews pointing to them (very important), and see if (seasonally-adjusted*) the impressions are down.
-
If you started using Yotpo>90 days ago, you cant using this technique due to the data limitations in GWT.
-
I would pick a handful (maybe 10) pages to review first - look at ones that are the highest traffic/impressions.
-
If Impressions have bottomed out (seasonally adjusted) for these pages - disavow the domain AND email the support team at Yotpo. Here are the instructions straight from Google. Use the domain:yotpo.com flag in your file.
-
Look at the Organic session/user data in Google Analytics (GA) from before after you started using Yotpo. Use the same criteria here as you would GWT, about 10 pages, that have a decent number of monthly visits (>300).
-
If your data is small - this probably won't help much as any change could cause a big swing in it.
-
If your Organic sessions have bottomed out (seasonally adjusted) for these pages - disavow the domain AND email the support team at Yotpo.
-
If you are unsure about #1 and #2 - email the support team at Yotpo and ask them to noindex/nofollow their 301 redirects. They owe it to you as a customer NOT to mess up your SEO.
-
If you are ok with a little risk, then don't worry about it for now and monitor continuously.
- A word on seasonally adjusted data - I worked with a Ski Gear/Equipment company in the past and we saw very dramatic swings in traffic from November - February. You are probably seeing something similarly. If your work with Yotpo started during the "high season", I'd recommend seasonally adjusting it (divide the monthly session data by the % that Google Trends gives for that target keyword, in country. Yes - it's ALOT of work, but it will give you a precise idea). Since you posted this question in April, I presume that's soon after you started it and I would recommend only having your "before" traffic start sometime in Mid-March, after the high-season and into the shoulder season/summer. Weather and all other seasonality does play a factor here, but without the data telling you what's going on, you could either over/under panic and no one likes extra anxiety!
Let me know if this helps!
-
As Eric has mentioned above, you really should be doing backlink audits every month or every other month just to keep your site healthy and free from possible penalties.
Using a spreadsheet, entering in all backlink urls, fill in all other data you can find on them, DA, PA, backlink profile themselves, are they a directory, comment spam or are they even relevant to your site, or are they using many exact match keyword anchor texts and especially check if the backlink is still active, does it have a php error and so forth.
Fill out the spreadsheet to the best of your ability and go through and remove site's that are considered no good.
Be careful using disavow tool, google starts working on it once you upload it, if you made a mistake you can reupload the disavow file with updated changes. Make sure you have a copy of all disavow files you send to google, since it will help you very much in the future.
-
The best way to deal with new backlinks that you see is to evaluate them--determine whether or not they are natural links. If they're not natural, then consider disavowing them. If those links are low quality (low Domain Authority and Page Authority), then you might also consider disavowing them.
Besides disavowing them, you may want to contact the site owner and ask them to remove them.
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
-
Huge Drop in Direct Traffic in G4
Our direct traffic dropped 50% in October. Is anyone else seeing a drop in direct traffic in October in G4? It hasn't shifted to another source or unassigned it's just gone. Has anyone else experienced this and what might be the reasons?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | inhouseninja1 -
Backlink (which one is better)
Hi, for guest posting which Anchor is better for my brand website? 1)Naked Anchor text (e.g according to www.example.co.uk) OR Branded Anchor text? (e.g according to Example, which can be clicked to www.example.co.uk ) Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KINSHUN0 -
Huge Google index on E-commerce site
Hi Guys, Refering back to my original post I would first like to thank you guys for all the advice. We implemented canonical url's all over the site and noindexed some url's with robots.txt and the site already went from 100.000+ url's indexed to 87.000 urls indexed in GWT. My question: Is there way to speed this up?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ssiebn7
I do know about the way to remove url's from index (with noindex of robots.txt condition) but this is a very intensive way to do so. I was hoping you guys maybe have a solution for this.. 🙂0 -
Building Backlinks to Backlinks?
Should I be building back links to my Back links, I have a fairly decent amount of guest post on decent to standard blogs and just wondered if I should be building a few medium quality back links to these. I can understand that I should just build all links to my website but there are a lot of opportunities on cheaper blogs such as little better than article submission sites which I would not really want my main site on would this help?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson1 -
Backlinks question: High Domain Authority, Lower Page Authority
We have a possibility of contributing guest blogs (with followed backlinks) to a site with very high domain authority (and highly trafficked), but when we've looked at the blog entires they already have, most of them have a much lower page authority. How do relevant links from a page with a lower PA but on a domain with a really high DA end up impacting our overall backlink profile? Can an expert or two give me some advice on what this may mean for us if we choose to go for it? In your opinion, does having lots of relevant links from a site with a much higher domain authority than ourselves (to give you an idea, our domain authority is in the low 60's, this site has a domain authority of almost 90) worth the time/effort/resources unto itself? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GrowOrganic0 -
High PR Profile backlinks
High <acronym title="Google Page Ranking">PR</acronym> Profilebacklinks still worth for SEO ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | innofidelity1 -
Please let me know how to improve this email backlink request
Hello, How can I improve upon this email request: Your "Links" section contains a lot of good websites, and we would like our site to be added to the list. Our pagerank 4 website, which carries (Here I said what we carry) You have similar sites located in the "Other" Section on your link page. We would greatly appreciate being added to this list. Sincerely, BobW
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW
Webmaster
Our Site Name Here
Email Address Here
Phone Number Here0 -
Does google detect all updated page with new links
as paid links? Example: A PR 4 page updates the page a year later with new links. Does Google discredit these links as being fishy?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | imageworks-2612900