Negative seo by Shady SEO Firm?
-
Recently a former client of man called me up and said that his rankings for his Auto Repair Shop in Tacoma WA had dropped and he had his worst November in sales since they hired this new SEO firm to rebuild their website and provide SEO. Of course the first thing I did was check his back links and sure enough there are 22 links from Yellowbook.com all pointed to different cities
I checked the SEO firms website and they and they had 4 links from YellowBook. The problem was the links from YellowBook were all optimized from different cities. I am pretty sure Google penalized my client for the unnatural back-links to YellowCrook.com. Does the community agree that these links caused the penalty? I included the links in pictures on my LinkedIn Profile. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/case-study-how-google-erased-60-percent-revenue-from-small-meshach?published=t
Here are the links.
<colgroup><col width="202"> <col width="545"></colgroup>
| http://www.yellowpages.com/seattle-wa/automotive |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/seattle-wa/auto-transmission | Auto Transmission in Seattle, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/kent-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Kent, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/seattle-wa/truck-service-repair | Truck Service Repair in Seattle, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/lower-queen-anne-seattle-wa/truck-service-repair | Truck Service Repair in Lower Queen Anne Seattle, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/bonney-lake-wa/mechanic | Mechanic in Bonney Lake, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/seattle-wa/auto-mechanics | Auto Mechanics in Seattle, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/shoreline-wa/auto-transmission | Auto Transmission in Shoreline, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/kent-wa/auto-repair | Auto Repair in Kent, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/lynnwood-wa/auto-transmission | Auto Transmission in Lynnwood, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/monroe-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Monroe, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/auburn-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Auburn, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/redmond-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Redmond, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/matthews-beach-seattle-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Matthews Beach Seattle, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/kent-wa/auto-transmission | Auto Transmission in Kent, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/monroe-wa/truck-service-repair | Truck Service Repair in Monroe, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/wilburton-bellevue-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Wilburton Bellevue, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/laurelhurst-seattle-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Laurelhurst Seattle, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/seattle-wa-98166/auto-oil-lube |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/gig-harbor-wa/auto-oil-lube | Auto Oil Lube in Gig Harbor, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/northeast-seattle-seattle-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Northeast Seattle Seattle, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/auburn-wa/auto-transmission |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/burien-wa/automotive | Automotive in Burien, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com | -
After further looking at his search results I noticed that his keyword that he was number 1 for the last 3 years. Tacoma Auto Care was still showing high up in the organic results. Number 4 behind 2 yelp results and one other company. But he was still number 10 to 15 in the 3-pack results for the same keyword. This leads me to conclude that the Yellowpage links destroyed his NAP with all the different cities they added. See picture attached
Also when you use the same search terms in BING there is NO LOCAL Penalty.
Bing Tacoma Auto Care
Bing Tacoma Auto Repair
www.philsautocareinc.com shows up number 1 and number 3 respectively.
Now we all know how to knock out our local competition in Google Don't We?
-
Thanks for the response. The company Philsautocareinc.com has had stead rankings for 3 years. They hired this new company www.effectivewebsolutions.biz to do their website site in April of 2016. They took 3 months to build the website and then started SEO work around July August 2016. The reason I focused on the Yellowpage links is because www.effectivewebsolutions.biz has the exact same links pointing to there site. So i know they are the ones who did it. Since this business physical address is in Tacoma wouldn't googles algorithms still see the different cities in the Yellowbook links as spam? Just saying.
-
Agree with Marcel, in essence he recommends a deeper dive. I recommend collate links, from majestic, moz, ahrefs and WMT's. Then you have to go through them each manually.
I tend to focus on exact matching anchor text, and non branded anchors. That is where you usually find the culprits. Also when identified disavow from the root.
Focusing on bad links though is not enough.
I would also be tracking any other site changes, did the new seo company change any title tags, h1's etc. Is the page speed still under 2 seconds... you should be able to do deep dive off WMT's as it all seems within 90 days... pin point some dates of drops... look at the words specifically that have dropped. Get granular. WMT's should really help at this stage, so I would do a deep dive there, capture as much data as you can as it is slipping away.
Hope that helps.
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
-
Inbound links with malicious anchor text. Negative seo attack
Hi, What to do with more than 300 links with a malicious anchor text that has nothing to do with my content. I am disavowing those links for the last 5 years. Some of them are directed to URLs that have been changed more than 8 years ago. How can I block this malicious behavior? Thanks in advance
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Arlinaite470 -
How much value does these have on SEO?
how much value doesn't having an address a phone numbe an https rather than http i appreciate any help.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
301 redirects for 3 top level domains using WP SEO Yoast
Hey Guys I have a custom built website - and a wp blog attached to this - problem is there are 3 top level domains: zenory.co.nz, zenory.com and zenory.com.au **The issue is when I enter the domain to 301 redirect I only have to enter one domain usually i enter redirect from zenory.com/blog/oldpage to zenory.com.newpage ** For eg: I have just move Phone Psychic Readings from the blog - over to the main site. However there seems to be an issue that I'm still having and trying to clean up. I'm finding backlinks there are linking to each other of my 3 domains that end up backlinking across domains, which I was told this can look as spammy to google. For eg: co.nz links many pages to com.au. I'm currently trying to clean this up at the moment - however while im in the process of this - I find myself question when I'm creating the 301 redirects from the blog - but lets say I'm on the blog for zenoy.co.nz/blog/oldblogpost and when I click on a blog post - it redirects me to zenory.com/newarticlepost - because I have redirected it to .com - how can I redirect and make sure is going back to the right domain name to save myself from having to show this cross backlinks? Would gratefully appreciate any assistance on this tricky situation. Cheers Just
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | edward-may0 -
Negative SEO and when to use to Dissavow tool?
Hi guys I was hoping someone could help me on a problem that has arisen on the site I look after. This is my first SEO job and I’ve had it about 6 months now. I think I’ve been doing the right things so far building quality links from reputable sites with good DA and working with bloggers to push our products as well as only signing up to directories in our niche. So our backlink profile is very specific with few spammy links. Over the last week however we have received a huge increase in backlinks which has almost doubled our linking domains total. I’ve checked the links out from webmaster tools and they are mainly directories or webstat websites like the ones below | siteinfo.org.uk deperu.com alestat.com domaintools.com detroitwebdirectory.com ukdata.com stuffgate.com | We’ve also just launched a new initiative where we will be producing totally new and good quality content 4-5 times a week and many of these new links are pointing to that page which looks very suspicious to me. Does this look like negative Seo to anyone? I’ve read a lot about the disavow tool and it seems people’s opinions are split on when to use it so I was wondering if anyone had any advice on whether to use it or not? It’s easy for me to identify what these new links are, yet some of them have decent DA so will they do any harm anyway? I’ve also checked the referring anchors on Ahrefs and now over 50% of my anchor term cloud are totally unrelated terms to my site and this has happened over the last week which also worries me. I haven’t seen any negative impact on rankings yet but if this carries on it will destroy my link profile. So would it be wise to disavow all these links as they come through or wait to see if they actually have an impact? It should be obvious to Google that there has been a huge spike in links so then the question is would they be ignored or will I be penalised. Any ideas? Thanks in advance Richard
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Rich_9950 -
Knowledge Graph SEO Factors
I notice when I search for my clients brand name it pulls up the Google local info and Google+ stuff, knowledge graph etc, as well as a section at the bottom, 'People Also Search For' and lists a number of the clients competitors. However when I search one of the competitors no Google local or knowledge graph stuff comes up. Client obviously wants to limit promotion of the competitors. Does anyone have any experience with this? I know Google Author rank seems to play a factor in knowledge graph results? Are the competitors doing anything on their end SEO wise? What can be done to limit this? Thanks for any help! jkn0BMT.png
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | EmarketedTeam0 -
Does Anybody Know Who Interflora's SEO Company Is (Or Was)?
In light of the recent penalty put on the Interflora site, does anybody know who their SEO company is or was (or if they were doing it in house)? Also, do you think SEO companies that are responsible for things like this should be named and shamed?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jasarrow0
