Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Thought FRED penalty - Now see new spammy image backlinks what to do?
-
Hi,
So starting about March 9 I started seeing huge losses in ranking for a client. These rankings continue to drop every week since and we changed nothing on the site.
At first I thought it must be the FRED update, so we have started rewriting and adding product descriptions to our pages (which is a good thing regardless). I also checked our backlink profile using OSE on MOZ and still saw the few linking root domains we had. Another Odd thing on this is that webmasters tools showed many more domains.
So today I bought a subscriptions to ahrefs and instantly saw that on the same timeline (starting March 1 2017) until now, we have literally doubled in inbound links from very spammy type sites. BUT the incoming links are not to content, people seem to be ripping off our images.
So my question is, do spammy inbound image links count against us the same as if someone linked actual written content or non image urls? Is FRED something I should still be looking into? Should i disavow a list of inbound image links?
Thanks in advance!
-
Hi Zach,
Just to quickly add to what Nicholas has said, I have seen instances where links to a site via hotlinked images can cause ranking problems. It sounds like you're on top of it with the disavow file, so just keep an eye on things and update that as you find new links.
If you've been hit by the Fred update, that does seem like something different, but again it sounds like you're doing the right things that would help with SEO anyway. It could be worth comparing your site and it's features to other sites that seem to have been affected and see if you can spot any similarities. Here is a list from Search Engine Roundtable.
Cheers.
Paddy
-
will do
-
Definitely check the Lost & Broken links in ahrefs.
Interested to know the outcome, I have the same question myself.
Keep us posted.
-
Thanks for the quick response. I actually already disavowed the spammy image links 'just in case' haha.
The whole thing is weird, the spam links literally start at the exact same timeframe as FRED. However only people using our images on super spammy pages.
We have no ad heavy pages, no good links lost.
I'll keep updating this as time goes on.
-
Hi Zach, this is a tough one to give a straight answer or solution to, from what I'm reading it looks like it was more than likely Fred Update related. The spammy backlinks are concerning though as well, in theory those links should just be ignored by Google now, instead of having a negative impact on your rankings, I would check that the website also did not lose any good links in the last couple months as well (ahrefs should show this). Not sure what kind of website this is for, but make sure the product pages and homepage are not too "ad-heavy" or "affilate-heavy" (Amazon etc.) as well, as penalizing these types of websites was part of the Google Fred Update also.
If I were in your shoes, I would use the disavow tool from Google with the really spammy, low quality links, just to be safe (as well as try to regain any good backlinks that have been last the past few months). Also, continue doing your product pages updates and optimizing potential landing pages for the website with unique titles and meta descriptions, remove some ads (if your client's website has them) and then use the Fetch and Render tool in Google Search Console and request re-indexing of the website.
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
-
Why are my site images hosted by secureservercdn.net?
All of my image links are hosted on secureservercdn.net. for example, if i go to a webpage, mydomain.com/blog/blog-post and right click any image with a "copy image address" the images are all linking to secureservercdn.net/blablabla rather than mydomain.com/wp-uploads/blalblabla. this cannot be good for SEO. Any ideas why this would be? My site is hosted through GoDaddy, is it on their end? Thanks, Ryan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RyanMeighan0 -
Backlink audit - anyone know of a good tool for manually checking backlinks?
Hi all, I'm looking at how to handle backlinks on a site, and am seeking a tool into which I can manually paste backlinks - is there a good backlink audit tool that offers this functionality? Please let me know! Thanks in advance, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Too many backlinks from one domain?
I've been in the process of creating a tourism-based website for the state of Kansas. I'm a photographer for the state, and have inked a nice little side income to my day job as a web designer by selling prints from Kansas (along with my travels elsewhere). I'm still in the process of developing it, but it's at least at a point that I need to really start thinking about SEO factor of the amount of backlinks I have from it going back to my main photography website. The Kansas site is at http://www.kansasisbeautiful.com and my photography website is http://www.mickeyshannon.com. This tourism website will serve a number of purposes: To promote the state and show people it's not just a flat, boring place. To help promote my photography. The entire site is powered by my photography. To sell a book I'm planning to publish later this year/early next year of Kansas images. To help increase sales of photography prints of my work. What I'm worried about is the amount of backlinks I have going from the Kansas site to my photography site. Not to mention every image is hosted on my photography domain (no need to upload to two domains when one can serve the same purpose). I'm currently linking back to my site on most pages via a little "Like the Photos? Buy a print" link in the top right corner. In addition, when users get to the website map, all photo listings click back to a page on my photography site that they can purchase prints. And the main navigation also has a link for "Photos" that takes them to my Kansas photo galleries on my photography website as well. The question I have: Is it really bad SEO-wise to have anywhere from 1 to 10+ backlinks on every page from one domain (kansasisbeautiful.com) linking back to mickeyshannon.com? Would I be better served moving all of the content from kansasisbeautiful into a subdirectory on my photography site (mickeyshannon.com/kansas/) and redirecting the entire domain there? I haven't actually launched this website yet, so I'm trying to make the right call before pushing it to the public. Any advice would be appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | msphoto0 -
I have a lot of spammy links coming to my 404 page (the URLs have been removed now). Should i re-direct to Home?
I have a lot of spammy links pointing at my website according to MOZ. Thankfully all of them were for some URLs that we've long since removed so they're hitting my 404. Should i change the 404 with a 301 and Re-Direct that Juice to my home page or some other page or will that hurt my ranking?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jagdecat0 -
Does a 302 redirect pass penalties?
I'm having problems finding a definitive answer to this question, there is a lot of rumour and gossip out there but nothing I can rely on. I'm working with a site that received an unnatural links notice followed by a massive drop in search traffic. Looking at the link profile it's pretty much jacked beyond repair and I have recommended that we move over to a fresh domain. However, it's an established brand with many more sources of traffic than organic search. There's no way we can burn all their repeat visits, loyal customers, brand recognition that they've built up over the years so I want to redirect from the old domain to the new. This is not to try and make any SEO gain from the previous site, frankly we don't give a crap about that. We just want to maintain the brand. A 302 is a temporary redirect, this will be a permanent move BUT a 301 will pass on the penalty. So can we safely use a 302 redirect in this situation or is there a better alternative (meta refresh?) Thanks for your help! MB.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MattBarker0 -
New Website Launch - Traffic Way Down
We launched a new website in June. Traffic plummeted after the launch, we crept back up for a couple of months, but now we are flat, nowhere near our pre-launch traffic or previous year's traffic. For the past 6 months our analytics have been worrying us - Overall traffic and new visitor traffic is down over 10%, bounce rate is up almost 35% since site launched, keywords aren't ranking where they used to, and of course, web sales are down. Is this supposed to happen when a new site is launched, and how long does a new this transition last? We have done all the technical audits, adding relevant content, we're at a loss. Any suggestions where to look next to improve traffic to pre-launch numbers?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WaySEO0 -
Bing Penalty
I am working with a client who apparently has been penalized by Bing. The site has been around for many years and they are an industry leader in their field. The site was previously indexed and received a substantial amount of traffic from Bing. Last week the site disappeared from Bing's index. A site: and url: search both show no results. Does anyone have a significant amount of knowledge or experience related to Bing penalties? Here is what I have done so far: http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/webmaster/archive/2009/03/19/getting-out-of-the-penalty-box.aspx This 2009 article states Bing's Summary Tool offers a "Site Status" section with a "Blocked" indicator which informs webmasters if a site is penalized. I have seen it before a long time ago, but apparently the field no longer exists. Is there a definitive means of determining if Bing has manually penalized a site besides a response from their Content Inclusion Request? Danny Sullivan wrote a great article about how Bing removed some sites for thin content last month. It seems two of the sites which were a focus of the article have been re-included in Bing's index. Bing claims an algorithm change where Danny seems skeptical. Either way this could be the same issue. http://searchengineland.com/bing-bans-holiday-deals-sites-102856 there are two recent complaints on Bing's forums about a similar issue where various webmasters shared their sites have been removed. There are no responses to these posts from Bing: http://www.bing.com/community/webmaster/f/12252/p/670360/9665163.aspx#9665163 and http://www.bing.com/community/webmaster/f/12252/t/670550.aspx?PageIndex=1 (the comments are relevant but not the initial post). Any ideas or suggestions would be helpful.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RyanKent0 -
How long until you see results?
How long does it typically take for SEO efforts to materialize? We recently performed a complete website redesign (new site, and am wondering how long we should wait until we analyze the results and possibly change our seo/keyword strategy?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tdeboer0