Backlinks that we didnt place, killing our SERP rank and PR
-
I am in need of advice regarding back links that we did not place, and which are hurting our search engine results. How and why they got there I cannot explain.But they have appeared recently, and are damaging our SERP ranks.
For several years, I have been a member with SEOmoz, and we have done our search engine optimization in house. I am the owner of a personal injury law firm, which is a competitive field in search engine optimization.
Recently, in the spring, we updated our website, added significant content (over 100 additional pages), we set up a better site structure, and we completed a significant back link campaign from white hat sources. As a result, we were the strongest law firm in search engine results in the state of Arizona, and the page rank from our home page went from a 4 to 6, and from our next highest level of pages, they went from a 3 to 6. This happened in 10 week period. Our search engine results were fantastic.
We were getting a significant amount of business from out Places page and our Organic results. That has almost completely dried up.
Approximately 6-8 weeks later, we started having some serious problems. Specifically, our search engine results decreased significantly, our page rank reduced from a six to a four. So we started using SEOmoz tools to see what the problem was, and when we created an open site Explorer report, there are approximately 1000 different links from very shady websites they are now linking to our home page. Some of these linking URLs prompt a download to video and other files. Other of the linking are simple on junk sites.
Obviously, some other person placed these links. First and foremost I am interested in maintaining the integrity of our site, and if there were a way to remove these links, and protect against that in the future, that is what I want. Secondly, if there were a way to find out who did this, I would like to know that also.
What options and/or actions should be taken. I am thinking that I may need to employ a professional/consultant. Will I have to transfer content to another domain?
Your thought and help are appreciated.
Thanks,
-
Just wanted to let you know that the links that are prompting a download are a bug in OSE and not real links. Check out the post by a Linkscape engineer at http://www.seomoz.org/q/how-are-our-competitors-getting-these-inbound-linking-domains. So sorry for not catching this thread earlier, hope it helps explain some of the problems.
-
I am wondering if your site got penalized because of your backlink campaign.
If you normally don't acquire links during a large span of your business, but suddenly start a large scale backlink campaign, even if it is 'whitehat', Google might get suspicious for the jump of links during the short span.
It would be much better to have a gradual addition of links.
-
Since you did your link building inhouse, let's rule that out as a factor. The next step would be to follow on EGOL's suggestion to investigate your site for any other issues or recent changes.
-
You seem to be focused on those spammy links and I can understand that. They are disturbing. However, before I would blame them for the problem I would want answers to these....
-
is there any problem with the update of your site... were there URL changes, dynamic content assembly, java links in your persistent navigation?
-
the new content that you produced... has it been grabbed by others and posted on their sites... Search for unique sentences in quotes
-
the whitehat links that you obtained... did you have to give any links back to obtain them... are they paid or links that could have been devalued?
For me the spammy links rate my attention only after the potential problems above are ruled out. Lots of sites have these types of links. They are ubiquitous on the web and the sites that hold them usually do not persist for a long time. I believe that duplicate content, linking back to other domains and design problems are more common causes of damage to rankings.
Also, consider that both Ryan and I suggest that the spammy links or the white hat links could have been helping for a short period of time before being devalued.
As for finding an available SEO, I would look for generous and competent contributors here and ask if they are available.
-
-
Ryan, we did not place those links. We went to great lengths to get while hat links.
These 1000+ spammy harmful links (many of which prompt downloads of various files) appeared without our involvement. We did not hand off any link building to anyone. We do it in house based on the techniques we learned on SEOmoz videos and learning materials,
The big issue is as you tracking down and having those links removed. I am looking for either the process of how to do that, or preferably hiring a pro, but dont know where to look for a reputable one
-
We did not acquire the 1000 spammy links, Our backlink campaign was done in house and was painstaking to ensure that they were white hat. Our additional content was 100% original written by us.
The 1000+ links are not only spammy, they prompt downloads of various types of files. we did not place these.
believe me, i am not a conspiracy theorist, but It appears that our site was sabotage with harmful links that we did not place, but obviously someone did with the intent to harm our site
I dont know what part of the county you are in, but I imagine where ever it is, like here, attorney advertising in omnipresent. We were by far the dominant Personal Injury law firm in organic results and also Google places listing results. Probably 50% or our business came from online searches -- which we don't have costs for anything like TV, Radio, outdoor advertising,
I agree that at this point we need a pro to look at it. I want someone who can do forensic type analysis, to find the unwanted and harmful links that we did not place, and have those blocked or removed, and possibly traced,
where should I look to find a reputable pro that can help us
-
Ive seen spammers build links to pages they have placed UGC links on, to boost the value of the links they are getting from your site. Any way they are getting links (even no follow) off your homepage?
BTW I and a mates sites have had exactly the same TBPR increase and then big decrease over about the last month. Nothing seems to have changed in traffic tho
-
we completed a significant back link campaign from white hat sources.
when we created an open site Explorer report, there are approximately 1000 different links from very shady websites they are now linking to our home page.
I hate to state the obvious but it seems most likely the links you gained where not from white hat sources.
Without being able to view your site and the links involved, a likely guess is that your site received paid links which have been devalued.
The first step I would recommend is signing in to Google WMT and submitting a request to determine whether your site is under a penalty. If your site is under a penalty, perform whatever cleanup is necessary to remove the penalty.
If your site is not under a penalty, it is likely those 1000 links from questionable sites gave you a boost, and those links have been devalued which has negatively impacted your overall stats and rankings.
I recognize your site is for a law firm so feel to correct me if you feel I am in error. My understanding is anyone can legally create a link to your site. There is nothing you can do to prevent it. You can track down each site and request them to remove the link. Keep in mind OSE only shows approximately the top 25% of links on the internet. There may be many other links which you are not seeing. Another helpful tool is Google WMT which may display more links.
These "bad" links should not hurt you in any way unless they are paid links and you receive a penalty for buying links. Otherwise they are outside of your control.
I would recommend contacting whomever you used for your link building campaign. Another tool is to take a look at who else these sites have built links for. Can you determine if all of Agency X's clients (or whomever built your backlinks) receives similar links?
-
Most websites that become highly ranked in their niche accumulate a lot of links from spammy domains. My sites have lots of them too. I didn't place them, I can't control them and I don't worry about them.
There are many factors in your question that could relate to your rankings drop.... 1) site was updated, 2) big backlink campaign, 3) added lots of content, 4) one thousand spammy links. Any one of them could be the cause of this drop.
The updated site might have a crawl, indexing or some other problem.... the backlinks you acquired might not be as good as you think.... the content that you uploaded might be duplicated elsewhere or have been spun for other sites... and those spammy links could be the problem.
If you are confident about your updated site, the quality of the backlinks and the uniqueness of your content then my bet would be placed here..... that the 1000 spammy links that were quickly acquired actually helped your rankings temporarily and then were devalued.
If you have any doubts that you can't answer yourself about the first three factors you might get a pro to look at them carefully for you.
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
-
Duplicate product description ranking problems (off-site duplicate content)
We do business in niche category and not in English language market. We have 2-3 main competitors who use same product information as us. They all do have same duplicate products descriptions as we. We with one competitors have domains with highest authority in this market. They maybe have 10-20% better link profile (when counting linking domains and total links). Problem is that they rank much better with product names then we do (same duplicate product descriptions as we have and almost same level internal optimisation) and they haven't done any extra link building for products. Manufacturers website aren't problem, because these doesn't rank well with product name keywords. Most of our new and some old product go to the Supplemental Results and are shown in "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the ... already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.". Unique text for products isn't a option. When we have writen unique content for product, then these seem to rank way better. So our questions is what can we do externaly to help our duplicate description product rank better compared to our main competitor withour writing unique text? How important is indexation time? Will it give big advantage to get indexed first? We have thought of using more RSS/bing services to get faster indexation (both site will get products information almost at same time). It seems our competitor get quicker in index then we do. Also are farmpages helpful for getting some quick low value links for new products. We have planed to make 2-3 domains that would have few links pointint to these new products to get little advantage right after products are launched and doesn't have extranl links. Sitemap works and our new product are shown on front pages (products that still mostly doesn't rank well and go to Supplemental Results). Some new product have #1 or top3 raking, but these are only maybe 1/3 that should have top3 rankings. Also we have noticed problem that when we index products quickly (for example Fetch as Google) then these will get good top3 results and then some will get out of rankings (to Supplemental Results).
International SEO | | raido0 -
Suggestion for Baidu Keyword Rank Tracking Software?
Does anyone have a suggestion for the best keyword rank tracking software in Baidu? The keywords would be in Chinese. We currently already have keyword rank tracking software for Google/Bing/Yahoo so we just need to expand to Baidu. I am looking forward to comparing my research with what the Moz community has to say! Thanks!
International SEO | | kchandler0 -
Ranking well internationally, usage of hreflang, duplicate country content
I'm trying to wrap my head around various options when it comes to international SEO, specifically how to rank well in countries that share a language, and the risk of duplicate content in these cases. We have a chance to start from scratch because we're switching to a new e-commerce platform, and we were looking into using hreflang. Let's assume an example of a .com webshop that targets both Austria and Germany. One option is to include both language and region in the URL, and mark these as such using hreflang: webshop.com/de-de/german-language-content (with hreflang de-de)
International SEO | | DocdataCommerce
webshop.com/de-at/german-language-content (with hreflang de-at) Another option would be to only include the language in the URL, not the region, and let Google figure out the rest: webshop.com/de/german-language-content (with hreflang de) Which would be better? The risk of inserting a country, of course, is that you're introducing duplicate content, especially since for webshops there are usually only minor differences in content (pricing, currency, a word here and there). If hreflang is an effective means to make sure that visitors from each country get the correct URL from the search engines, I don't see any reason not to use this way. But if search engines get it wrong, users will end up in the wrong page and will have to switch country, which could result in conversion loss. Also, if you only use language in the URL, is it useful at all to use hreflang? Aren't engines perfectly able to recognize language already? I don't mention ccTLDs here because most of the time we're required to use a .com domain owned by our customer. But if we did, would that be much better? And would it still be useful to use hreflang then? webshop.de/german-language-content (with hreflang de-de)
webshop.at/german-language-content (with hreflang de-at) Michel Hendriks
Docdata Commerce0 -
.im domain ranking globally?
Hello all, I know that Matt Cutt's stated a while back that .co domains would become recognized by google as a gtld and was wondering how google views .im domains. I was looking at using a couple for work but have a generic name .im of my own that when checked in webmaster tools is locked to the isle of man in the geographical targeting option. I was wondering if anyone can advise me on this and if possible provide some feedback based on experience with .im domains. Thanks.
International SEO | | LukeHutchinson0 -
I rank well but I dont get any clicks !
Hi everyone, I am on page #1 position #2 with my keyword but doesnt get any clicks ! I think I know the problem but I desperatly need your opinion too. Here are some info about my site. what do you think the problem is? Thanks for your help. It means a lot. -My keyword's Global and Local montly search is 1300 (exact) -Seomoz Rank Tracker shows that I rank ( on Page #1, Position #2 in Google / United Kingdom) -I use always private browsing to check my rankings -my domain is a .com and I bought the domain name from godaddy -Hosting is 1&1 and their server is in Germany. Which is a shame, I ve just realized 😞 -My site ranks on Google.uk (The web) but doesnt rank Google.co.uk (pages from uk). Is this the problem? I ve just change the target country to United Kingdom using webmaster tool. Will it help? When I search a query , I dont change it to ''pages from uk'' it came automaticly (the web). Does people care and change it to the ""pages from UK"? I had some clicks at first when my site was page #1 position #8-9 but now its position #2 and I get no clicks at all. Thanks
International SEO | | Jorenr0 -
A google ranking problem
HI, Thought I would try SEOMoz out for a while and I am going to dive straight into my initial problem. I have my client moving up nicely in local Google search within my country but the problem is he seems to have actually slipped down a place when I search on google.com/ncr. (and on Rank Tracker) He does sell locally but is a worldwide supplier of his product and wants to obviously rank well everywhere. I understand why he has moved up locally but don't get the shift down internationally. So, 1. If everyone's Google is forcing local search results on everyone, how do you market better internationally. 2. Noticed that his competitors are all getting clever and now using keywords in their URL. Two guys are new on first page Google just because they have Keyworded urls. (killing me). The one guy has one backlink!! (although the client does have a keyworded URL stashed away but we don't want to got that route because we like to keep things 'white hat') The client is happy because when he searches he see's his site moving up nicely but I have a conscience and I am going to have to tell him whats going on. (that his Google is showing local results) I hope that all makes sense. Thanks Mike
International SEO | | MIkeCape0 -
How to rank in Google for a specific country?
Hi, I've a relative good ranking for a specific keyword in google.com (english queries (hl=en)), but searching for the same keyword in google.com.br (Brazilian Portuguese (hl=pt-BR)), my rank for that keyword is far worst. The question is: I need to do something specific to rank in google.com.br (hl=pt-BR)? I'm doing the regular link building. Creating some blogs, blogging for 10 days before droping my links, and creating link wheels the same way. The blogs I create to make links are written in Brazilian Portuguese, also, the blog that I'm trying to rank higher, is also written in Brazilian Portuguese. Sorry for the english, it's not my native language. Thanks
International SEO | | izaiasalmeida0 -
Ranking local content against English content
Hi SEOMoz, If I have a site that has multiple language selection, how would it be possible for my site with localized content to rank higher than the default/English content? For example, in Google.co.th, my site with English content (http://www.xyz.com/en-us/) ranks higher than the localized content (http://www.xyz.com/th-th/). How is it possible for me to turn things around and ensure that for local markets like Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, China etc the localized content organically ranks higher than the default-English page? Thanks! Steve
International SEO | | sjcbayona-412180