Links from local.com after Penguin
-
I have been doing some research on where some competing links are getting their links from and I see that a decent number seem to be getting some juice from local.com.
My question is- have the panda & penguin updates rendered these useless- or even worse can links from directories like this now harm my SEO?
-
@AWCthreads: given how hugely damaging it would be to local.com to fess up to getting penalized, I'm guessing your chances of a straight answer from them are slim. Agree, though, that going to the parent newspaper would be a good possible route.
For everyone, an example of the kind of directory we're talking about is here: http://directory.journal-advocate.com/alexandria+va.z.html
-
Hi Peter. Thanks for weighing in. Please let us know if you find something definitive.
I've still not heard back from local.com and have not tried in a couple of days. I'm curious if I can handle this at the news station/ newspaper level. Perhaps those outlets have some influence on how the content is fed.
-
We're doing similar research on behalf of a friend who was hit hard by Penguin. A prior SEO had run a link building program that resulted in more than 50% of their total links coming from various repeats of the local.com directory. We're unable to pinpoint anything else that would have caused a precipitous fall in rankings. We've tried some other searches of the local.com directories using the methodology someone on SEOmoz suggested (i.e. searching for exact title tags) and those searches would indicate that local.com was, in fact, penalized.
On the surface, local.com would not appear to be one of the cheesy directories that Penguin aims to devalue, but I'm wondering if that fact that the content gets duplicated so many times (as a directory for multiple newspaper sites) might be part of its devaluation. A service business in North Carolina that shows up in a local directory in Oregon isn't really a quality directory.
We're still in the hunt but have growing conviction that local.com got hit.
-
A timely question. We've got a bunch of local.com backlinks that just showed up. All are no followed and the anchor text is "website." How nice.
Our domain authority dropped a couple of points (perhaps associated with this - who knows), so I called local.com several times about the backlinks. Still haven't heard from them.
I don't know if Google frowns on a littany of no followed backlinks from local.com with a bunch of spammy looking anchor text, but apparently, SEOmoz frowns on it.
My intent is to ask local.com if they can at least use our store name for anchor text. If they can't, I'd just as soon they give us 2 or 3 no followed links with our store name in the anchor text.
If they can't do that, then I'd be fine if they just get rid of the backlinks altogether. If they're going to give me some directory love, do it right. If they're not going to do it right, don't do it.
-
Matt Cutts recomened local or relevant directories, so i would not be concerned
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 Links from Top Level Domains doesn't Pass Link Equity?
Hello, I have a doubt about Equity-Passing links report of OpensiteExplorer.org According to Sam Weber http://moz.com/community/users/432678 links which pass value from one page to another including followed 301 and Meta refresh links are under Equity-Passing links. I am surprising after looking at the links report generated by opensiteexplorer.org. Most of the article and directory links which have low DA and PA are under Equity-Passing links. Whereas websites like EzineArticle or Articlebase which have good DA and PA are not found in either Equity-passing links or under only nofollow category. Please suggest me if the report of Opensiteexplorer is not good enough or the links from the site like Ezine Article doesn’t pass the link equity. Thanks.
Link Building | | TopLeagueTechnologies0 -
Link building strategy - my weak link!
Please help me understand link building. I've read the articles on Moz, but they seem vague to me. Specific questions: 1. How do I get my webpage on good quality sites? 2. Guest blogging? Good or not? 3. What about when people pick up one of our blog stories and publish it on their site with a link back? Is that bad now because it is duplicate content??? 4. Forum posts with a link in the signature? Good or not? 5. Directories - I get it that these are no longer good... are they severely negative? Should I take them down. 6. PR - Looks like this is bad... right??? 7. Youtube - any value? 8. Pinterst, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram? Any value to backlinks here? 9. What about sites like redit? 10. Anything else I should consider?
Link Building | | CalicoKitty20000 -
Do links from between common sites you run count as "bad" links?
Hi everyone,
Link Building | | AMA-DataSet
Iv recently been asked to review a group of sites. There are 3 sites, each of these sites has a link to the other two sites within the footer or the navigation.
These site are about a similar topic each provides a different perceptive or aims at a specific section of the industry so its not like the links are to irreverent sites. However because the links are in a global section they are repeated thousands of times on each site and count for a large proportion of the link profile to each site, I don't think this is good practise and I want to remove them or at least add a no-follow but my client insists they are relevant to each other and doesn't not want the links removing. What would be best in this situation? remove them? no-follow them? or leave them? Thank you in advance,
Liam0 -
About link again
I checked all links to my site (not too many at all) http://oasisoftheseasallureoftheseas.com/ and discovered that very important link – from my supplier,
Link Building | | NadiaFL
Royal Caribbean International is not listed at all. Some links with ‘nofollow’ tags show up but not this one. RCI source here http://www.royalcaribbean.com/customersupport/travelagent/processLocate.do?selectedCountry=USA&taname=&city=&state=&zip=34994&.x=22&.y=6 Any ideas?0 -
Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links to http://www.loveandlucky.com/
On FEB I got a message on my Google Webmaster Tools saying "Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links to http://www.loveandlucky.com/" How can I know what inbound links Google considered as unnatural? thanks.
Link Building | | cardif0 -
Links and keywords
A rather simple question, If i have a paragraph and have the words cat, dog and bird would it be a good idea to have them all linking to the same url? or is better to have them all going to different urls?
Link Building | | Vetshopgroup0 -
Link Building
I've been hearing about going after niche directories, and my question is most of them have a ton of links on any given page. Is it even worth taking the time to approach these sites knowing they won't pass a lot of link juice?
Link Building | | azguy0 -
Internal linking
I 'am using a seo component (sh404sef) for a joomla website, for the time being, any internal linking is organized. I've been said the sitelinkx is not advised (a component dedicated to build internal links) with sh404sef... How could i manage to set it up fastly ? Tks a lot..
Link Building | | mozllo0