Can a sitewide backlink with exact anchor text penalize my website?
-
A few years ago, I exchanged a link with another website. In the meantime, this other website grew quite fast and now they just added a forum.
The backlink from their website is sitewide and is using the anchor text "best web hosting". According to Google, this backlink now appears on 117,000 pages of the same domain.
Yesterday, I just got a warning from Google:
"We've detected that some of your site's pages may be using techniques that are outside Google's Webmaster Guidelines..."
Could that sitewide link be one of the causes?
Of course I know there are tons of bad links to my site but I'm wondering if I should get this one removed.
Thank you for your help and sorry for my english.
Stephane
-
Thank you for your response.
In the meantime, I chose to email the webmaster so that he can have the link removed.
I've got thousands of natural links to my website and near 1000 pages of unique, useful content so hopefully removing that link won't cause any major change since I wasn't ranking for that keyword anyway.
-
Hi Stephane,
I would suspect that those links are a problem. If they make up a majority of your link profile then it looks "unnatural" to Google. Usually, your highest frequency of Anchor Text should be your brand name or home page. Your best bet is to use Open Site Explorer and check your Anchor Text distribution. If this link appears in the footer or sidebar you are raising another red flag.
After doing some research your best bet would be to ask that webmaster if they can add the "no follow" attribute to a majority of the links. You might want to find strong pages on their site to ask for an in text link in order to keep some of the link juice. These links are generally editorially given and do not raise red flags.
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
-
Alt text from an external site
We have a relevant external website that is linking to our site through an image. What ideally should the alt text of this image be? Should it just be non-commercial as generally advised with the anchor text of an external link? Or should it include where suitable relevant keywords? Keen to know people's thoughts here! Thanks.
Link Building | | Gavo0 -
Backlinking
I read the moz begainers guide and I am confuse over this point. " If i have too many back links from a single site. It's considered too spammy. " Q: I have a blog and it constantly black links to my ranking page, is this considered bad? Q: I have an active forum that I go to and I am constantly contributing to the topic however i will always try to relate back to my website, is this considered spammy too?
Link Building | | kevinbp0 -
Do links to my website improve all pages?
I'm currently building links to my home page (through directories) and blog pages. However, none of these pages are actually targeted pages for main keywords. In SEO, do links to any webpage of a site contribute to the improved rank of other pages?
Link Building | | Gavo0 -
Does Website Design Matter?
I've got a new site officially launching next month (just waiting on a few inner page designs to be finished up). But if I'm looking to get a head start on backlinks, would it be okay to start publishing content now on one of the default WordPress themes? And then start publishing guest posts immediately to get backlinks? Or would Google look at the site as not being unique?
Link Building | | JABacchetta0 -
How to remove backlinks?
Hey guys, With all this anti over optimization movement going around with Google, I decided to do a link building profile audit. I see some pages with PR 0 and some pages that expired. My websites are not penalized at this moment, however I do want to avoid this at all costs. What can I do? Could a backlink from an expired domain penalize my site?
Link Building | | nrv0 -
Backlinks point to files
Hello, Some competitors have which I am analyzing backlinks that point to files, eg. Dwg,. Fla. Pps. How is this possible? Thank you.
Link Building | | d2bcomunicacao0 -
How can I check a website to see if it is "nofollow"?
I'm a little new to SEO, so maybe this is obvious to some . . . I'm attempting to build backlinks by submitting articles, posting on forums etc. I just wrote my forst article for ezine and submitted it. I was feeling pretty good about myself until I mentioned it to someone trying to sell me their SEO services and he said that ezine articles are considered "nofollow" on all their links. Well, that was pretty frustrating to hear! It got me wondering, how many of these other sites have all their posts and blogs listed as "nofollow"? Is there a way for me to figure it out ahead of time? Obviously, there are only so many hours in the day and I would rather focus on posting on sites that will actually help me build backlinks! Thanks for your help in advance!
Link Building | | damon12120 -
Can PR0 backlinks be harmful?
Having a discussion on someone with whether or not PR0 backlinks can be harmful. Managed to find these blog posts that support my argument; http://geoland.org/2011/02/can-bad-links-hurt-your-google-rankings/ http://www.johnmcelborough.com/bad-links-good-site My argument: Things like article spinning and distribution are pretty much pointless. I used UniqueArticleWizard for a while when I first started out with SEO. It gave me around 1000 PR0 backlinks. A few weeks later my site was penalised from PR5 to PR2. Thanks
Link Building | | craven220