Untrusted site - malware!
-
I recently had my link profile done as I was badly effected by something in 2012 (Penguin, Panda.. who knows? never got a message from google in webmaster about anything).
Loads of INBOUND links were identified as being 'dodgy'' and the person highlighted them in different colors. However, another seo éxpert' told me to leave them (perhaps remove just 3 of them) and don't bother with the rest. Now I am not sure what to do? Any opinions?
RED
3 were highlighted as being from untrusted malware. I think I should disavow them but really, would 3 make that much difference for a fall in my site?ORANGE
240 were said to be spam articles and I was advised:
The following pages highlighted in orange are on sites created for the purpose of publishing articles for link building. Since the same articles appear on multiple sites, Google views this as duplicate content. Links to Monteverde Tours in these articles should be removed or tagged "nofollow." Where this is not possible, the domains should be disavowed.YELLOW
85 were said to be from Low-quality directories
The following pages highlighted in yellow are on low-quality directories and link farms. Links to Monteverde Tours on these pages should be removed or the domains disavowed.GREEN
340 were said to be from sites were the page was not found , Account suspended, Problem loading page, Link removed, domain expired
The following pages highlighted in green include pages whose links to Monteverde Tours have been removed and pages that were inaccessible for various reasons, as shown in the Comments column. These pages or their domains should be disavowed to remove them from the Google index.I have read (and asked on this forum) about disavow but the more I read the more I am getting confused about the next action. I tried for one year to get rid of any bad outbound links, did blogging, social media, improved content, landing pages etc but all to no avail.
Any opinions appreciated. I am not looking for a magic bullet, I know there isn't one. I know I need to keep improving content etc but after a year of NO improvements should I consider the link removal route?
<colgroup><col width="215"></colgroup>
| Untrusted site - malware! | -
These pages or their domains should be disavowed to remove them from the Google index.
The disavow tool can't affect whether or not your site is indexed (or I could disavow all my competitors). Disavow is a hint to Google that tells Google "Please don't count this link towards page rank". In other words, disavow, more or less, lets you reach into another person's site and nofollow the link to you.
So, should you use it? Unless you have WMT messages telling you you have a manual penalty, don't touch it. Most likely the links in question are already devalued. If you use it, you could disavow links actually helping you and thus do yourself harm.
MALWARE!!!!
Unless there's malware on your site, links from sites that have malware on them won't hurt you (simply because they have malware)
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
-
Dodgy links across top ranking sites in a certain industry - Could this be negative link building?
Hi, I've noticed repeated low value / high spam backlinks directing to a site that I manage, and despite disavowing, new links showing similar anchor text keep appearing. See sample in the table below: <colgroup><col width="514"> <col width="407"> <col width="364"></colgroup>
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Alexanders
| biz.mfso.info/files/images/vertical-blinds-for-bifold-doors.html | | Get free high quality HD wallpapers vertical blinds for bifold doors |
| nmr.mfso.info/files/images/mould-on-vertical-blinds.html | | Get free high quality HD wallpapers mould on vertical blinds |
| nmr.mfso.info/files/images/install-vertical-blinds.html | | Get free high quality HD wallpapers install vertical blinds |
| nmr.mfso.info/files/images/cutting-vertical-blinds.html | | Get free high quality HD wallpapers cutting vertical blinds |
| rre.uere.info/files/images/high-quality-vertical-blinds.html | HD wallpapers high quality vertical blinds rre.uere.info | Get free high quality HD wallpapers high quality vertical blinds |
| dig.uere.info/files/images/mould-on-vertical-blinds.html | HD wallpapers mould on vertical blinds dig.uere.info | Get free high quality HD wallpapers mould on vertical blinds |
| dig.uere.info/files/images/mould-on-vertical-blinds.html | HD wallpapers mould on vertical blinds dig.uere.info | Get free high quality HD wallpapers mould on vertical blinds |
| hja.uere.info/files/images/cost-vertical-blinds.html | HD wallpapers cost vertical blinds hja.uere.info | Get free high quality HD wallpapers cost vertical blinds | I also looked across 5 high ranking sites in the same industry and noticed they too have these 'dodgy' links in their backlink profiles. Could this be negative link building? If so, does anyone know a way to trace it or get it stop?0 -
Active, Old Large site with SEO issues... Fix or Rebuild?
Looking for opinions and guidance here. Would sincerely appreciate help. I started a site long, long ago (1996 to be exact) focused on travel in the US. The site did very well in the search results up until panda as I built it off templates using public databases to fill in the blanks where I didn't have curated content. The site currently indexes around 310,000 pages. I haven't been actively working on the site for years and while user content has kept things somewhat current, I am jumping back into this site as it provides income for my parents (who are retired). My questions is this. Will it be easier to track through all my issues and repair, or rebuild as a new site so I can insure everything is in order with today's SEO? and bonus points for this answer ... how do you handle 301 redirects for thousands of incoming links 😕 Some info to help: CURRENTLY DA is in the low 40s some pages still rank on first page of SERPs (long-tail mainly) urls are dynamic (I have built multiple versions through the years and the last major overhaul was prior to CMS popularity for this size of site) domain is short (4 letters) but not really what I want at this point Lots of original content, but oddly that content has been copied by other sites through the years WHAT I WANT TO DO get into a CMS so that anyone can add/curate content without needing tech knowledge change to a more relevant domain (I have a different vision) remove old, boilerplate content, but keep original
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Millibit1 -
Hacked site vs No site
So I have this website that got hacked with cloaking and Google has labeled it as such in the SERPs. With due reason of coarse. My question is I am going to relaunch an entirely new redesigned website in less than 30 days, do I pull the hacked site down until then or leave it up? Which option is better?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Rich_Coffman0 -
I think My Site Has Been Hacked
I am working with a client and have noticed lots of 500 server errors that look very strange in their webmaster tools account. I am seeing URLs like this blog/?tag=wholesale-cheap-nfl-jerseys-free-0702.html and blog/?tag=nike-jersey-shorts-4297.html there are 155 similar pages yet the client does not sell anything like this and hasn't created these URLs. I have updated WP and all plugins and cannot find these links or pages on the site anywhere but I am guessing they are slowing the site down as GWT keeps highlighting them as errors. Has anybody had any experiences with these types of hacks and can point me in the right direction of how to clean it up properly? Ta
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | fazza470 -
Seeking Top Notch Marketing Company with experience in growing sites post manual penalty
Does anyone know of a company who has direct experience with growing websites AFTER a manual link penalty has been lifted? Any referrals would be great!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
Can anyone tell me why this site ranks so well?
Site in question: cellphoneshop.net From what I can tell from their link profile, the links they garner don't appear to be particularly high value but they dominate organic listings for my vertical (cell phone accessories), esp. in the last 2-3 months when Google was supposedly increasing the quality of their search results. Can anyone tell me why in particular this site ranks so well for competitive short and long tail terms?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | eugeneku0 -
Am I Being Penalized For Having My Whole Site In A Subfolder Named With A Keyword?
I inherited a client. For some reason, their previous webmaster set up the site so everything is in a subfolder /law/. It's an attorney website. All the urls have the primary domain name /law/ and then assigned url. I can't image this is helping but could the site be penalized for this by Google or Bing? It's set up like this: www.attorneysite.com**/law/**therestoftheurl /law/ is included in EVERY PAGE... even the homepage.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | DeltonChilds0 -
Switching existing website to a Wordpress Site and afraid of losing top spot
I am going to be switching my current site from a standard html site to a wordpress site. I'm kind of paranoid of losing my top spot for the keyterms. If I keep the content the same, and keep the same amount of image alt tags, the same anchor text etc, nothing should change right? Grateful for any advice. Thanks Will
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | willie790