Footer Link in International Parent Company Websites Causing Penalty?
-
Still waiting to look at the analytics for the timeframe, but we do know that the top keyword dropped on or about April 23, 2012 from the #1 ranking in Google - something they had held for years, and traffic dropped over 15% that month and further slips since.
Just looked at Google Webmaster Tools and see over 2.3MM backlinks from "sister" compainies from their footers. One has over 700,000, the rest about 50,000 on average and all going to the home page, and all using the same anchor text, which is both a branded keyword, as well as a generic keyword, the same one they ranked #1 for. They are all "nofollows" but we are trying to confirm if the nofollow was before or after they got hit, but regardless, Google has found them.
To also add, most of sites are from their international sites, so .de, .pl, .es, .nl and other Eurpean country extensions.
Of course based on this, I would assume the footer links and timing, was result of the Penguin update and spam.
The one issue, is that the other US "sister" companies listed in the same footer, did not see a drop, in fact some had increase traffic. And one of them has the same issue with the brand name, where it is both a brand name and a generic keyword. The only note that I will make about any of the other domains is that they do not drive the traffic this one used to. There is at least a 100,000+ visitor difference among the main site, and this additional sister sites also listed in the footer.
I think I'm on the right track with the footer links, even though the other sites that have the same footer links do not seem to be suffering as much, but wanted to see if anyone else had a different opinion or theory.
Thanks!
Jen Davis -
I would get rid of these links.
I'll bet that very few people use them.
They "should not" be the problem since they are "nofollowed". However, you never know what google is doing.
This massive number of links are going to evaporate a lot of pagerank. No need to do that.
If it was really important to link to these other sites I would make one internal page such as "about us" or "our international sites" and link to them on that one page with a followed link. That link will be anchored with the domain name or the official company name.
-
So it seems the link network became a weight around your neck, so to speak. If you didn't receive an unnatural links warning in GWT then it was an algorithmic smack and if those links were, in fact, the issue, then you may just draw a new baseline at you current levels and start working your way up again from there.
-
To answer your question the links are evenly distributed, not only to the us sites, but the other European sites as well.
They are all selling the same industry products, although the site I'm talking about sells everything, the others are a smaller subset.
In other words, if we use pet products as an example, the main site in question sells all, dog, cat, hamster, bird, etc. Another of the US sites sells the same animal group products, but just less product offering. The other US sites sell only specific animal products, so one is dog only, another one cat, etc. The other European sites again sell other animal groups, but a smaller product offering again.
And we have found that the links were followed before, the subsequently made them no follow after the loss. All US sites are currently down in traffic over last year now.
-
Well, if they were all nofollowed, it would be hard to suspect that they were the problem. Still, thatsalotta back links! I think it's interesting that the other US sites didn't take that same hit and that some of their traffic increased--almost as though the links to the main site disappeared and the link juice consolidated on the remaining links to the other US sites.
I've made a couple of mental guesses but there's just too much going on there without enough detail to put an educated guess down in writing. I'd like to know if the links between the sister sites were spread evenly among all the sites, if the sites are all in the same market, and the outcome of the hunt to discover whether all the links were all nofollowed or not before taking a stab at it.
-
Hi Jen. I'm curious to hear what answers you receive. Especially since they are NOFOLLOW links...
My understanding is that NoFollow links do not effect ranking at all - whether they are good or bad or even all have the same anchor text. That is supposedly a featuire of Google's Disavow tool - it let's you turn bad links into NoFollow links and make them "disappear".
I just spent many days working on a Disavow project, and the first thing we did to our spreadsheet of links was sort out and delete all the NoFollows. What a mess if we misunderstood the effects of NoFollows!
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
-
Advise / Help on Bad Link Removals
Hey everyone.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TheITOteam
Im new to the community and new to backlinks - hence the question to the community today.
I would like help understanding options and work load around back links and removing them.
I have a client with over 8000 back links as a few years ago he paid someone about £10 to boost his rankings by adding thousands of backlinks.
We fear this is having a bad effect on their site and rankings organically as 90% of these back links have a spam score of over 50% and also no follows. My questions to the community (if you could be so kind to share) are:
1. Whats the best way to decide if a Backlink is worth keeping or removing
2. Is there a tool to decide this or assist with this somewhere on the internet? Ive had advise stating if its not hurting the page we should keep it. However, again...
How do I know what damage each Backlink is causing to the domain? I appriciate anyones time to offer some advice to a novice looking to clear these1 -
How do you check if a website has a link network (From the same C Class)
Hello Mozzers, I'm conducting a link audit and I see a red flag for one of my guest blogs i did in 2012. let's say the IP of the website was 62.658.62.9 Little did I know that the blogging website is a link network with the same content on each IP via it's specific C class: 62.658.62.9 62.658.62.10 62.658.62.11 ETC... How does one find a website to blog on and check to see if they have a blog network or better yet, see if there is a similar distinction of duplicate sites based on its C-class?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Shawn1240 -
How to save website from Negative SEO?
Hi, I have read couple of good blog post on Negative SEO and come to know about few solution which may help me to save my website during Negative SEO. Here, I want to share my experience and live data regarding Negative SEO. Someone is creating bad inbound links to my website. I come to know about it via Google webmaster tools. Honestly, I have implemented certain solutions like Google disavow tool, contact to certain websites and many more. But, I can see negative impact on organic visits. Organic visits are going down since last two months. And, I am thinking, These bad inbound links are biggest reasons behind it. You can visit following URLs to know more about it. Can anyone share your experience to save website from negative SEO? How can I save any website from Negative SEO (~Bad Inbound Links) https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BxyEDFdgDN-iR0xMd2FHeVlzYVU/edit https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxyEDFdgDN-iMEtneXU1YmhWX2s/edit?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxyEDFdgDN-iSzNXdEJRdVJJVGM/edit?usp=sharing
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CommercePundit0 -
11 000 links from 2 blogs + Many bad links = Penguin 2.0\. What is the real cause?
Hello, A website has : 1/ 8000 inbound links from 1 blog and 3000 from another one. They are clean and good blogs, all links are NOT marked as no-follow. 2/ Many bad links from directories that have been unindexed or penalized by Google On the 22nd of May, the website got hurt by Penguin 2.0. The link profile contains many directories and articles. The priority we had so far was unindexing the bad links, however shall we no-follow the blog links as well? Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | antoine.brunel0 -
Rankings dropped, should I start a new website?
Hello, my rankings dropped last year (penguin update) - I think it was April 2012 and the website went from 300 visitors per day to 10 per day. This probably happened because I bought links, but I also did a lot of manual and natural SEO (at that time). After the drop, I didn't know what to do... so I did some manual SEO, blog comments, forum posts, article publications (lets say 60 links in total - with diverse anchor texts - brand keywords, etc) and then I paused working on the site to see if there will be any changes... and 1 year latter, there are still no changes. My site used to be in the top results of the first page and now it is totally out of Google. http://getmoreyoutubeviews.com Should I move on and start a new website or do something to fix this one? Thanks Alex
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | buysocialexposure0 -
Can i send a disavow if a detect a spam link
I have detected than one web domain is generating 2400 links to my site should a use a disavow tools, as it is imposible to have contact from webmaster and no response to your emails My web as not been warned or penalized, but i dont like this link, and i want to inform google of that,. If google acepts the disavow file, should i still see on my webmaster tools that web links, or will they desapear thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | maestrosonrisas0 -
Clear out Spammy Links
I was looking at my Open Site Explorer, and I noticed that now we have link anchor text in terrible words (porn videos, free streaming porn movies, big black c*ck) I believe this is an ex employee who we caught doing black hat seo and now they are retaliating. Has anyone had this happen to them? I need to know how to remove these links and make it stop. We have had a slight decline in our ranking as well, and wasn't sure if it could be the result of all this spamming. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AmandaJ0 -
What's been your experience with profile link-building?
What have your experiences been? Short Term? Long Term? There isn't a lot written about it, and I'm wondering where it falls in the order of things. I was very hesitant to jump in, but have launched a few campaigns, both for local geo targeting phrases, and national accounts. Surprisingly, I've seen a surge in rankings, but also wonder how short lived they will be. I've noticed the links still don't come up in tools like open site explorer, but I'm able to find them when searching for the unique username I used while building the profiles. The sites I'm listing on have no relevance to industry, unless by chance, although the PR's I'm using are all 4 or higher. Is this considered gray hat?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | skycriesmary720