Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How can I block incoming links from a bad web site ?
-
Hello all,
We got a new client recently who had a warning from Google Webmasters tools for manual soft penalty. I did a lot of search and I found out one particular site that sounds roughly 100k links to one page and has been potentialy a high risk site.
I wish to block those links from coming in to my site but their webmaster is nowhere to be seen and I do not want to use the disavow tool.
Is there a way I can use code to our htaccess file or any other method?
Would appreciate anyone's immediate response.
Kind Regards
-
Hi Yiannis,
As far as I'm aware, there isn't really a way to "block" a link. The link is seen on the other site. Returning a 404 for the page being linked to doesn't change the fact that there are a 100K links from one site pointing at your site. The only options I'm aware of are to 1.) contact the owner of the website with the links and ask them to remove the links and 2.) if that doesn't work disavow the links.
I understand your hesitancy to use the disavow tool, but quite frankly, this is exactly what it is intended for.
If you feel comfortably with the links being there and think Google has already dealt with them, then do nothing, but if you want to do something about the links, you either have to get them removed or disavow them.
BTW - My understanding of the partial manual actions is that often times Google not only deals with the suspicious links (devaluing them), but they also penalize the pages/keywords they think you were attempting to manipulate. So, just because it was a partial action and not a full site action doesn't mean it's not effecting some of your rankings. It's just not going to affect all your rankings for all your pages.
Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com -
Hi eyepaq and thanks for your reply, much appreciated
The reason I do not want to use the disavow tool is because
- Google sent on the message that "took targeted action on the unnatural links instead of on the site’s ranking as a whole", meaning they took care of the problem 2) Ranking and traffic looking solid
- I have seen a lot of cases where people used it and lost rankings (some never recovered).
My thoughts were to block the spammy links and monitor if the traffic will be affected (which I doubt as it seems most of it is for branded searches). If then I face de-index, drops then use the disavow/reconsideration request.
What do you think?
-
Hi,
If you are talking about one or only a few sites then it's easy.
Just build a disavow file as there is no down side to that . The disavow with domain:domainname.com (not individual pages) and upload it via Web master Tools. After sumbiting the file - send a reconsideration request explaining the situation and mentioning the disavow file. You should be safe after that.
Alternatively - but to be honest I don't see the reason why not going with the first option - is to return a 404 if the referral is that domain.
Hope it 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
-
Does anyone know the linking of hashtags on Wix sites does it negatively or postively impact SEO. It is coming up as an error in site crawls 'Pages with 404 errors' Anyone got any experience please?
Does anyone know the linking of hashtags on Wix sites does it negatively or positively impact SEO. It is coming up as an error in site crawls 'Pages with 404 errors' Anyone got any experience please? For example at the bottom of this blog post https://www.poppyandperle.com/post/face-painting-a-global-language the hashtags are linked, but they don't go to a page, they go to search results of all other blogs using that hashtag. Seems a bit of a strange approach to me.
Technical SEO | | Mediaholix0 -
Can I set a canonical tag to an anchor link?
I have a client who is moving to a one page website design. So, content from the inner pages is being condensed in to sections on the 'home' page. There will be a navigation that anchor links to each relevant section. I am wondering if I should leave the old pages and use rel=canonical to point them to their relevant sections on the new 'home' page rather than 301 them. Thoughts?
Technical SEO | | Vizergy0 -
Tools/Software that can crawl all image URLs in a site
Excluding Screaming Frog, what other tools/software to use in order to crawl all image URLs in a site? Because in Screaming Frog, they don't crawl image URLs which are not under the site domain. Example of an image URL outside the client site: http://cdn.shopify.com/images/this-is-just-a-sample.png If the client is: http://www.example.com, Screaming Frog only crawls images under it like, http://www.example.com/images/this-is-just-a-sample.png
Technical SEO | | jayoliverwright0 -
Do web design footer links of websites you build have value?
Hi everyone. I am trying to build up DA for my site and create linking opportunities with my clients sites but I am not seeing any link value. I just did a redesign with another firm and we built out www.denbow.com . We have links to our sites in the footer but for some reason it's not being indexed. Can someone help me understand if it is good to put built by a href link in the footer? I've built almost 12 sites in my first 1.5 years of being in business for myself and I thought the links would pass some sort of value. Thanks in advance for the help and education. Regards, Noob Gary
Technical SEO | | gdavey0 -
URL Structure On Site - Currently it's domain/product-name NOT domain/category/product name is this bad?
I have a eCommerce site and the site structure is domain/product-name rather than domain/product-category/product-name Do you think this will have a negative impact SEO Wise? I have seen that some of my individual product pages do get better rankings than my categories.
Technical SEO | | the-gate-films0 -
Correct linking to the /index of a site and subfolders: what's the best practice? link to: domain.com/ or domain.com/index.html ?
Dear all, starting with my .htaccess file: RewriteEngine On
Technical SEO | | inlinear
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.inlinear.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://inlinear.com/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.html
RewriteRule ^(.)index.html$ http://inlinear.com/ [R=301,L] 1. I redirect all URL-requests with www. to the non www-version...
2. all requests with "index.html" will be redirected to "domain.com/" My questions are: A) When linking from a page to my frontpage (home) the best practice is?: "http://domain.com/" the best and NOT: "http://domain.com/index.php" B) When linking to the index of a subfolder "http://domain.com/products/index.php" I should link also to: "http://domain.com/products/" and not put also the index.php..., right? C) When I define the canonical ULR, should I also define it just: "http://domain.com/products/" or in this case I should link to the definite file: "http://domain.com/products**/index.php**" Is A) B) the best practice? and C) ? Thanks for all replies! 🙂
Holger0 -
Best practices for controlling link juice with site structure
I'm trying to do my best to control the link juice from my home page to the most important category landing pages on my client's e-commerce site. I have a couple questions regarding how to NOT pass link juice to insignificant pages and how best to pass juice to my most important pages. INSIGNIFICANT PAGES: How do you tag links to not pass juice to unimportant pages. For example, my client has a "Contact" page off of there home page. Now we aren't trying to drive traffic to the contact page, so I'm worried about the link juice from the home page being passed to it. Would you tag the Contact link with a "no follow" tag, so it doesn't pass the juice, but then include it in a sitemap so it gets indexed? Are there best practices for this sort of stuff?
Technical SEO | | Santaur0 -
404 error - but I can't find any broken links on the referrer pages
Hi, My crawl has diagnosed a client's site with eight 404 errors. In my CSV download of the crawl, I have checked the source code of the 'referrer' pages, but can't find where the link to the 404 error page is. Could there be another reason for getting 404 errors? Thanks for your help. Katharine.
Technical SEO | | PooleyK0