Spam Links? -115 Domains Sharing the Same IP Address, to Remove or Not Remove Links
-
Out of 250 domains that link to my site about 115 are from low quality directories that are published by the same company and hosted on the same ip address.
Examples of these directories are:
-www.keydirectory.net -www.linkwind.com -www.sitepassage.com
-www.ubdaily.com -www.linkyard.org
A recent site audit from a reputable SEO firm identified 125 toxic links. I assume these are those toxic links. They also identified about another 80 suspicious domains linking to my site. They audit concluded that my site is suffering a partial Penguin penalty due to low quality links.
My question is whether it is safe to remove these 125 links from the low quality directories. I am concerned that removing this quantity of links all at once will cause a drop in ranking because the link profile will be thin with only about 125 domains remaining that point to the site. Granted those 125 domains should be of somewhat better quality.
I am playing with fire by having these removed. I URGENTLY NEED ADVICE AS THE WEBMASTER HAS INITIATED STEPS TO REMOVE THE 125 LINKS.
Thanks everyone!!!
Alan
-
Hi Alan,
Can you give us an update on how things are going? Do you have any more questions? Have you seen any changes recently?
-
I would definitely remove them. They're probably a factor in the Penguin algorithm. If for some reason Penguin hasn't picked up on these links then it probably will in the future as Google is constantly evolving the Penguin algorithm.
If your site is truly affected by Penguin then you're going to need to be really thorough with your disavowing and removing. Removing just some of the links is not likely to make a huge difference. The only sites that I have seen recover are ones that have removed and/or disavowed close to 100% of their unnatural links AND also have a good base of natural links.
-
Hey Alan,
I didn't realize how deep you had gone in your research already! I definitely agree with removing them now that I understand how you found all of this.
I've seen a lot of people blame penguin and other google anti-blackhat methods for their lack of traffic but few have actual proof the way you do. And its funny you mention blogging at the end. I was just going to ask about your content and its freshness, etc. I used to have a blog with a TON of content but some of it was poorly written. I'm not the best at grammar apparently.. so I removed a bunch of articles I thought were a waste of time for anybody reading them.. bigmistake! I lost almost half my traffic.
Best of luck,
-Nick
-
Hi Nick:
Thanks for your perspective.
Our website traffic (my company is a commercial real estate brokerage firm in New York City) dropped 60% after the first Penguin update in April of 2012. It recovered somewhat last October after the latest Penguin update after we eliminated repetitive, spammy footer links. The site was also redesigned last Summer.
The quality of the links was only reviewed last November by a SEO firm and a formal audit. The links were analyzed by Link Detox. About 55% are toxic. 40% suspicious and 5% OK. I have no stomach to risk my business with this terrible link profile. But I am trying to take a middle of the road approach. First step being to remove links from 113 domains deemed toxic by Link Detox. These domains all originate on the same IP address so they are mostly a link farm. The owner of the directories has agreed to remove them.
That will still leave me with some toxic links, suspicious link and a few good ones. So I am immediately going to hire an SEO firm for six months to build high quality links (monitoring their deliverables each month). Only in a few months after we have obtained some high quality links will I start working on removing the other toxic and suspicious links. The objective will be to try to radically improve the link profile within a year.
I am also going to be adding blog content on a weekly basis and increase activity on social media to counter what I am realizing is an absolutely awful link profile.
In the last two years I spent more than $35,000 on web marketing and coding and ignored the link profile. BIG MISTAKE!!!
-
Hi Alan,
You Should Delete all of these bad/low Quality backlinks. It will not effect your website but will help in Long term.
Also, did your Website Rankings Dropped ? If so then You have to delete all bad backlinks and Change Anchor text of the Good backlinks to something more Generic.
If your Website is Ranking well then how Can anyone tell that it has been hit by penguin ? Penguin effected website have lost their Rankings.
hope it helps.
-
Hi Alan,
Do you have any evidence that you are under any sort of penalty? I agree with Morgan that these directories are playing with fire and could definitely burn you BUT I also know first hand my biggest competitor uses these directory sites for the majority of their back-links and they outrank me on most keywords I target. If you feel like living dangerously don't mess with them but don't add more. If you want to be 100% clean and straight edge than have them removed but it may hurt you. This is sort of a damned if you do and damned if you don't scenario.
Just my .02
-Nick
-
Hi Alan,
I would remove the links. If you're indeed suffering from a penguin penalty, your site will suffer as long as you have those links. Ask these directories/sites to remove their links to you, or disavow them. Keep a log of your backlinks, the ones you've identified as spammy, and the actions you've taken to clean up your link profile.
I know you're concerned about removing these links and how it will affect your search rankings. As long as you're under a penalty, your site won't do as well in SERPs. Cleaning up your link profile will get you out of the Google doghouse, and help you on your way to better SERP listings. Make sure you're working to get links from highly authoritative websites, and you'll be in a better position.
Good luck!
Morgan
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
-
Links not removed
Hello, I want some help regarding Bad links, I have Uploaded Disavow links, webmaster tools before 4-5 months But still, They are showing in Back links to my Site & Not disavow, can any one Help For this ? why they still appears in backlinks to my site, Why not removed Still ? Thanx in Advance, Falguni
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sanjayth0 -
Dealing with Penguin: Changing URL instead of removing links
I have some links pointing to categories from article directories, web directories, and a few blogs. We are talking about 20-30 links in total. They are less than 5% of the links to my site (counting unique domains). I either haven't been able to make contact with webmasters, or they are asking money to remove the links. If I simply rename the URL (for example changing mysite.com/t-shirt.html to mysite.com/tshirts.html), will that resolve any penguin issues? The link will forward to the homepage since that page no longer exists. I really want to avoid using the disavow tool if possible. I appreciate the feedback. If you have actually done this, please share your experience.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | inhouseseo0 -
IP Address: Ownership Location Versus IP Resolve
We are a US based ecommerce company that recently switched hosting to a Canadian owned company. I was told we would have a US based IP address but noticed yesterday that the MOZ bar is listing my website, 1800doorbell.com as a Canadian company. I've researched this online and what's typically stated is that your IP location needs to be in the Geo area you serve. When I brought his up to my host they stated: "The location being reported by many of these tools will be the one from the WHOIS. Since our corporation is registered in Canada, it will return a matching result. You can verify the location of the address by issuing a traceroute and examining the location codes at the end of the traceroute. For example, on: 96.125.180.207" So now I am really confused. What matters to me is how the search engines see my IP address. Will/do they see it as a US IP address? Below is the output from DNSstuff and thanks for any help: This is what I received back from DNSstuff: | ASN | 12179 |
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jake372
| Name | INTERNAP-2BLK |
| Description | - Internap Network Services Corporation |
| # Peers | 11 |
| # IPv4 Origin Ranges | 32 |
| # IPv6 Origin Ranges | 2 |
| Registrar | ARIN |
| Allocation date | Apr 13, 1999 |
| Country Code | US | | |
| Reverse | unknown.static.dal01.cologlobal.com. |
| Reverse-verified | No |
| Origin AS | - Internap Network S... |
| Country Code | CA |
| Country | Canada |
| Region | North America |
| Population | 31592805 |
| Top-level Domain | CA |
| IPv4 Ranges | 5944 |
| IPv6 Ranges | 336 |
| Currency | Canadian Dollar |
| Currency Code | CAD |
| IP Range - Start | 96.125.176.0 |
| IP Range - End | 96.125.191.255 |
| Registrar | ARIN |
| Allocation date | May 10, 2011 |0 -
Sharing same IP address as competitor - Pros & Cons?
Hey there! I was wondering is there were any particular 'Pros or Cons' to sharing the same server IP address as a competitors website which links back? Site 'A' = http://goo.gl/N1JUO // Stockists of Site 'B' brand products Site 'B' = http://goo.gl/fU9hc // Links to all Stockists of it products with a follow link including site 'A' It is desirable for site 'A' to rank above site 'B' to reduce the volume of visitors finding other stockists linked to from the stockists page of site 'B' when searching for site 'A' primary broadest keyword. However, site 'B' is one of site 'A' best in-bound links. So does it matter that site 'A' is sharing the same server IP address as site 'B'. Also should site 'A' have only 'no-follow' links to site 'B'? Look forward to your input fellow SEOMozers 🙂 Cheers! Ben
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chichesterdesign0 -
Can a domain rank for a competitive term with no links?
Hi, I know that this topic has received a lot of attention recently (Not all of it good) and I am not normally one to re-open a can of worms but the whole 'Camper Mens Shoes' fiasco has got me thinking. If you're not familiar with the story then you can get the highlights of it here - http://martinmacdonald.net/the-curios-case-of-camper-shoes/ My question is this - Say that you had a domain (Domain A) that was ranking well for a competitve keyword and that it had a good backlink profile. If you used rel="canonical" on every page of Domain A to point to a duplicate site on a different domain (Domain B) , would Domain B then rank well in place of Domain A? I know that this probably doesn't have much practical use but I am trying to get a better understanding of the effect of using rel="canonical" Would the result of doing the above mean that Domain B would rank well without having any links pointing directly to it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdeLewis0 -
Domains merging
Hi everyone, The company I work for has two domains, one for the english version of the website and another one for the french version. Example: www.digitalmusic.com (in english) www.musiquedigitale.com (in french) (these are examples***) I would like to know if on SEO standpoint it would be better to only have one domain so all of the links link to the same domain. Would it increase the domain authority and our rankings ? We will then have: www.digitalmusic.com/fr/page1 for pages in french www.digitalmusic.com/en/page1 for pages in english with all the 301 redirects required... Thank you in advance for your answers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Maxxum0 -
Redirecting One Page of Content on Domain A to Domain B
Let's say I have a nice page of content on Domain A, which is a strong domain. That page has a nice number of links from other websites and ranks on the first page of the SERPs for some good keywords. However, I would like to move that single page of content to Domain B using a 301 redirect. Domain B is a slightly weaker domain, however, it has better assets to monetize the traffic that visits this page of content. I expect that the rankings might slip down a few places but I am hoping that I will at least keep some of the credit for the inbound links from other websites. Has anyone ever done this? Did it work as you expected? Did the content hold its rankings after being moved? Any advice or philosophical opinions on this? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EGOL2