Can internal links from a blog harm the ranking of a page?
-
Here is the situation: A site was moved from its original domain to its new domain, and at the same time, the external wordpress.com blog was moved to a subdirectory, making it an onsite blog. The two pages that rank the highest on the site have virtually no links from the blog and no external links, while all the other pages are linked extensively from the blog and have backlinks. Their targeted keywords are not so much easier to rank than the other pages for that to be the sole cause.
To confuse the matter even more, there was a manual penalty affecting incoming links which was removed last month. The old site, which has many backlinks to the new site, is still in Google's index. The old blog however, has been redirected page by page and is not in Google's index. Most of the blog posts are short 1-paragraph company updates and potentially considered low quality content because of that (?)
The common denominator among the two highest ranked pages (I'm talking top 3 in SERP v. page 3 or 4) seems to be either the lack of external backlinks or the lack of internal links from the blog. Could there be an issue with the blog such that internal links from it are detrimental rather than helpful?
-
OK I think I understand what you did
"The old site, which has many backlinks to the new site, is still in Google's index"
So you are pointing links from a penalized site to your new clean site, hope you are using nofollows? hmmm. Not a good idea if not!I would not 301 redirect either. As this will simply assign all the bad stuff over to your new domain as well.
The blog is internal which is a good thing now, but the low quality will effect the whole site eventually. Low quality content must be addressed or Google will hit the site hard with the Panda Algorithm. That low quality then links to your internal pages, not a good idea either.
If the blog offers no real value and you are unable to maintain it then remove it for now completely and focus on creating a well rounded good quality site first. A few good blog posts is better than a hundred terrible ones.
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
-
Can Google Bot View Links on a Wix Page?
Hi, The way Wix is configured you can't see any of the on-page links within the source code. Does anyone know if Google Bots still count the links on this page? Here is the page in question: https://www.ncresourcecenter.org/business-directory If you do think Google counts these links, can you please send me URL fetcher to prove that the links are crawlable? Thank you SO much for your help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Fiyyazp0 -
SEO and Internal Pages
Howdy Moz Fans (quoting Rand), I have a weird issue. I have a site dedicated to criminal defense. When you Google some crimes, the homepage comes up INSTEAD of the internal page directly related to that type of crime. However, on other crimes, the more relevant internal page appears. Obviously, I want the internal page to appear when a particular crime is Googled and NOT the homepage. Does anyone have an explanation why this happens? FYI: I recently moved to WP and used a site map plugin that values the internal pages at 60% (instead of Weebly, which has an auto site map that didn't do that). Could that be it? I have repeatedly submitted the internal pages via GWT, but nothing happens. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mrodriguez14400 -
Https://www.mywebsite.com/blog/tag/wolf/ setting tag pages as blog corner stone article?
We do not have enough content rich page to target all of our keywords. Because of that My SEO guy wants to set some corner stone blog articles in order to rank them for certain key words on Google. He is asking me to use the following rule in our article writing(We have blog on our website):
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlirezaHamidian
For example in our articles when we use keyword "wolf", link them to the blog page:
https://www.mywebsite.com/blog/tag/wolf/
It seems like a good idea because in the tag page there are lots of material with the Keyword "wolf" . But the problem is when I search for keyword "wolf" for example on the Google, some other blog pages are ranked higher than this tag page. But he tells me in long run it is a better strategy. Any idea on this?0 -
Web pages fighting over rank for one keyword. Can it be stopped?
Hey, See attachment. Website is Omega Red. The page I want to rank for seems like it is being held back by other closely related pages with similar titles. I am looking to rank for electrical earthing with this page. On the graph it shows how the other pages have interacted over a period of time on the website and how if they drop out of the top 50 this page then moves up in Google. I don't really want to canonicalise the other pages into one but maybe this is what needs to happen? Any suggestions? bWymgVt.jpg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Hughescov0 -
Google Page Rank Dead?
Does PR still work? I have sites that have PR3 and get almost no traffic and sites that are PR1 and get thousands of uniques per month. My PR on my main sites haven't moved for about 7 years, even though we've grown significantly. I know lots of you are going to jump in with get the MOZ toolbar, which I already have done, and I agree, it's great ... But can anyone tell me about what's going on with Google PR? Is it still active? Or has Google abandoned? I noticed that the Google toolbar is not even available for Google Chrome. That should say something ... If you like this question, do me a favor, and give me a THUMBS UP!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | applesofgold2 -
What is the best choise for seasonal pages that rank after the season is over?
Hello and thank you for your attention. I am optimizing a travel website and I have a few problems. Every time I get a good rank for a particular keyword the owners take down the page because the offer is over. They also take down the category because the season is over. That is why I loose all the rankings. What is the best option in this cases and how should I guide the whole team that putts offers and new categories on the website? Would a Static sitemap be enough - I do not know what to do as moving a category from the main menu to a sitemap - another page on the website would result in loosing authority - and SERP. Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | A.Popoviciu0 -
Site Wide Internal Navigation links
Hello all, All our category pages www.pitchcare.com/shop are linked to from every product page via the sidebar navigation. Which results in every category page having over 1700 links with the same anchor text. I have noticed that the category pages dont appear to be ranked when they most definately should be. For example http://www.pitchcare.com/shop/moss-control/index.html is not ranked for the term "moss control" instead another of our deeper pages is ranked on page 1. Reading a previous SEO MOZ article · Excessive Internal Anchor Text Linking / Manipulation Can Trip An Automated Penalty on Google
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | toddyC
I recently had my second run-in with a penalty at Google that appears to punish sites for excessive internal linking with "optimized" (or "keyword stuffed anchor text") links. When the links were removed (in both cases, they were found in the footer of the website sitewide), the rankings were restored immediately following Google's next crawl, indicating a fully automated filter (rather than a manual penalty requiring a re-consideration request). Do you think we may have triggered a penalty? If so what would be the best way to tackle this? Could we add no follows on the product pages? Cheers Todd0