Google Penalty due to external links
-
-
On Sep 3, we got a Manual Action by Google: unnatural links to your site
-
Immediately we arranged to have all those links the rel="nofollow" atttributes, these were links set by our customers since we are hosting providers.
-
We sent a reconsideration request to Google on Sep 8 and this is their answer:
We’ve reviewed the reconsideration requestfor xxxx and modified its status, but we still believe that content on your site or links to your site are outside our quality guidelines. No more info provided. - We double checked everything but could not find anything else that could harm us so we asked Google (in a new reconsideration request sent on Sep 11 to provide us some samples. -
On Sep 24 Google answers with a sample of 3 sites which contains links to us. After verification, all the external links to us have the rel="nofollow" attribute !!
-
Today the manual action is not anymore a side-wide one but a partial one and applies to unnatural links--impact links.
So it seems that we need to physically have those links removed? As well I checked https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2604772?ctx=MAC and he does not refer at all about setting the rel="nofollow" attribute, Looks like Google wants the full monopoly on text links.
-
-
Great answer with some quality humour. Love it!
Thumbs up for you sir!
-
Google can be pretty anal about these things.
You'll increase your chance of a penalty removal if you physically remove the links and show evidence of your work and progression.
I can't really put it better than this guide on penalty removal by HitReach. They've removed hundreds (or thousands) of penalties and this is their methodology. Having done something similar myself, I can vouch for it, so I highly recommend reading it and implementing it.
And just for fun, here's a comic of theirs
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
-
SEO & URL parameters on external links
Hey guys! I've got a quick question: We are getting some guest posting opportunities with a few big sites in our space...
Link Building | | floriannin
In those guest posts we will also have to chance to link back to 1-2 articles of ours and to our main site. Should I use UTM parameters to track how many clicks we get or will this in any way negatively affect our SEO benefits? Hope you guys know what I mean. I found tons of articles on this but mostly about inbound links... which isn't the case here. Thanks in advance 🙂0 -
What does google think about legit link exchanges where one is follow and one is no follow?
Hi Experts! Here is my Question for you. I am doing a link exchange in a legit way to increase sales for my site and my associate's site. My associate just wants a sales increase and no link juice. He has a very low DA so I want to give him a no follow link. Is it suspicious of fishy that I give a no follow link and receive a followed link in return? Please let me know how to proceed, I don't want to take any changes. Can you tell me the best way to proceed with this link exchange? Thanks
Link Building | | Ruchy0 -
GWT Lists URLs with links to my site, but those URLs don't have links to my site
There are a number of URLs that show up for my website in Webmaster Tools as having links to my site when in fact they don't. I know this to be a fact because I actually wrote some of the sites that Google is saying are linking to my site and I know there isn't any links on the specific pages to that site. For example, the site in question is: https://www.liftproducts.com/ As an example, Google is saying that about 100 URLs from https://www.lift-tables.net/ are linking to it when, I'm fairly confident that there is only 1 link to it found here: https://www.lift-tables.net/info.php?countrytabs=3 Yet Google says links exist on this (and many more) page: https://www.lift-tables.net/liftproducts/max-lift/lpt4w-030-48.php I thought at first it might have been due to linking to a image file directly instead of locally hosting it, but after checking the source, that's not the case. I am also seeing this type of non-linking being reported on sites I have no clue what they are. For example, some Spanish site about tandem bicycles is being listed as linking to liftproducts.com: http://206-225-85-34.dedicated.abac.net/tandem/inc Yet I can find no evidence of an actual link existing. Am I missing something here? Any insight of why this is happening and how I can clean up my link signature would be appreciated.
Link Building | | Nivik231 -
Who should I reach out to for external links?
As a web designer, who should I reach out to for external links, other than former clients?
Link Building | | IntentioDesigns0 -
Links from sites with iffy link profiles?
So the site http://www.cadenas.de/ appears to have good decent scores from the various Moz ranks, but when I check out the site in OSE there are a lot of really sketchy links that jump out, online pharmacy/drug type links. I should also add that the negative links are seemingly going to a weird blog deep in the site and only appear when I select all links to the root domain in OSE. Everything about the site appears very legitimate except for the link profile which has me nervous. Would you guys pursue a link from this site?
Link Building | | CJ50 -
What is a good ratio of total links to linking root domains?
Is 100 total links for every linking domain too high? I suppose I could also look at ratios of sites that are doing well in the rankings.
Link Building | | ProjectLabs0 -
Removed Link
After I have removed a link, how long does it take for it to be reflected in Google WMT?
Link Building | | raph39880