Why have I lost 1/3 of my backlinks (about 5,000) in 3 months?
-
In August, my client's site (I work at a marketing agency) had about 15,000 backlinks. Now they suddenly have about 10,000 backlinks. And their Domain Authority has dropped from 48 to 40!
Can someone please help me understand what could've happened?
At first I assumed this had something to do with the latest Penguin update, since I knew my client's site had some extremely spammy backlinks they hadn't cleaned up yet. (The site was hacked at some point and hidden pages were created as part of some kind of link-building scheme, and there were lots of links from sketchy sites to those pages. The hidden pages have been taken down and the URLs now redirect to my client's home page.) But that would only explain a sudden drop in Domain Authority, right? How could Penguin suddenly cause my client to lose 5,000 backlinks? And if it's not Penguin, what could it be?
Thanks in advance for any insight that anyone can share!
-
It's entirely possible that indexation issues are contributing to what you're seeing, Matt. I'd also suggest reading through this Q&A thread by Rand:
-
Mello Matt,
If it was my site I would seriously consider getting rid of any redirects from old dodgy pages, you could force Google to consider for the content still exists. If it goes to a 404 Google can then see clearly it no longer exists.
But would be interesting on what others have to say on that.I would source my back links mainly from Google search console.
Hope that helps.
-
Hey Matt,
Our site saw a massive up tick in links and then an even larger drop in links from one index to the next. Read this post below from Moz about their last index and about their not-so-great indexing over the last year. That might give you the answer you are looking for.
I can't remember everything in the article, so rather than try to explain it myself, I'll let them do it for me. Hope that helps.
-
Thanks for the response! And thanks for the advice – I'll definitely look into all those steps.
The redirects from the hacked pages are occurring automatically somehow. I guess that must've been set up by the agency that redesigned the client's website last year. They must've specified 301s for certain key pages and had all other old URLs redirect to the home page.
To answer your question, I'm using Moz for backlink analysis. Could their update be the reason I'm seeing such a drop?
BTW – Search Console shows no notifications that would relate to this issue, and no manual penalties...
-
Sorry just a question, where are you getting your back links list from? It's not unknown for tools to be inaccurate.
Another point I forgot to mention, Moz did update their index in the past few days, lots of people have seen a DA drop.
-
Firstly, sounds like you do have a penalty of some sort.
Secondly, I would not have redirected the hacked pages back to the site anywhere, you could give yourself a penalty that way. You could be passing bad authority or worse from anywhere else on the web, completely out of your control.
Thirdly, don't discount the potential of a website problem. Broken script, user damage, another hack etc
1. Do a thorough link cleanup.
2. Consider taking down any pages that are not relevant or earning any value.
3. Check search console for any notifications or manual penalties.
4. Check the website for performance and functionality.
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
-
Backlinks and SPAM
I was doing some back link review of competitors and I have noticed that many of our competition have 300+ do follow back links from Justia.com and an additional 300+ do follow links from law.cornell.edu (they share the same database). The links on Justia are from different pages and they are all going to the root of our competitors site. So the questions are as follows; 1: For the purpose of SEO is this considered SPAM 2: If not SPAM, then does it have a positive effect on the competitions website and should I attempt to emulate for my client. Thanks in advance. -Jeff
Link Building | | FriedmanSimon10000 -
Good or Bad Backlinks
Hi All We are trying to go through all of our backlinks to see which links are good and which are bad. We are using two paid for tools to find our backlinks and sort them out, either good or bad. I have found that both tools have returned links as being good even though the links are not indexed by Google and have no page rank. Also we have found that both tools returns some links as good even though the links are pointing to a 404 page. Any advice on how to proceed would be appreciated.
Link Building | | Palmbourne0 -
Dead/Broken links on old blogs
Hi We are currently trying to update our blog page on our website but quickly realized there are numerous dead or broken 404 links after clicking on anchor text from past blog posts. Our blog is set up in WordPress and we recently installed an SEO plug in with it. Some of these anchor texts don't actually need links and I want to unlink them, is there a simple way to do this on WordPress? Other anchor text I would like to "301 redirect" to another page. Can i do this on WordPress or is this something my SEO plugin should be able to fix? Answers are much appreciated! Thanks
Link Building | | SapphireCo0 -
Does it help to have more than one backlink from the same website?
I have received two follow links from a website with a domain authority of 64 because I contributed to 2 blog posts. Will it help my site to get more back links from this same website or should I focus my efforts elsewhere?
Link Building | | dealblogger0 -
How to clean backlinks?
I noticed that my content is steeled and taken to stuffed
Link Building | | NadiaFL
site. What I can do about that? Thank you!0 -
Backlinking post penguin
Does anyone have any effective strategies about how to backlink for a new website. I'm just really cautious of this new penguin update and don't want to submit to too many directories or do anything that will get penalised, seen as the website is new.
Link Building | | AAttias0 -
Where I can find a backlink community exchange?
I know is difficult but it's worth to try. I am looking for a community eager to exchange links. I am in the venue rent for weeding and conferences in London and I would be delighted to find other people to exchange the links. At the moment my page is PR4 I have seen communities for games where they exchange anything, why don't link exchange!!!!
Link Building | | lnietob0 -
Finding sites to target for backlinks
How can I quickly find a list of sites that link with follow and 301 links to my competitor, but not to me?
Link Building | | Nashville0