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.
Rankings Dropped After New Backlinks.
-
I have a low-traffic website (under 100 unique visitors per day) and I've encountered a strange issue started yesterday morning. I acquired three back-links, one of these back-links is contextual and the other two are site-wide. The site-wide back-links are from PA 40+ blogs. It looks like the back-links are already indexed by Google.
Despite these new back-links, my rankings across multiple keywords have dropped several positions. I'm new to SEO, but I would assume new back-links would improve my rankings. None of these back-links are low quality links, they are from real established blogs with high domain and page authority values.
Could anyone give me insights into why my rankings may have dropped with new back-links?
-
Hi poke1! If Gaston's replies helped, mind marking one or more as a "Good Answer?" It'll get him some bonus MozPoints, and it's helpful for us.
Otherwise, how can we be of more help?
-
Got it, thank you!
-
The links are new (only 2 or 3 days old) and all of them are DoFollow and all links are from relevant blogs.
In my opinion it's too early to impact that much in rankings.
The site-wide links are branded links (not rich anchor text links), I don't see how branded site-wide links could warrant a penalty.
That's why i've stated that some people believe that it might get you a penalty. It depends. In this case, being branded will cause not harm. You should've said that were branded.
There are many blogs which list their favorite websites on their sidebar, it looks to be common among average bloggers. Should I ask these bloggers to remove the links or should I wait for 2/3 weeks and basically see what happens.
Yeap, let's wait a little longer. And no, in the case that are branded there is harm.
Could it be that Google is just "shuffling" my website around after they noticed new back-links and I am on the downside right now and may rebound? Is this something that happens?
I dont think that this "shuffling" is only related to the backlinks. It may be a reason. There is no garatee that you will remain in the old position, or if you will stay in a different. I'd advise you a little patience. And dont make any major changes so to be able to analyze after.
Best Luck.
GR. -
The links are new (only 2 or 3 days old) and all of them are DoFollow and all links are from relevant blogs.
The site-wide links are branded links (not rich anchor text links), I don't see how branded site-wide links could warrant a penalty.
There are many blogs which list their favorite websites on their sidebar, it looks to be common among average bloggers. Should I ask these bloggers to remove the links or should I wait for 2/3 weeks and basically see what happens.
Could it be that Google is just "shuffling" my website around after they noticed new back-links and I am on the downside right now and may rebound? Is this something that happens?
Thank you for your response.
-
Hi there,
tl;dr; Wait 2 or 3 weeks to make sure that the problem is not caused by the backlinks. I'd worry a lot about those site-wide links.
It's really hard to analyze how much some backlinks have impacted in your SERPs. Even more difficult is to see changes in such short notice. Three things to say here:
- Site-wide links. There are lots of people saying that those asure you to be penalized. My opinion, it depends. You should take special care of your backlink profile It doesn't harm to have some siwte-wide, but it shoudn't be the majority of your links coming from those sources.
- The PA's backlinks. That metric is not thar reliable to ascertain a good/bad impacto in your rankings. There are lots of other analysis to be done. Keep that in mind.
- How did you find out those new backlinks? Dpending on the backlink checker tool, you should check how long have them been there. Also, are them DoFollow?
Remember that rankings may vary for other reasons that yours. It is likely that some of your ranking competitors are gaining strenght or google made some update on the algorithm that is crushing you.
Best of luck.
GR.
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
-
Why did my Domain Authority drop?
I had an ok domain authority. We focused on building backlinks for our website and it shows that we received a significant number of backlinks. However, today, our DA fell significantly. I don't understand why that happened. Can someone please help me with this situation? Thank you.
Link Building | | MizbaCMU1 -
Should backlink URLs include www, https, or both???
My business is located at remotebaba.com, and I am wanting several sites to link to it.
Link Building | | udaipabla
I am only interested in home page at this point, and we are using HTTPS for our site. Which one of these should I have other sites link to (Please provide complete justification):
remotebaba.com (my root domain)
www.remotebaba.com
https://remotebaba.com
https://www.remotebaba.com I really appreciate your help!1 -
How to identify spammy website before making backlinks on them
Hi, I search in google but didnt find a proper answer for this! maybe search an incorrect keyword! The question is, How can I find out a website that I'm going to make a backlink on is a spammy website? For example I did this guest bloging on this good website: Best Sure-Shot Organic Pest Control Approaches Every Gardener Should Know | Balcony Garden Web But it seems to be spammy because I use SEO POWERSUIT software that shows this backlink is 20% risk of google penalty! Is it right!? So how can we rest assured for making a quality backlink? I can not think any other way 😞
Link Building | | Shervin0 -
Spammy no follow backlinks - what should I do?
There is a individual/company that is creating lots of spam sites in my niche. It doesn't seem that they are trying to rank for any keywords, so I'm a little confused as to their purpose, but here's what they're doing. They scrape the top 10 Google results for each keyword and create a page - so if the niche is "widgets", they scrape the top 10 ranked sites for 'widgets', 'blue widgets', 'red widgets', and so on. A 'results' page is created for each keyword, which is linked from a home page. The results page always contains 10 websites - text is the site metadescription or similar. Each website gets a nofollow link back with the page title used as the anchor text. The host sites all have the keyword in the domain name - e.g www.widgetsxyz.com. The sites are thrown together but interestingly have a very crappy but individual logo (like 90's clipart). The host sites all have high DA/PA due to some very extensive link spam pointing to the sites, with very targeted keywords. There is seemingly no purpose to these sites that I can see - no other 'followed' links on the page or site. Whoever is doing this is churning out tens, if not hundreds of these sites. Any ideas what might be going on here, and whether I should be disavowing these sites (even though no follow). The fear is that they could switch the links to do follow, and get all the major players penalised in one fell swoop. ???
Link Building | | johnohara0 -
Does backlinks in images equal naked backlinks?
I've discovered few backlinks in images came from websites points to my home page. What is the value of these links?
Link Building | | Eslam-yosef0 -
Building backlinks for a newspaper site?
Anyone have tips on building links to a newspaper site? I am looking for a strategy to create links to a news site beyond building one link at a time. We have so much content that is constantly updated that it would be impossible to do this one page at a time.
Link Building | | BostonWright0 -
Changing backlinks anchor text
Hi, I've read a few blog post here that suggests the strength of building links using your brand as an anchor text. This supposedly gives the site authority. Currently a chunck of the back links to my homepage are on generic terms i'm trying to rank for which doesn't seem to be working very well. I was thinking of contacting the various webmasters to change the anchor text to that of the site brand name but wondering if this will signal a manipulation of links to the search engines and potentially could be flagged as paid links? Has anybody done this before and what is the danger of doing this? Thanks Duke
Link Building | | clickangel0 -
What is the best way to manage backlinks?
What back link management software do you guys use or recommend? Need to manage types of links on each page. Thanks
Link Building | | joemas990