How do I know for sure if my site has been slapped?
-
I'm new to this SEO business - and I focus on inbound marketing. My client's site is www.SubconsciousMind.com. Just a few weeks ago it was showing in the top search results for several major keywords. Now, it has disappeared all together and there are competitors showing that have very little SEO (metatarsi not set up properly, etc.). So, I know there has to be an opportunity.
Some obvious things:
There aren't a lot of links and the majority seem to be bad (bad linking farms)
Social media is set up by a robot
Articles are poorly written obviously ONLY for SEOMy client hired a SEO company awhile back to get results, not understanding black hat / white hat and it worked for several years. Now - it is really hurting her. The sites she is linking to doesn't have any contact info to get the "unlinked." I've read I can use the disavow tool.
I asked her if she got anything from Google about "being slapped". She doesn't even receive the emails to her site because she trusted someone else to set it all up.
Should I rebuild from scratch? Any recommendations? We are funning adwords now as a quick fix.
-
If you feel like you have done everything within your power to try and get the links removed, but there's just no way, then you should disavow the URL or domain. You should attempt to reach the owners of the domain 2-3 times before giving up. During my link removals, there have been a decent number of webmasters that finally responded on my 2nd or 3rd attempt.
As for disavowing URL or domain, if the entire domain is something you'd never want a link from, disavow the entire domain. Even if you only have ONE link from the entire site. Still, disavow the domain. Only disavow the URL if you think the site in general is good quality but you happen to be on 1 particular spammy page for some reason.
-
Hi Philipp,
I checked with Google Webmasters and there is no penalty - good news! I've also attempted to contact those sites with spammy links and I am getting no response. So - would you recommend at this point that I simply go through the disavow at this point?
Thanks in advance,
Joeaux
-
Happy to help
And I took a quick look at the backlink profile for subconsciouschange.com... definitely spammy. A nice cleanse will get you on the right track!
-
Thank you so much for your input... yes, you are all correct - I had the wrong URL. It is actually www.SubconsciousChange.com
I so appreciate your input and will start working right away on those bad links.
-
Is it really www.SubconsciousMind.com ? PR 0 and listed at domainnamesales ?
-
Philip gives good advise, I would add, that if there is no manual penalty, then the algorithm will be dismissing links at best, it would not be penalizing you for them. not for links anyhow
but as Philip said, the domain seems to be parked
-
How to see if your site has received a manual penalty from Google? Sign up for Google Webmaster Tools (http://www.google.com/webmasters).
From within there you will be able to see if the website has received a manual penalty from Google. Once you've got the account setup and verified, look on the left menu for "Search Traffic" and then "Manual Actions". If there is a MANUAL penalty imposed, you'll see it there. It will either be "partial" or "site-wide". The former means that only some pages are affected. The latter means that all pages are affected.
If you have a manual penalty, you will NEED to do outreach to get links removed, and THEN you submit a disavow for the ones you were unable to remove. You're right, most spam sites won't have contact info, but you can check http://www.who.is and find an email address in most cases. You will more than likely not get the result you're looking to get if you forego the link removal process and skip straight to a disavow.
One last note, if there's no manual penalty in Google Webmaster Tools, then the site may be penalized algorithmically. If you know there are spammy links in place, you should act as if you were penalized manually, with the only difference being that you won't be submitting a reconsideration request to Google. If the site quality is poor, you will want to research Panda recovery options.
By the way, www.SubconsciousMind.com doesn't seem to exist. So either you typo'd the name, or you have an ever bigger problem on your hands now
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
-
What would you say is hurting this site, Penguin or Panda?
Would you say this is both Penguin and Panda and no penalty has ever been lifted? What would be your general recommendations for this site? seWnoQm
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Exchange link from sites in same google account
Hi everyone, Anybody have experience when you have some websites which stored in Google Webmaster Tool and they exchange links between sites. So is it good for sites? We are hosted on different server. Thank you so much
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Jeepster0 -
What could go wrong? SEO on mobile site is different than desktop site.
We have a desktop site that has been getting worked on over the year regarding improving SEO. Since the mobile site is separate, the business decided to not spend the time to keep it updated and just turned it off. So any mobile user that finds a link to us in search engines, goes to a desktop site that is not responsive. Now that we're hearing Google is going to start incorporating mobile user friendliness into rankings, the business wants to turn the mobile site back on while we spend months making the desktop site responsive. The mobile site basically has no SEO. The title tag is uniform across the site, etc. How much will it hurt us to turn on that SEO horrid mobile site? Or how much will it hurt us to not turn it on?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CFSSEO0 -
Can I use content from an existing site that is not up anymore?
I want to take down a current website and create a new site or two (with new url, ip, server). Can I use the content from the deleted site on the new sites since I own it? How will Google see that?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RoxBrock0 -
Inbound Links Inquiry for a New Site
For a site that is only one to two months old, what is considered a natural amount of inbound links if you're site offers very valuable information, and you have done a marketing push to get the word out about your blog? Even if you are receiving backlinks from authority websites with high DA, does Google get suspicious if there are too many inbound links during the first few months of a sites existence? I know there are some sites that blow up very fast and receive thousands of backlinks very quickly, so I'm curious to know if Google puts these kind of sites on a watchlist or something of that nature. Or is this simply a good problem to have?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
Can anyone tell me why this site ranks so well?
Site in question: cellphoneshop.net From what I can tell from their link profile, the links they garner don't appear to be particularly high value but they dominate organic listings for my vertical (cell phone accessories), esp. in the last 2-3 months when Google was supposedly increasing the quality of their search results. Can anyone tell me why in particular this site ranks so well for competitive short and long tail terms?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | eugeneku0 -
Opinions Wanted: Links Can Get Your Site Penalized?
I'm sure by now a lot of you have had a chance to read the Let's Kill the "Bad Inbound Links Can Get Your Site Penalized" Myth over at SearchEngineJournal. When I initially read this article, I was happy. It was confirming something that I believed, and supporting a stance that SEOmoz has taken time and time again. The idea that bad links can only hurt via loss of link juice when they get devalued, but not from any sort of penalization, is indeed located in many articles across SEOmoz. Then I perused the comments section, and I was shocked and unsettled to see some industry names that I recognized were taking the opposite side of the issue. There seems to be a few different opinions: The SEOmoz opinion that bad links can't hurt except for when they get devalued. The idea that you wouldn't be penalized algorithmically, but a manual penalty is within the realm of possibility. The idea that both manual and algorithmic penalties were a factor. Now, I know that SEOmoz preaches a link building strategy that targets high quality back links, and so if you completely prescribe to the Moz method, you've got nothing to worry about. I don't want to hear those answers here - they're right, but they're missing the point. It would still be prudent to have a correct stance on this issue, and I'm wondering if we have that. What do you guys think? Does anybody have an opinion one way or the other? Does anyone have evidence of it being one way or another? Can we setup some kind of test, rank a keyword for an arbitrary term, and go to town blasting low quality links at it as a proof of concept? I'm curious to hear your responses.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AnthonyMangia0 -
Problems with link spam from spam blogs to competitor sites
A competitor of ours is having a great deal of success with links from spam blogs (such as: publicexperience.com or sexylizard.org) it is proving to be a nightmare. Google does not detect these (the competitor has been doing well now for over a year) and my boss is starting to think if you can’t beat them, join them. Frankly, he is right – we have built some great links but it is nigh on impossible to beat 400+ highly targeted spam links in a niche market. My question is, has anyone had success in getting this sort of stuff brought to the attention of Google and banned (I actually listed them all in a message in webmaster tools and sent them over to Google over a year ago!). This is frustrating, I do not want to join in this kind of rubbish but it is hard to put a convincing argument against it when our competitor has used the technique successfully for over a year without any penalty. Ideas? Thoughts? All help appreciated
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RodneyRiley0