Strange new links being picked up in Webmaster tools affecting SERPs
-
Hi,
I have a question regarding new links being found by Google, and showing in our latest links file from Webmaster tools.
I run this site: http://www.propertysales.com it's a fairly new website with a small (ish) link profile but over the last 3 months I've seen a lot of links being found in Google like this: http://www.financecourier.com/news/story/523316/foreign-carmakers-milk-chinas-cash-cow/full_story.html
it's clearly a scrap of a webpage from the FT.com, who we partner with, that has a link to PropertySales.com but the number of links Webmaster tools is seeing is much bigger than we would normally get in any given month.
As a rule I would normally ignore scrapper sites as I’ve always assumed Google is smart enough to know which site these are and thus wouldn't affect your SERPs but I’ve also seen a drop in our SERPs over the same month so now I’m thinking these are effecting the sites SEO.
Does anybody have any insight into this or advice on the best way to handle this, I looking at going through these site and adding them to our disavow file but this can take a few month to take effect so are they any better options or way to handle this?
Thanks for your help in advance.
Rufus
-
Hi Rufus,
If it's a minor drop, then it might just be temporary. Are you still building links to your site now?
Like you, I normally ignore scraper sites. They sometimes give me a lot of good links lol
ill gauge it again after 3 months. If it's effect is questionable, then I end up disavowing them right there if it's a really bad looking site. Some scraper sites are really structurally sound and have unique content so I leave those out.
-
If you've seen a drop in ranking but have no penalty, ideally you would be adding more links, but you're not the first person to talk about noticing this issue, and we had a similar issue on our website. I'd keep an eye on it and when you run across particularly bad instances, ask the webmaster to remove the link. That sometimes works. And when it doesn't, I would consider adding it to a disavow file.
We ignored this issue too long, and got penalized for not doing something about it. So I wouldn't necessarily assume that Google can always tell the difference between bad linking practices, and junk websites linking to your website.
-
Unless Google has issued a warning penalty, they either know about the site and ignore it anyway or have not found these links.
Therefore yes build better content to drive traffic, but I wouldn't worry too much about the problem now you have done the disavow.
Hope that helps
Bruce
-
Hi Rufus,
You are correct that a disavow can take some time to start making a difference, but even so, you need to either continue with this, or contact the poor link sites and ask for links to be removed.
What you can always do, is some positive link-building and outreach to help counter this. I would never really advocate just removing lots of links without doing something positive as well, and this does work well.
You could also look to create a strong internal link strategy to key pages throughout the site. This can often help push specific phrases back up that might have seen a bit of a drop.
Additionally, see if there is some value-added content that can be written for the site to help Google again see that positive measures are being taken.
-Andy
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 My Search Console Not Showing New Links From Last One Month ?
I want to ask about the search console that webmaster not showing any data about new links or new domains from last month.
Link Building | | vijay99690 -
Are new pages treated similar to new domains with respect to ranking?
Hello...I'm hoping to get some advice or guidance regarding the following. My website has gone from a 30 page site about loans, to a 500 page site covering a much wider range of products such as mortgages and other more specific loan related pages. All the new pages were made live at the same time, and I've been through GWT tools to add pages with in the Google fetch and most have been indexed fine. My question is, how should I expect Google to treat all of these new pages? The site has changed massively and many of the new pages are at pages 3-4 for their key terms. Will Google treat these new pages in the same way it may a new domain, e.g. it could be potenitally a couple of months before the pages start to rank better? I appreciate that the terms are very competitive. Thanks!
Link Building | | Dave_B1 -
Link Auditing
Anyone have any useful ways to link audit? I'm stuck picking up the slack from a previous worker who decided buying links was a great idea for our clients.
Link Building | | CGR-Creative0 -
Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links ...
Hi, We recently got "the message" from Google about unnatural links for two of our 50 sites. Ranking has dropped significantly since, we did not take any action to remove the links. All our 50 sites were managed by the same SEO company but only two got this message. We are in the process of understanding the best ways to deal with this situation, but currently there are two main approaches we can detect: Remove the links, resubmit for reconsideration Ignore the message and do not do anything, if you do something it is actually like admitting you did something wrong, and Google can not prove that you did... Any insights on what approach we should adopt? Thanks in advance.
Link Building | | jid1 -
Is it worth it to link to sites that link to you in guest posts?
Suppose you published a guest post on a quality site and you link to a previous guest post you have written for another site (which links to you). In theory you could send link juice to the page that links to you for a second order effect. Has anyone seen results from this tactic?
Link Building | | ProjectLabs0 -
What link would be better?
Okay, I found a niche blog that has a google PR6. They have a ton of dollow blogroll links, as well as a ton of internal links on homepage. Would I be better off getting the blogroll link? Getting a link in an existing post with a lower PR? Getting an advertiorial written with a link in it? I just don't know. It has a domain authority of 33 currently. It's not a cheap link for blogroll. The in-post, or advertorial isn't too bad, but not cheap either. Thanks in advance.
Link Building | | azguy0 -
Value of Inbound Links to Pages With a lot of Outbound Links
Suppose you have a resource page of the Top 50 Awesome Sites in your niche. Since there are about 50 outbound links, then I would think there will be less Page Rank being passed to internal pages from internal links on the resource page. Since you are getting less PR passed to internal pages, are there other ways the inbound links can be beneficial, such as increasing the diversity of links of your domain? Sites like SEO Optimise seem to create a lot of Top 30 Resources lists and I have read that they think it is a strong tactic.
Link Building | | SparkplugDigital0