Can spammy links affect indexing?
-
Meaning, if you have a lot of bad quality links (directories, blog comments) that are giving great rankings for some terms (on a homepage of a site), could the low quality of these links negatively affect the crawling frequency of interior pages or perhaps even give interior pages a ranking penalty?
-
This is a topic I feel needs extensive testing. As you have said, although google has not commented on the subject to any great degree other than best practice (with respect to relevant linking) it would appear that there is methodology out there that would suggest the comparative quality of inbound links does have an effect - Eric Ward/Adgooroo are avid promoters of "domain profile" when it comes to inbound links.
The penalty side of things has only come into play recently with the PANDA update - many sites that rely only on syndicated content to exists have been penalised - as a result, perfectly legitimate sites that have syndicated content out with links in have suffered .
Of course the efficiency factor comes in to play too - both from the time and effort needed to gain a high quality link, over the "loads of links in 10 minutes" through directories/blog comments/syndication. We all know that 10 high quality, relevant .edu links will earn way more brownie points than 100 "easy" links from non-relevant sources.
I suspect if you took a large site with a high number of back links and reduced the number of spammy links - you might, over time, see an improvement in ranking. This is of course an assumption though, would be interesting to see if anyone has experimented.
-
There is some discussion on this same topic you can take a look at: http://www.seomoz.org/q/few-high-quality-links-or-a-plethora-of-mediocre-links
Most SEO experts will share the same thought "you want to build your site over time with high quality links". I completely agree but many sites would like a boost to get started. Others have good content but due to heavy competition or other factors desire to perform better in SERP.
It is my understanding having a lot of low quality links can help a site, and cannot harm a site. For those who feel otherwise, I would appreciate the opportunity to further discuss the topic. I would love to see any information from Google or Matt Cutts on the topic.
The term "penalty" often used to describe these links or the site which receives them usually refers to the loss of link juice from the bad link. I am not aware of any negative effects outside of discounting the bad link.
The Pandora effect, or any drop of ranking, is due to the loss of juice from the offending links, not a penalty from Google. The site still benefited. For a time, they had higher rankings and more exposure to the public. During that period the site could have earned additional sales or picked up readers who otherwise may have not seen the site. Those additional customers and readers can directly lead to the site ranking higher then it would of if it never received the "bad" link.
-
Just because you are getting great rankings for some terms, or better yet - THINK you are getting rankings for great terms due to bad quality links, does not mean that at some point you won't be harmed by them. And you could be harmed from them right now - or not necessarily harmed as much as hindered.
While Google does a questionable job at weeding out sites with lots of bad links, they're not completely helpless. And sites have been known to fall due to an over-abundance of bad links, though it's more that Google will discount them as a ranking factor before they actually penalize a site.
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
-
Pages to be indexed in Google
Hi, We have 70K posts in our site but Google has scanned 500K pages and these extra pages are category pages or User profile pages. Each category has a page and each user has a page. When we have 90K users so Google has indexed 90K pages of users alone. My question is. Should we leave it as they are or should we block them from being indexed? As we get unwanted landings to the pages and huge bounce rate. If we need to remove what needs to be done? Robots block or Noindex/Nofollow Regards
Technical SEO | | mtthompsons0 -
Any need to worry about spammy links in Webmaster Tools from sites that no longer exist?
I own an ecommerce website that had some spammy stuff done on it by an SEO firm through SEOLinkVine a few years ago. I'm working on removing all those links, but some of the sites no longer exist. I'm assuming I don't have to worry about disavowing those in Webmaster Tools? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | CobraJones950 -
Canonical needed after no index
Hi do you need to point canonical from a subpage to main page if you have already marked a no index on the subpage, like when google is not indexing it so do we need canonicals now as is it passing any juice?
Technical SEO | | razasaeed0 -
Does Google index has expiration?
Hi, I have this in mind and I think you can help me. Suppose that I have a pagin something like this: www.mysite.com/politics where I have a list of the current month news. Great, everytime the bot check this url, index the links that are there. What happens next month, all that link are not visible anymore by the user unless he search in a search box or google. Does google keep those links? The current month google check that those links are there, but next month are not, but they are alive. So, my question is, Does google keep this links for ever if they are alive but nowhere in the site (the bot not find them anymore but they work)? Thanks
Technical SEO | | informatica8100 -
Link Detox
Hey guys, I'm currently working on cleaning up our link profile and have been looking at several tools. Has any one used this from http://www.linkresearchtools.com do you think its worth investing in? Matthew
Technical SEO | | EwanFisher0 -
Is link cloaking bad?
I have a couple of affiliate gaming sites and have been cloaking the links, the reason I do this is to stop have so many external links on my sites. In the robot.txt I tell the bots not to index my cloaked links. Is this bad, or doesnt it really matter? Thanks for your help.
Technical SEO | | jwdesign0 -
Linking out?
First of all, sorry this Q is all in one block, but iPads don't like this site or vc/vs. When using the SEOmoz on-site keyword optimizer tool, it suggests at least one link to be to an off-site page. Would it be considered a link exchange if we linked out to an niche SUPER Authority sit that had a link back to our website? It seems like a naturally good strategy, but I'm afraid google may not agree. If the answer is no, there are many similar sites that mention our company in ver good ways, awards, etc.., but with no links. I would think this is a no-brainer. Personally I would like to eventually harvest all this press coverage to benefit our site. Btw, I was grey before I learned about SEOmoz, just like the rest of our niche. Now I'm shooting to be Snow White! Hopefully it works out. 🙂 I also wrote two landing pages that I tried to SEO the right way. I would love to hear your feedback to know if they are truly effective and if they are actually white. I think they are, but don't know "all" the rules of being white http://jamproa.com/ideology/product-innovation.php http://jamproa.com/industrial-design/what-is.php Thanks!
Technical SEO | | dmac0 -
A Puzzling Link
I'm stumped and I'm hoping some mozzers will be able to help. I run our company blog (http://scottymacblog.com/). The last couple of days I have noticed that the blog is receiving some traffic from cnn.com. I looked, but cannot find any mention of the blog on cnn. Adding to my frustration is that the content on cnn is constantly changing. Our blog doesn't do any sort of advertising and no one affiliated with the blog posts on cnn. As great as it is to be getting traffic from such a valued source, I have no idea why. Has something like this happened to (for?) anyone else? Any ideas on how I can research the source of the link? Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | EssEEmily0