Victim of negative SEO
-
Hello,
I'm one of those people that got the "unnatural links" message from google.
Since i run my site from the very first day and always was a one man business i know all the ins and outs of the website.
Basicly i have never ever used a seo company to submit my site anywhere.
Never ever i used any shady tactic to get better ranks.
The only thing i did was trading traffic/links with real active websites, being daily updated, high traffic, etc etc.So. After i got notified in webmaster tools i started digging into a list (provided by webmaster tools) to find out why i got this message (meanwhile i lost 75% of my se traffic in past 3 months)
After searching for hours i found out that in the past 2 / 3 months my site has been spammed on about 150 forums (completely dead forums with nothing but spam on it)
There was no logic at all since my site got linked with the most ridiculous and unlogical word phrases.
My site is adult related and all spam links contained word phrases like "bangladesh mobile" or "rock girl" or "animal abuse" or "ringtones" etc etc.if i ever would be so stupid to start spamming my 7 year old strong business i would at least use titles that would make sence.
anyway.
I can't do nothing about these forums, i don't own them, i can't erase them and if there are any owners, they simply don't respond.
I made a list of all the forums and send it to google but the only response they come up with is "there are still unnatural links". I hardly believe they did anything with that list i send them.I don't know what else i can do and was hoping that somebody could advice me on what to do here besides sending google messages on a daily base.
cheers
-
Unfortunately i share the same thought about this mess.
-
i already tried
-
gonna do some work on this and hopefully get result.
-
-
Unfortunately there is work to do to clean up this mess. You want the links to your site removed. A few approaches you can take:
1. Contact the site owners, let them know the URLs of the pages which link to your site and request for the links to be removed. I know many site owners will not respond or help, but some do. Carefully document your efforts.
2. If these sites all use the same forum software, determine if the software is licensed. If they use vBulletin (for example) you can contact VB and give them a list of the sites and request they check to see if these sites are using a licensed version of VB. It is possible someone bought 1 license and used it on many sites which would be software piracy. Hopefully VB will do the work for you of contacting the web hosts and having these sites removed.
-
I provided you the url in a PM
The spammy forums are ALL different urls BUT with the same software.
Yes i only exchanged like 75 links myself BUT i'm pretty sure there are about 4 times more all around the web, spread by people visiting my site etc etc. Just like people post links to youtube on external sites, but nothing to worry about, this is normal..You don't have to register to post a response on those forums btw. A real spam heaven for spammers. Created ONLY to spam.
It is clearly a bot who did this, all posts made are similar, only the title of urls are used different.I don't think any human would spend time doing this unless it was a very desperate webmaster who tried to kick me out of results.
-
A few questions:
-
Can you share the URL of your site? If it is an adult site, clearly mark it as such so no one receives any surprises.
-
How many quality links have you earned since your site began?
-
These spammy forums you mentioned, are they 150 different forums? It is a lot of effort for someone to register on 150 different sites just to spam you. I would suspect all these sites are related in some way or there is an automated way to post on them. Do they all use the same forum software? It is possible for a script to be written to auto-register on forums and post spam. I am asking because if we can figure out how this spam was generated, it may help with figuring out how to remove it.
Normally 150 spammy links are not a problem for a site, but if all you have is 75 exchanged links and these 150 spammy links with nothing else, then that can be a concern. A first step would be asking all the link exchange sites to "nofollow" their links to your site. A link is supposed to be an "independent vote" for your site. These links do not represent that and instead are a business exchange similar to advertising.
-
-
from over 100 links i discovered only 2 were linking to an internal page. I removed those internal pages already but i'm afraid the direct homepage links are hurting badly.
-
Are those "spammy" links you've identify pointing to the home page or internal pages ?
-
Hello Ryan,
First of all thank you for your valuable comment.
All responses i had so far on many other forums were "you must be a spammer" or "it's your own fault" based on nothing. (probably lack of intelligence from the one who responds)Anyway,
I can say 100% that in over 6 years i'm running my site i never submitted the site to any free directory.
I have never hired anyone related to a seo company or any other link builder.
Also never submitted articles to blogs or other stuff related to submitting.I don't own other sites offering similar content but i do trade traffic with other sites offering similar content, some of these partners (i call them partners because i do business with them since i started this website years ago) also link to me with "follow" links.
I probably have about 75 of these links, all gathered in a time period of over 6 years. 75 links spread over 6 years should not be something to worry about in my opinion, especially when these sites are mostly quality sites too.All these other sites i do business with have a same way of doing business. It's all about sending traffic to eachother, creating content and offering those to visitors.
All these sites i mentioned are still ranking page 1 for the keywords our niche is based on exept i'm the only one not in top 100 right now (While i was ranked in top 3, if not nr 1, for over 6 years)..
That is why i think the reason why only my site got hit are the 150 (spam)forums i mentioned before.
Thanks
-
Hi Rasit,
I have responded to numerous site owners who felt they were a victim of negative SEO. After research, none of them were. You could be the exception but it is not possible to make that determination without a review of your site and its backlinks. Some questions to ask:
-
have you submitted your site to a bunch of "free directories". Many site owners perform this task thinking it is ok when in 99%+ of the cases these links violate Google's Guidelines.
-
Have you or anyone else (developer, "seo company", link builder, etc) created links to your sites from blog comments, forums, etc. While it is possible to create these links in a quality way by sticking to moderated sites which are relevant to your niche and posting meaningful replies, a large percentage of sites post this type of content in a spammy manner which creates manipulative links.
-
Have you submitted articles to various generic sites or article directories? The same ideas as comment spam apply.
-
Do you own other sites offering similar content which then point follow'd links back to your main site?
The above are a few of the primary methods used to create manipulative links. I find many site owners participate in the above techniques not realizing they are damaging their own site with these activities and causing their own penalties.
The only thing i did was trading traffic/links with real active websites, being daily updated, high traffic, etc etc.
This is definitely a concern and could be considered manipulative linking depending on how it was implemented. It would more likely be manipulative if these links are site wide.
Google penalties are a complex SEO issue. There is not a few simple steps which can be offered in a Q&A reply that would be meaningful. The first step is identifying the link penalty and then resolving it. It is not 100% clear whether you simply received a warning or whether your site was actually penalized. Based on the drop in traffic you mentioned it does seem likely your site was penalized.
My advice would be to work with a SEO consultant to remove the link penalty. As when hiring any professional (accountant, attorney, mechanic, etc) be sure to learn about the SEO's experience handling your issue and do not simply hire anyone you find. Another caution is be careful of any "Independent SEO Review" sites. Many industry professionals have repeatedly discussed how any SEO can be rated #1 with these type of companies.
-
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
-
A few important mobile SEO questions
I have a few basic questions about mobile SEO. I'd appreciate if any of you fabulous Mozzers can enlighten me. Our site has a parallel mobile site with the same urls, using an m. domain for mobile and www. for desktop. On mobile pages, we have a rel="canonical" tag pointing to the matching desktop URL and on desktop pages we have a rel="alternate" tag pointing to the matching mobile URL. When someone visits a www. page using a mobile device, we 301 them to the mobile version. Questions: 1. Do I want my mobile pages to be indexed by Google? From Tom's (very helpful) answers here, it seems that I only want Google indexing the full site pages and if the mobile pages are indexed it's actually a duplicate content issue. This is really confusing to me since Google knows that it's not duplicate content based on the canonical tag. But - he makes a good point - what is the value of having the mobile page indexed if the same page on desktop is indexed (I know that Google is indexing both because I see them in search results. When I search on mobile Google serves the mobile page and when I search on desktop Google serves me the desktop page.)? Are these pages competing with each other? Currently, we are doing everything we can do ensure that our mobile pages are crawled (deeply) and indexed, but now I'm not sure what the value of this is? Please share your knowledge. 2. Is a mobile page's ranking affected by social shares of the desktop version of the same page? Currently, when someone uses the share buttons on our mobile site, we share the desktop url (www. - not m.). The reason we do this is that we are afraid that if people are sharing our content with 2 different url's (m.mysite.com/some_post and www.mysite.com/some_post) the share count will not be aggregated for both url's. What I'm wondering is: will this have a negative effect on mobile SEO, since it will seem to Google that our mobile pages have no shares, or is this not a problem, since the desktop pages have a rel="alternate" tag pointing to mobile pages, so Google gives the same ranking to the mobile page as the desktop page (which IS being shared)?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | YairSpolter0 -
Negative seo problem
Hello, Someone attacked our website with negative SEO and our website fell drastically. If i use bing webmaster tools link explorer i see dozens and dozens spam links but if open a link i don't find this link in that website. Is it possible that someone added the links and then remove thouse links when we got hit? Or is it possible to hide the links that they don't show up on webpage but they are still there? How can i use Google disavow links tool if there is no links in thouse websites but Bing link explorer shows spam domains pointing to our website. BR, T
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | otsinguturundus0 -
Any SEO value in gTLD redirect?
So, my client is thinking of purchasing several gTLDs with second level keywords important to us. Stuff like this...we don't want .popsicles, just the domain with the second level keyword. Those cost anywhere from $20-30 right now: grape.popsicles cherry.popsicles rocket.popsicles companyname.popsicles The thinking is that it's best to be defensive, not let a competitor get the gTLD with our name in it (agreed) and not let them capitalize on a keyword-rich gTLD (hmm). The theory was that we or a competitor could buy this gTLD and redirect it to our relevant page for, say, cherry popsicles. They wonder if that would help that gTLD page rank well - and sort of work in lieu of AdWords for pages that are not ranking well. I don't think this will work. A redirected page shouldn't rank better that the page it links to...unless Google gave it points for Exact Match in the URL. Do you think they will -- does Google grade any part of a URL that redirects? Viewing this video from Matt Cutts, I surmise that a gTLD would be ranked like any other page -- if its content, inbound links, etc. support a high DA, well, ok then, you get graded like every domain. In the case of a redirect, the page would not be indexed as a standalone so that is a moot point, right? So, any competitor buying a gTLD with the hopes of ranking well against us would have to build up pagerank in that new domain...and for our purposes I see that being hugely difficult for anyone - even us. Still, a defensive purchase of some of these might not be a bad idea since it's a fairly low cost investment. Other thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jen_Floyd0 -
Web domain hurt seo?
does having the "web" prefix in the domain name, such as in web.pennies.com/copper hurt SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | josh1230 -
Seo for mobile and apps
I have a client with a website who's URL is a very common name (most people say this phrase daily). My questions are: How would you best SEO for this site given the common nature of their URL They want to move to mobile and are wondering if their mobile site needs different SEO then their main page Is there a way to SEO apps?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | StreetwiseReports0 -
How to create SEO budget?
If I see the site which has 8,000 links from unique domains (RDD in Market Samurai). How much could it cost to build such amount of links? How long does it take? What SEO budget will be based on these data?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rboychuk0 -
Advertising links hurt SEO?
I'm working with a publisher who said that having DFA links on his site will hurt his SEO. He is taking my link and pointing it back to his site and then to mine. Does that sound right to you?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GFTMarketer0 -
The SEO process...step by step
In what order do you carry out your SEO? do you start with keyword research or competitor analysis or is it on-page and then on to link building, do you concentrate on article submissions and then move on to social networking? List your step by step process here.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IPIM0