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Thank you both for your responses. I will definitely redirect only to relevant pages and if Google happens to reset my domain, that will suck, but it's better than being hit with a penalty! Thanks again guys.

Hi there. What we know for certain is that these kinds of signals show up in manual warnings delivered via Search Console, and are a signal that a human quality reviewer would pay attention to. Everything about exactly what Google is doing algorithmically has some element of guesswork to it, but this is a machine-detectable pattern that I would think would be very likely to be detected automatically and the links discounted. [Sidenote: it wouldn't be the crawler that did this - it would happen at some stage after that - just a semantic difference, but thought it was worth adding for clarity.]

unless you are really going ham on creating anchor text internal backlinks, I would focus on user experience first and foremost. If using the brand name in the link would make it easier for your visitors to navigate the website (and ultimately convert), do that. If links in paragraph form is more convenient than links in list form, do that. Without knowing your website, its hard to make a call but above is applicable to most scenarios.

Hello Mathew Edgar, To make it simple for you, we give you few steps here to implement in your client's website that could results in possibilities of no penalty from search engines [ especially from Google ] 1. keep the content & URL unique from other pages 2. Avoid flash or scripts that makes the web-page to load slower 3. Try to keep ONLY 3 - 5 Ads [ max of text based with low portion of images ] maximum in the web-page 4. Do not OPTIMIZE the page i.e., for keywords rankings, organic results, back-links etc 5. Give the images Name & ALT Text for easier crawling Also usually Bots just crawl a web-page / domain instead making clicks. Bots only make sure that the page is crawl-able with search engine [ Google ] guidelines.

Hey George, As you say, Google shouldn't be inferring ranking adaptations from your data, for your site (within your Google Analytics profile). If they use any data in that kind of way, it would probably be from Search Console (which is actually Google's data, from their side) If you can identify that it certainly is bot traffic, then it's unlikely that Google would move on it at all. They're very good at detecting fake traffic. Back in the day 'click-farms' used to be a thing, hundreds of people in third world countries (or a robot) clicking Google search results to try and increase CTR. If they've taken measures to filter that out (which they have) then 'dumb' bot traffic shouldn't impact you much That being said, if all the bot traffic slows your site down a lot and then causes real users to react negatively to their browsing experience, that could be something which Google might pin you on Your main thing to do is to really identify the traffic and what network domain it's coming from. If it looks obviously 'bot-like' then you can take measures to block requests from that area of the web. Be careful though, it might be a legitimate crawler, even Rodgerbot (the Moz crawler!) See if you can pin the traffic to a network domain in GA, and then an IP-range in something like AWStats or server-log based analysis software. If you can say, yeah that IP range is probably that network domain and my vague idea of what it is, is X - then you'll be in a much better (more informed) place to proceed

seoman10, I do realize that DA is not a Google metric, my thought was that SSL (or TLS) would be a factor in calculating the DA score, especially because of the recent changes Google has made with secure/not secure sites. Thanks for your time! I consider this answered

Hi, I just got a client who has had the same problem as you do, different numbers - drop and goes back up again. I did some analysis as he also had taken some SEO services. Well, I wouldn't blame the backlinks that he had but yes, it was excessive backlinks produced during the Dec 2017 - Mar 2018. Which I believe wasn't required at all. Did some fixing with backlinks and now he is back up again. When it comes to your case, Do not rely 100% on third-party tools like SEMrush they can be right up to some extent but not 100%. Second, season or competition could be another thing that may have pushed you down during a certain period of time. Third, what does GSC says, High impression or Clicks? It's okay to have a higher impression but If clicks are somewhere around the same in comparison to organic traffic that it's okay as you do not get the 100% exactly the same data both in GSC and GA, numbers may differ up to 5%-10%.  Also focus more on High Impression VS. CTR. Do some comparsion what was working in Feb or June or anyother high months and what's not working this month. Which queries dropped in CTR or Impression etc. Do some analysis. Last, we all know there was an update in August that has impacted most of the websites and experienced the dropped in traffic and such small updates are still impacting the sites. My suggestion: Do an audit, go through the backlinks, check your keywords, see which pages were working good? What keywords went down? What could be the reason competition or do you need to change ON page.

Hello kekepeche, Citing your sources is good practice & you'll;l avoid aby potential penalisation. Google is clever enough to 'know' the original [older] content source Use regular links since you're citing the original authors If you can get your writer to rewrite some source content to make it 80%+original this would be better for your SEO campaigns as it's technically original content so will rank better - Though, take care as not to infringe copyright

I'm sorry to hear about the trouble. If you can post the URL, that would be helpful in sorting out the issue.

Yes - I would remove/no-index rather than redirect. The URL's don't have any equity so it's not worth redirecting them. Thanks!

Nobody?

Hi there, so just to confirm - you have a page that is redirected to your homepage (I'm assuming not with a JavaScript redirect) and your Google Analytics is reporting that page is getting traffic from 12-reasons-for-seo.com? This sounds like Measurement Protocol spam, I'll explain why I think that based on the way GA works but to reassure you - if that's the case then all it's messing with is your analytics. Google doesn't use Google Analytics data to inform search rankings - in terms of "bounces" Google just uses data about whether a searcher, on a Google page, clicks one result and then comes back to the search results page and clicks on another. Google Analytics records page views based on receiving a message from some JavaScript code that runs on (ideally) every page of your website If the page is redirected before it loads (as in not a JavaScript redirect) that code won't have time to run, so Google Analytics won't see you having a page view on that page, even if someone tried to access it Measurement Protocol is a way you can manually send hits to Google, it's a way of recording all kind of things that are difficult to reflect in terms of pageviews and events on your site (i.e. someone bought a product over the phone or someone viewed the same page on your app) Anyone can get your GA ID by looking at your page code and once they have that, they can send fake pageviews to your Google Analytics. If it's true that all of these pageviews are landing on a page that doesn't even load before it's redirected (that's important, because if it's a JavaScript redirect your GA code might have time to run) then the best solution for this is probably to find what all of these hits have in common (sounds like you've already found a couple things) then create a Google Analytics filter for your reporting view which excludes this traffic as specifically as possible (to reduce risk of accidentally dropping real traffic)

Thanks Everett!!

If Google detects that your website contains social engineering content, the Chrome browser may display a "Deceptive site ahead" warning when visitors view your site. You can check if any pages on your site are suspected of containing social engineering attacks by visiting the Security Issues report. If your site is flagged for containing social engineering content, follow these steps: Check in with Search Console. Verify that you own your site in Search Console and that no new, suspicious owners have been added. Check the Security Issues report seeing if your site is listed as engaging in social engineering. Remove deceptive content. Ensure that none of your site's pages contain deceptive content. Check third-party resources included in your site. So make sure your site is clean and request a review here https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/security/hacked/request_review?visit_id=636777391086456088-3885393656&rd=1

Hi Serge, Google removed the warning from our pages and they are back to normal. However Google didn't give any info on what exactly caused the issue. Probably they marked by mistake and removed the warning. We have removed the meta descriptions after receiving this warning which were added two weeks back before this issue, but I don't think they have anything to do with this. Even the third party http links are not the culprits as they are still at the pages. Thanks

Hi Yasin, I hope you're well! You can create a disavow file that contains potentially spammy domains, but I would note John Mueller’s statements from a Google Webmaster hangout in November 2017. “With regards to sites that don’t have a manual action for link issues, we do try to take those links out of the equation automatically when we can recognize them.” - JM Do you know if your site was manually penalized by Google? You can confirm this in Google Search Console: google.com/webmasters/tools/ Dashboard > Search Traffic >> Manual Actions. Furthermore, Mueller goes on to explain: “If you’re unsure as to whether or not Google is actually taking those into account or kind of taking those out of the equation then the disavow file is a great way to kind of get peace of mind and to say well I’m sure these won’t get taken into account by any of Google’s algorithms. And that way you’re absolutely certain that you’re not associated with those links to your site that you can’t remove or kind of change.” -JM Marie Haynes, wrote an awesome start to finish guide on how to build and submit your disavow, which can be found here: https://moz.com/blog/guide-to-googles-disavow-tool Note: the article is a bit dated, but the basic premise still applies. Hope this helps! You may also want to make sure everything was redirected properly when you merged sites and switched to https. Are the old domains still being indexed? All the best, Paul

So as the title implies does building backlinks work in improving the rankings in Google? At the end of the day, Google is just a crawler who follow and classify links/ web pages. Links still matter, what has been changed is the way Google evaluate those links but still are one of the primaries sources to Google. But how about other backlinks that are of higher quality? Well build backlinks is one of the most time-consuming tasks these days on the SEO world, is not something that you make after ending the On-page optimization. In fact, in my case, it is a Full time tasks with its own budget, tools, schedules, providers, and calendar. So a simple example for that if I want to build a backlink for a page a do not just send an email for outreach ( that is for newbies) I have been built my own database with categories, tags, niche, topic, requirements ( every webmaster/blogger has its own requirements) Tools and services that strongly recommend you Buzzstream or Ninjaoutreach The Hoth **** -----------> (Link Building Services) Authority Builders  ** --> **(Link Building Services) Gotch SEO ** ----------> (Link Building Services)** So if you have the budget and the resource the best way to do it is create the content lets take an example. You want to launch an article about "how to make money online". The first thing that you need to do is create an outstanding article ( minimum 3000 words ) and then create an outreach campaign about that specific topic this can be _How to make money with Upwork _ How to make money with affiliate marketing _How to make money with Google Adsense _ So basically you need to publish that content on third party websites pointing to your target page "How to make money online" also to keep you safe you need to invest on social signals ( shares and so on) to give credibility to your site (trust). If you keep in mind all the budget required to do that, you will realize that is not cheap or a secondary tasks These are some basic numbers Buzzstream payment --> $99 Content Broker or Constant Content  --> 20 to 50 per article (in the best scenario) Infographics or Media Assets  --> 20 to 50 VA for permanently or part-time outreach ----> Depending on the experience can be from 600 to 1500 As you will notice is not cheap or easy and if you want to make it like a pro you really have to start to see it as a project, not as a task. If you don't have the money, the time or the resources you can use some of the services that I mentioned above such as The Hoth. Another factor that you need to keep in mind is the competition level of the topic that you want to rank for. A local website for a plumber it's far easy to rank if you compared with an Affiliate website ( in weight loss) or a dropshipping website or even worst a Shopping website Hope this info will help you Regards