Does anyone have any suggestions on removing spammy links?
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Hi Everyone - and Ryan,
IRyan, thanks for all of your helpful info. I'm so desperate to understand this Penguin further...could you answer 2 questions for me please?
I got the "unnatural links pointing to my site" message in the google WMT last month and now my traffic is almost gone. Before I clean up, I need to udnerstand 2 things clearly.......
1 - What exactly are spammy links or "inorganic links"? Can you (or anyone) explain in simple terms what that means? How will I know which ones to remove?
Or is it safe to say that any link I built through article marketing is considered spammy or inorganic? For example, I hundreds of articles in places like Articlesnatch.com or Articlebase.com. These articles contain at least 2 links pointing to my site -- 1 to my home page and 1 to my T2 or T3 page. Should I try to remove them ALL?
2 - People say the other problem is having too many links with the "exact same anchor text". Does that mean having too many links pointing to the same page (like home page) using the same text in the URL - like MYHOMEPAGE.COM?
Thanks for any advice I can get.
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What exactly are spammy links or "inorganic links"? Can you (or anyone) explain in simple terms what that means?
Organic links are links you earned. They are usually links which are editorially added. Inorganic links are ones which were created to manipulate Page Rank. There are various examples and details which can be offered to further clarify the distinction but at a high level, that is the distinction.
People say the other problem is having too many links with the "exact same anchor text". Does that mean having too many links pointing to the same page (like home page) using the same text in the URL - like MYHOMEPAGE.COM?
No. If you use a URL link then the concept of exact match anchor text does not apply. If you sell sports watches and then build 10 links to your page with the anchor text "sports watches" that would be an indicator the links are not organic.
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Hi Ryan,
Great words. I am following the thread throughout. I need a help from your last post;
"If you use a URL link then the concept of exact match anchor text does not apply"
please correct me if I am wrong in understanding, this line means that if the anchor text is a URL then there is no issue of exact matching anchor text. Am I right?
What do you suggest that what ratios are Green, Yellow and Red signals for the exact match anchor texts in the back-links?
I am unable to find what back-link types are remaining after Penguin to be used? Do you think that if all the back link types like;
1- Forum Profile
2- Forum Posts
3- blog comments
4- Articles links
5- Author Bio
6- Directory Submission
are used in safe ratio of keyword mix, PR evaluated, Google Indexed sites then the site can gain a good ranking. what other back link types do you suggest and why?
I found three kind of links in the back link of my client site and mentioned them as paid links.
1-Link List
2-Advertisement
3-side bar
Am I right in my idea? what other links do you suggest are kind of paid links?
S
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The concept of anchor text manipulation deals with replacing the URL with text which is more targeted to the keyword for which the site is trying to rank. Editorial links mostly do not use ideal anchor text. Many simply use the site link while others use text that is not ideal for SEO.
When the site owner or a SEO builds links to their own site, one of the many signals that point towards manipulation is when the anchor text is perfect. Try this...check OSE for Google.com. Look at the anchor text. Filter out the image alt text and just focus on the anchor text. Of course you will see "Google" a lot but you will see a nice variation of terms used to link to the same page. That is because those links are natural.
Look at your client's site. When you look at the top 20 links and 17 of them show "Best watch" for the anchor text, that is a clear sign of manipulation. Either the site owner or someone working on their behalf likely created those links. Another possibility is the site owner influenced the creation of those links. These links are not natural, or at the very least are less natural.
I hope that answers your question. I will also add the suggestion you are focusing on the wrong area. The best way for a site owner to build links is....to create amazing content which others find useful / helpful / amazing then let the world know about it. If you wish to build more links, then embed yourself as a member of the community related to the site's niche and sparingly mention the site.
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Has anyone had any luck with contacting the hosting company; Specifically for 3 or more links from a "network" of sites from the same C class IP with absolutely NO contact information what so ever. If so, can you provide an example of the letter you sent? Thanks you guys
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If a website does not offer any contact information, the next step is the WHOIS information. Visit http://www.whois.com/
Site owners are required to provide their accurate name, address, phone number and e-mail when registering their websites. It is part of the ICANN rules. It is also required that this information be maintained up-to-date.
I am not a legal expert but it is my understanding if the information is not accurate, you can file a complaint with ICANN who then will attempt to contact the site owner. If they are not successful they can recall the domain.
Some sites, especially spammy ones, choose to hide their contact information using a privacy service. There is still a contact e-mail provided. If you send an e-mail to that address it does get forwarded to the site owner.
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What if the anchor text has a lot of variation but they are still exact keyword phrase, just a lot of different ones?
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Thanks Ryan,
Yes I'm using whois and a variety of other services to discover contact information but more often than not, I'm getting returned mail (address not valid). Some of the networks, especially those banned from Google have hidden themselves VERY well. One of my hit sites is 16 years old and I'm not embarrassed to say what seemed very ok years ago is now an issue along with what appears to be content scrapping along with a link to my site. I'm thinking it might be best to remove the "you can use this article as long as you give a link" statement that was popular in the past..RIGHT? ..
I'll keep digging into the whois info..along with other search techniques but I was hoping someone had some luck with hosting services replying to this issue. -
Ron, you are missing the key idea.
You should simply not worry about anchor text. Why? Because you should not have control over anchor text. If you earn authentic links from others, they will link to your site.
I control less then 5% of the anchor text for my clients. I would have to think further about the math but it may very well be less then 1%. At those low percentages, you are not at any reasonable risk of incurring a penalty related to manipulative anchor text links.
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The challenge with contacting a host is their hands are tied. There are only two ways I can think of for a host to potentially help you:
1. Provide the site owners contact information. That would be a breach of confidentiality. There is simply no reason for a host to share this information with you.
2. Remove the links to your site. If you filed a DMCA complaint regarding a copyright infringement, then a host is likely to help you. They may also assist with trademark complaints. Otherwise the site owner is free to link to any site they desire. The site owner is not breaking any laws by linking to your site. Therefore the web host is not able to take action.
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Thats what I thought from remembering issues back in "the day". Thanks for clarifying. Hmmm...seems like there is a career opportunity for people right now who want to go into the hunting down website owners business
I'd certainly pay a nice penny at this point. -
What about with your guest posting? Are you using anchor text or branded terms?
How do you target other keyword phrases that a page is not totally targeted for when Google also doesn't want a bunch of pages on a site that target slightly different but simliar keyword phrases? Is this a matter of creating great content i.e. blog posts, linkbait, etc. that target those different pages?
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The idea is the overwhelming majority of links to your site should be earned. People should want to link to your site. If a large percentage of the links to your site are self-created then I have two suggestions:
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review your website. Consider all aspects which may affect the user experience.
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review your content. Is it authoritative? Is it accurate? Is it compelling? etc.
Let's take this Q&A post as an example. SEOmoz has a great site. It is a custom built site. There are many aspects of the site which help offer a great user experience. It is still a work-in-progress, but hopefully some of the $18 million they recently received will be set aside for site improvements
Also look at the content of this article. It seems very helpful to many people based on the responses received. This Q&A is relevant to the site, it's a current topic, etc. If you can generate great content on your site, then you should earn links naturally.
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Exactly..when reviewing our site about a keynote speaker a few years ago we realized we didnt have much info that was helpful to people hiring a keynote speaker..so we added that..our own ideas on the subject..probably why we passed through the last Google updates so well. We have tons of original helpful content..however; I've learned we have to be better than that. There is soooo much our company has to offer that we need to get out there for our industry. We have been at the top 1% of it for awhile now in terms of dollars, experience etc. So once again, its time to revisit, refine, etc. but what this thread is about is removing links! And thats what i want to talk about here
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Ryan, I am 100% agreed with you, man if I look into competitor's links they are all or full of manipulated links. they are still there. I don't know why
I am agreed with you on the ".to create amazing content which others find useful / helpful / amazing then let the world know about it. If you wish to build more links, then embed yourself as a member of the community related to the site's niche and sparingly mention the site."and this is the best long term planning for a site.
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Rayan i have just found one of my clients has the same problem, I am glad of your previous expirence as i dont want to have to go thought such a long process.
Did you investigate if blocking those links by making the server drop the request will work. This seems to be a easier way if posible?
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Did you investigate if blocking those links by making the server drop the request will work. This seems to be a easier way if posible?
Alan, I had not investigated blocking server links. Anything is possible but after thinking about the process, it does not seem reasonable to me that Google would remove a penalty based on the block. Some challenges:
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How could Google see the block exists?
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Even if the block does exist, why would Google care? The types of links Google is penalizing are not likely to receive any traffic, which is why they are being penalized. If the links actually received traffic, Google would not have any problem with the links.
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After working through a few of these penalties I really feel Google is trying to achieve one of two goals. Either to punish webmasters who have violated their policies, or to clean up the web. Blocking the links does not achieve either goal.
With the above noted, it is just my intuition and logic. I have been mistaken before. Nothing beats testing and experience!
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Just worth a follow up, there are now multiple tools and services that help with this. I wont link to them because I own one of them, but just search google for either bad link removal tool or bad link removal services to find a bevy of companies assisting in the process.
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a) How did you contact Google, was it purely through reconsideration requests?
b) How did they respond back to you, was it whoever's email was linked to the domain in Google Webmaster Tools?
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During my initial case of working on this type of penalty in 2011, the first couple contacts were through Reconsideration Requests. After that the contacts were e-mail exchanges. They e-mailed me directly.
There seems to be a bandwagon of "Google is bad / evil / [insert adjective]". In my experience if you are sincere and put forth the proper effort, they will do what they can to help. In the overwhelming majority of cases I find people are not sincere. They are not sorry they cheated the system, they are sorry they got caught. They are not putting forth the proper effort, they are putting forth the minimum effort. When this happens, the relationship becomes adversarial.
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