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Just a " heads Up " the Original Poster was saying he had " 301 domains linking to his site, not that he has a domain 301ing to his site "

I've just come from this area for a recent client, Luckily for me it was only 700 urls total.

**I got all the links linking back to my site ( backlinks ) from: **

1. Google Webmaster Tools ( Search console )
2. Moz.com
3. Ahrefs.com
4. SEMrush

Added them all to a spreadsheet, downloaded an addon in google sheets called "remove duplicates" to remove same urls, once that was done, I put as much information for these urls as I could find, both what was already listed from those sites I got the backlinks from. Then I also went and visited every single one of them, listed if they were still working or 404, what the anchor text was, what the domain authority and page authority was and anything else to help, like was it a foreign site or a directory listing or comment spam.

I had over 75% of my backlink profile was nofollow or was a directory / comment spam.

So far I have disavowed 153 urls, I have more but want to do chunks at a time so if something really horrid and unforeseen happens I can reavow ( yes thats a real thing ) the urls a section at a time a wait.

I recommend doing this once to create a master backlink list, and just keep things dated and correct so you only have to add to it each month and keep up to date on your backlink profile!

Since backlinks are on par with content in terms of ranking there is no reason to not be so involved with backlinks.

In niche industries, I've found guest posting to be best.

You search for blogs that relate to your content, you read through their site because if you don't you cannot be personal in your request and that well look automated and you wont get an answer.

Tell them that you want to write for them and have a link back to your site and that you'd like them to write for you and include a link to their site. Then go about explaining why they'd even want a backlink and how it can help them.

This method has worked so far 10 out of 10 times.

Another method I've heard is to try to sponsor a local team, pitch an internship to a college, look for broken links to related content resources.

Thanks for the reply, I agree with your points but also felt I didn't explain the rest of the backlinks quality that well either.

they have around 450 backlinks, 102 use that keyword we want as main as anchor text, the rest of the links aren't all good either.

Most of the 411 backlinks are nofollow it seems, with around 150 of those links being follow. Many of the follow links are under 50 DA and majority of those are directory listings or comment links.

This is why I think they've been hit, since the the backlink anchor text for follow links are using our main keyword and aren't to very high quality sites.

Couple that info with the fact I've had google index that one landing page 3 separate times since our redesign launch a month ago and only that main keyword fails to gain rank, It did make a big jump when we launched the redesign from 72 to 58 then to 41 but 2 days after ranking up to 41 it dropped back to 62 where it has stayed for the week, moving up to 64 and holding.

This is while every other keyword has improved by 20+ ranks, just this one keyword isn't going anywhere, I have around 160 more links to define the DA, follow or nofollow and anchor text if follow, then I will be grouping those follow links into a best to worst list and disavow 10 of the worst urls at a time every week to see how things go.

What do you think?

Hello,

I jumped aboard as SEO for a client, who seems to of had been hit by panda and penguin back in 2012 of April, the panda part I feel I've fixed by creating better content, combining pages that were same topic into one, basically creating a better content experience that relates better to search terms users are searching for.

Once the site was redesigned and relaunched all keywords improved minus one, the main keyword they want to rank for. Created a landing page for it, that is very nicely optimized for that keyword and it's brothers and sisters, however that page isn't used by google since it's brand new with a PA of 1.

Doing a backlink audit I found 102 links out of 400 using the same anchor text as the keyword they want ranked for, they also have synonyms anchor text for other links too but not quite as much.

Most of those 102 domains using the main keyword anchor text are directories, in my opinion I'd declare all of them spam, however there are a few with DAs higher than 50, making me little more nervous to disavow, since I want to make sure we get out of the penalty if we were hit by penguin but also don't want to ruin the ranking for other keywords we're doing better with, since they are longtails and short, but very relevant to users.

How is the best way to determine if a site / directory is spammy enough that it's penalizing you and how could I approach the anchor text issue with backlinks? 99% of these links I cannot have changed, since they're directories I doubt many have had a human mess with them in a while.

Sidenote* If you're going to post a link as a response, try to summarize what that link will be about, as many times links are giving as an answer but end up not really providing the meat we were seeking.

Thank you!

I have had good results using individual product pages with the exception that products that only differ by color, size and material type, can be listed on the same page and create new options like color, size and material so you can list the item by its basic name but by users picking the option types they want, they get the blue 3 foot long granite slab, or the green, 2 foot wide concrete slab.

Have had my pages come up rather nicely from this, not to mention customers stay on the page and fiddle with options rather than click back or 10 other buttons on the site.

I tried adding onto a question already listed, however that question stayed where it was and didn't go anywhere close to somewhere others would see it, since it was from 2012.

I have a competitor who is completely new, just popped onto the SERPs in December 2015. Now I've wondered how they jumped up so fast without really much in the way of user content.

Upon researching them, I saw they have 200 backlinks but 160 of them are from their parent company, and of all places coming from the footer of their parent company. So they get all of the pages of that domain, as backlinks.

Everything I've read has told me not to do this, it's going to harm the site bad if anything will discount the links.

I'm in no way interested in doing what they did, even if it resulted in page 1 ( which it has done for them ), since I believe that it's only a matter of time, and once that time comes, it won't be a 3 month recovery, it might be worse.

What do you all think?

My question or discussion is why hasn't this site been penalized yet, will they be penalized and if not, why wouldn't they be?

**What is the good, bad and ugly of backlinks in the footer: **

1. Good
2. Bad
3. Ugly

I'd like to revisit this issue.

Why? Recently a competitor who was brand spankin new, propped their site up with this tactic, they had their parent company place a backlink to their site in the footer, so they get 160 some backlinks.

I saw this as one of the most boneheaded moves since what I read constantly says don't do this, google will throat check you.

However they aren't being penalized like I thought and read. In fact, they've surpassed my client's site in rankings. It's a bit perplexing to experience really.

So even though others have said :

Don't link externally in the footer

A couple of other rules that I see people violate all the time that Google has made painfully clear in the past few months: Don't link externally in the footer. Just don't. I'm not going to go into the reasons. Just don't do that.

What will happen to sites that link to other sites from their footer?

Hello,

This one I know since I just did it, only in reverse, had to remove someone since they didn't like the notifications.

Click on your circle icon for your account ( in the top right of the page ) or goto " Billing and Subscriptions " and then inside the blue bar click " Manage Seats " And then click " Assign a Seat ".

Hope this helps!

Very good points guys thanks!

• To Patrick: Yes, bad, bad backlinks in some cases, I'm actually in the middle of a backlink audit ( looking at our backlinks directories seem to have scraped us and or even a negative SEO campaign. ) So I want to remove the directories and other sad excuses for backlinks, especially ones using the anchor text of our keyword.
• As for the homepage title I only removed the 1st part of the keyword and replaced with a synonym that was already ranking for the homepage.  Reason I didn't want the homepage to rank, was that it simply doesn't give the searcher what they were searching for, yes it has the links, but not the meat. The subpage I want to rank for this, has about 6 additional paragraphs that explain the meat a searcher will want explained to them when searching for the keyword.

_I can send you a link to the site in private message. _

• To Dmytro: Yes it's a new page the subpage is, with a PA of 1, so homepage easily outranks it, and the homepage was ranking for this keyword before the redesign. So could be an issue of time google needs to see this page changed and the keyword isn't relevant any longer or I'll just need to build up the subpage to the point it takes back the keyword relevance.

_I can send you a link to the site in private message. _

Hello and thanks for the reply!

Backlinks / Anchor Text - ( Seems directories ( the cheap free ones ) have linked to us a good amount of times using our keyword )

Wonder if it will help to disavow some of these, because feel these are hurting us not just their quality but the pages the backlinks show up on changes based on how many backlinks they have, so the total number of backlinks changes + or - 1( or more ) because of these kinda directories.

Content - Homepage was completely rewritten upon redesign, the keyword we want to rank on the subpage doesn't appear at all, minus the anchor text for the link to that subpage. On the subpage itself, uses the keyword 13 times, as well in alt tags for images. Its hard to avoid the keyword being used that many times even, since it describes the material types as well.

Title tags are good, the homepage did have the keyword in it ( naturally ) but changed it to a synonym.

Seems a few backlinks using the anchor text with keyword will help pry the homepage away from the keyword relevance.

How do you feel about that?

Recently did a site redesign, 95% of the site and keywords are matching up in terms of keyword to what page is ranking for that keyword. All and all was expected and pleased with the redesign, except...

A subpage ( PA 1 ) really is a landing page for the main keyword in question is only one jump from the hompage, is it's own category and has the exact match anchor text to its page from the homepage, has a total of 14 total keyword usages.

The homepage has a PA of 28, mentioned the keyword once in the body text in form of anchor link, yet still steals the thunder from the main keyword. There aren't a ton of backlinks, but ones we do have 95% of them goto the homepage.

Subpage in question has a on page grade of A for the keyword, while the homepage has an on page grade of C. No backlinks at all for this page yet.

Subpage even uses the keyword as it's url name, so kinda at a loss to what else I can do, it's a new page, so alll I keep thinking is the issue is the page authority, it's linked to from other pages on the site.

Any suggestions?

Thank you greatly for the effort and time,

All the ideas and suggestions can help, it's certainly a long game.

This should get us started for a bit, anything worth something takes time to complete.

Thank you again!

Of course! We're all in the same boat, Any info I get will be directly passed on in this question section.

You got it!

The industry I have to be secretive about, but will say its a distribution company for commercial equipment that every commercial building needs.

That was the only part I wanted to be private, not the answers related. The rest of the conversation will be here.

I'll respond to this in private, but we can continue this here so it can benefit others.

I'd love some help in this department.

As most ideas I've read seem completely unrelated or unreasonable for a very niche industry, basically to the point I've been completely dumbfounded as to how to approach this.

Guest blogging is extremely hard to do in this industry where there aren't many blogs if any that would even be worth the effort to find them, since normal methods turn up little leads.

We have our manufacturers linking back, but other than that and the trickle we get from directory scrapers and links to actual content, backlinks for niche industries seem like a uphill battle.

Even the blogs here at moz and elsewhere on niche industry backlink building haven't really helped, due to the nature of what is being sold and the parent industry in general consisting of older than millennials and don't use the internet in a way that would assist us in this process.

In some senses seems we could acquire backlinks easier if we sold black eyes or bad luck.

Any advice in this case?

Also just remember even hunters get lost in the forest, knowledge is a quest not an end result.

Question everything

Thanks for that,

Yes I've been under the impression that any external link in a footer is going to be looked at questionably by google, especially if it's promotional in nature. Since it can indicate a paid link.

I've watched a few competitors using that same tactic to increase their overall DA for freshsite starting, they 1st ranked great and quickly dropped for various keywords relating to that link placed.

Thanks again EGOL & Gary

Are we talking about navigational urls in footers? The kind say a CMS will naturally place there?

Or is this about external sites, which I completely understand, I don't understand how navigational menus in the footer, say of the most popular pages on the site could be considered manipulation or a scheme.

I understand the original poster ( Gary ) is speaking of his site's url on domains he designs in the footer, but now this talk has me wondering the wording of google.

Thanks for the further clarification.

Not to barge in but I recently used these two sites coupled with analytics data to see if a drop correlated with a algo update.

I used http://feinternational.com/website-penalty-indicator/ 

Which will use estimated search traffic as far back as 2012 to present and overlays google algo updates ( color coded by type of algo ) so you can see what drop relates to what algo update.

I also used http://barracuda.digital/panguin-tool/

Which will ask to link to your analytics account ( read only ), you'll select the account, and the view and it will do the same as above, overlays the google algo updates to help you figure out what algo you were possibly hit by. ( also give further info about what each algo was and where to read more about it at )

If you don't want to use those kinda sites, your analytics data will be your best resource, looking for big drops after a steady flatline or increase could be an indication of a penalty, but really don't just assume, find out as much info about the algo update you think relates with your drops to see if your site really lacks in the area the algo was about.

Hope this helps!