I have an E-Commerce site with tons of categories.  These categories live on each product page for easy navigation of the site.  This means that the entire site has some 500 internal links with optimized anchor text.  Is this an issue and if so .....what to do.

Amazing ..... this huge update (from what I read on other sites and listening to Matt) and almost nothing here on SEOMoz.....What is up with that.

Sorry to hear things are still bad for your site.  We are still suffering reduced traffic and have done a ton of work on backlinks, created a list of very old ugly backlinks and a few new ones that frankly must be negative SEO (yea all you people that want to jump in and say no it is not negative SEO ....that is very rare to non-existent...dont bother....I dont want to hear it....your are wrong...you are as niavie as you are a fool).

We have now sent 1000s of emails and or filled out contact forms for link removals from these sites .....and gues what.....ZERO reponces so we are creating a disavow file and will try and come back here and let you know how it goes.

More on the negative SEO.....we have some recent links (according the MAN himself) that are super suspect.  We did not ask for them and there is really no reason for thse site to link us except competitors trying to pile on the already diminised ranks.  Hey negative SEO guys.....Get a life...

I would love to throttle some penguins.

I thoughs so ...just checking.  I get that the PR is only updated periodically.  I just frankly find is super hypocrytical to even index these sites.  In fact I will go further and say that if Google should either.

1. Just ignore links from sites like these as part a sites link profile.

2. publish a list like a wanted board an allow you to simple disavow.

I know once again I think they should think like me and I know this will not going to happen....so off I go to play the game some more.  Expect it to become harder and harder for small or even medium sized business to play this game.  In a few short years page one will belong to the large companies.

I am determined to fix the link profile of this site.  I found 52k backlinks..... Needless to say lots of them are old and the site no longer exists but at least once done I will have a cleaned up link profile.  A new starting point.

Thanks again Ryan

Signed backlink sloger jw

Ryan what do you think about directories like this

http://www.getbacklinked.com/

I don't think they pass the smell test but some do have thousands of pages index at google and even have PR from 1 to 4 on a few of them.

These are kind of like dmoz (a good idea turned joke IMHO).

My inclination is to request an unlink because I personally think that any site that just lists sites should be nuked from the internet.

I have been making as bad any site that has a submit your link or other such button in the top menu bar.

jw

Cool....I will stick to the ones we found that are not natrual if we dont get a reponce to remove.... I am still going to be amazed if any of these sites repond but out of 52k links I almost have the list of domains to contact.  Stuck the exports into a Microsfot Access DB which makes them easier to click and categories.

Cheers

So when I finally get around to disavowing some of these links should I include domains that are now parked or no longer have a functioning site.  That is to say the links are no longer active.  The reason I ask is there are many like that which are sites which were obvious link farms.....so it google holding those against the site even though those site are no longer active...... I could create a section in the disavow..and comment label it something like

OLD links that show up using various tools but no longer seem to function but we are including in order to make sure the link profile of this site is clean.

????

My plan was to use your last statement as my approach.  "if search engines did not exist, would this link be here"?  Said perfectly.  Does it mean I will remove some good links....well maybe but if google is not indexing a site then I suspect it is not giving me juice anyway and there are tons of links that google is not indexing.  This site does have some nice links so hopefully cleaning this up will get the site out the the box where penguins are stored.

I used netpeak for these status....great tool but worried me a tad as Malwarebytes blocks some outgoing traffic that tool is trying to send to their web site.  I assume just stat info and not the content of my hard drive....LOL

Thanks for the bing and AHREFs thoughts.  I will go grab them also, netpeak them and pull them in to the ACCESS database where I am making a superset list of junk.  Unformtualy the list is something on the order of 1000 links.  Give are take a few.

Thanks to the both of you for your help.  Sorry for the tardy reply as I was in transit.  The client has agreed for us to try and contact these sites and request link removal.  If that does not work then we will put a disavow list together and try to get this link profile repaired.  Then we will work harder on some quality links.

It is still hard to swallow that a practice that was once rewarded now requires money to fix....guess we will just caulk that one up to "Life isn't always fair".

I am just going to take Google Recent, Majestic SEO, and Site Explorer put them all together and get to work.

Ryan if you can share the name of the tool that would might give me a better handle on the actual age of the link that would be great.  I don't really want to share the links publicly and have my client to get 100 of calls.  If you are really curious I can PM details to you.

I suppose we would consider a reconsideration request if once these ugly backlinks are removed or disavowed the traffic does not return.  It is tough to think that something that was done 6 years ago now has such a huge cost.  I still think that if you are going to change such a fundamental rule (or finally actually inforce it might be a better way to put it) that you should allow people to simply reset their link profiles via the Disavow tool..... but hey .....no one is going to give me Matt's job anytime soon.

In the case of this site I watch the traffic fade starting the day of Penguin and it dropped more over the course of something like 5 days......It seems pretty clear Penguin implementation is the cause of the traffic lose also becuase long overdue deep on-page work did not help one bit.

Let the hours and hours of work begin....Ugh

I suppose one good thing about trying to get the links actaully removed is that traffic might start to recover during the effort as opposed to load up the disavow and wait.  In that sense we will start with the most agregious sites first.

The one thing I am still puzzled about is the 2012 backlink that are so harmful.  It is hard not to conclude this site is under attack by competitors.  I know everyone like to say this is rare but hey if you are being attacked then for your the stat is 100% ...not rare......why else would really scummy sites be backlinking to this site.  Please someone tell me a reason other than the 3 I have describe in this thread.

Ryan thanks again for all the discussion.  I will huddle up with my client and see how he wants to proceed. My only doubt that this is what is needed to escape the penguin update is we did not receive the unnatural links notice from Google.

Thanks much for the dialogue. Yes some time it is hard for me to be as dispassionate about this subject since I help customers with all aspects
of their web presence.  I don’t have 100s of customers and take a special interest in each one of them and get to know
them.

Trust me I would try to be a little more articulate than “Google Sucks” if I really wanted to get into that futile black hole.   If all I wanted to do was take a short cut and go for the perceived easy fix then I would have done that and not posted this and other posts I have made.  I have learned that to go slowly it to go smartly when it comes to reacting to SEO issue.  As a type A trust me this takes great restraint.

The tough thing as you know is that now this company has less sales and therefore less money to fix the mess.

I understand this past transgression has to be overcome but these recent links for porn sites and link farms are not my doing and truth be told those are the ones that have me mad.

There is only three reasons I can think for them

1. Ransom to remove the link.  I have read that this is going on.

2. Competitive Bad SEO.  I truly suspect there might be some of this by looking at the links from early 2012 and recently (pilling on)

3. Some perception that by linking to a site with decent PR that you life your scamy site up in the rankings.

With respect to taking the high road on getting links removed do you actually take the time to visit each site and look for a valid email address or do you simply send a mass email to webmaster@domain.com since all reputable sites should have either that or abuse@ as valid emails addresses and if they do not then shouldn’t that be enough effort spent to request links be removed?

I understand all your say and this company did pay for link farm nonsense.  They did not know better.  I suspect many of us dont know when our Doctor screws up.  We dont have the training.  A company 5 or 10 years ago paid for SEO and lazy SEO companies bought results on farms and got rich doing 1 hours work and charging $2k a month.  Matt basicly acknoledges this on the vid and basicly says he understands and you should work to clean it up.  Yes I know he says you made the mess so clean it up before you ask us to.  I get it.  I get it.  I hate it but I get it.

It's not a perfect world, I get that but since the rules changed I think Google should just let people disavow and not pay all this money to try and get these links removed.  That is my opinion.  Everyone has one......or 100...LOL

So you think companies that have backlinks placed on porn sites deserver what they get and should have to clean it up.  You think that is the responsibility of the reputable company that did nothing wrong.  Yes this company unknowingly participated in link farm nonsense but has not done sor for at least 5 years and is still gettting these links and they are not criminal.  They are hard working people that made a mistake.

Thasnks for the detailed anwers about your thoughts on the tool.

I guess what I will do is pick 20 of the really big scum bags from recent links and send an "Please ...Pretty please ...nice polite email and see what happens"  I will leave off the deserved PS: You scum bag....get a life.  It is just wrong....yea I know life is not fair.

Check out this vid

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM

Just like SEO wtih even higher stakes.

Thanks for the long reply.  We can talk about this a long time but it is like polotics in that you bring your life experence tot he discussion.

Let’s talk about what I consider link stealing.  A company that links to you to harm or hold you for ransom.   I did hear Matt say you have to make effort to get them to unlink you but frankly the idea that a reputable company has to spend hard earned money asking people that boldly place a backlink on their site which were never requested is just wrong. It is web equivalent of a hit and run or a kidnapping.   After carefully looking at some of the backlinks just before April 2012 and lately I am pretty convinced that this site has been attacked by the competition.   Why would a Cech porn site like to a reputable USA only e-commerce site.  This company should not have to put money into requesting those links be removed.  Google should allow a company to just disavow this type of attack.

I will go back to my customer and let him decided but my inclination is to just make a list of the link stealer and disavow them.
So beyond this philosophical  conversation let’s talk about the disavow tool.  I know it is new and perhaps I should just ice this effort  for 3 weeks but:

1. Do you think it is bad to list sites that might 404 but that show as 200 and ping but don’t pull up a site.  Will the site be penalized more for not figuring out which sites are currently active?

2. I am inclined to simply disavow all sites that are not indexed in Google.  See anything wrong with that?  I have looked at 100s of them now and they are all just the type of site that is a blight to the internet.   Ironically most of them are sites that just serve up AdWords.  Well hypocritical is really a better word.

Thanks for replying.  I have done extensive reading here on SEOmoz and I am aware of these concerns.

I am 100% sure this site was hit by  Penguin.  I watched the ranking drop in the 3 or 4 days folling Penguin.    Traffic is about 35% of what it was pre peguin. No webmaster message for Google.   I have worked extensively on on-page but this site is in trouble becuase of linking....well I am as sure as I can be....there is nothing 100% sure in SEO.

The link profile of this site sucks but it is a relevant ecommerce site and has decent traffic right up to Penguin..  Years ago the owner hired a couple of different Black Hat SEO's who just wanted his money so those links are still haunting the site.  Out of the 2534 backlink domains I have been able to identify about 1000 have no google indexed pages.  Yes I know that does not mean they are all bad but for sure about 1/2 of the backlinks to this site are hurting and not helping.

Recently created links are link farm silly stuff, even a Cech porn site   These make me think Bad SEO as we certainly did not ask for these links and the only reason any of thse links would have been create are either Bad SEO or a site that wants to charge to have the link removed.

As for contacting these irreputable scum bags.   No offence but that is a joke.  I am suppose to send emails to 1000s of these sites when they are just trash.  They will never take the link down and it will be a complete waste of time.

I do not plan to use the disavow indescremently.  That is why I am doing my homework and asking questions now.  I plan to make one list and then wait at least 1 month to see the results.

What I want to do is re-set the link profile of the site and then work on some decent back link building.  Don't you think the tool should be used for that.  I listened to Matt talk about this tool and it was clear to me that he indicated that you could distance yourslef from practices in the past you should not have been a part of .....that is what I want to do.

For this site there is also the question of it being under attack from competitors.  Take for example this site http://darwinsweb.com  Google shows that this site link to the site I am working on multiple times this month.  This site is PR 0 with one page ranked in Google (who know why).  This site is a virus and I did not ask to be on it and I will not write them and ask to be removed.  I want to tell google to not associate the site I am working with these type of scum bags.

Perhaps a better question to ask is what type of site should I not include in a disavow.

Like I said I found multiple domains that NetPeak shows all to the same IP address.  Should I include this or will Google already know about this type of nonsense and discount it.  Why should their be harm in telling google to not include a domain I know is harmful even if it is a dead site.

I heard Matt say you can use this tool as a bit of a reset button and that is what I am planning to do.  I did hear him say you are to contact these sites but come on....that is a joke...these sites I am talking about are so egregious they only exist as 1. black hat link farms, or 2. Bad SEO attack tools or 3. link randsome or all the above.   I can't believe Matt really thinks I should contact them.

With 35% of old traffic levels I have to do something meaningful.  Looking at the link profile there is litle doubt it is harmful.

I am trying to work up a list of Domains to disavow from old SEO black hat (long time ago) and I think some recent bad SEO against the site.  I found a few good articles here and started the process.  Very daunting even on a site that never had a lot of link work done on it.  One particular issue has my attention and need advice on what to do with it.

I find 100s of backlinks that all resolve to the same IP 72.215.225.9 .  Has anyone else seen this one.  These are sites such as mengems.com or http://www.downey-realestate.com .  I am using NetPeak Checker to grab stats on the backlinks after gathering backlinks for 5 different sites.  These site all seem to come from Majesticseo and sure enough if I ping any of them they return 72.215.225.9 on at first and then go not found.  They return a 200 in NetPeak .  I was hoping not open thousands of backlinks to see if they existing before I create my Disavow list.

Couple of questions.

1. Any harm in putting these on the disavow if in fact they really don't exist anymore?  Do the disavow police not like your list being longer than it needs to be ?  I am leaning to just leaving all of them off my list.  Seems I read something that says dont ask google to disavow something that no longer exists because they are not penalizing you for it.

2. If I start with the most egregious Bad  and ex-black hat domains and submit them, wait 3 weeks and the Penguin hit rankings do not recover at all then how to add to the list.  Do I leave all the original disavows on the list, add to it and resubmit ?

3. My first thought was to simple send a list of all domain that have no Google indexed pages regardless of return status code.  Basicly saying please clean the slate of this crap.....thoughts on this?

Thanks

jw

Thanks for the reply.  I gathered from additional resources that there is no one site. Nor any tool that properly evaluates them as spam sites so I guess I am rolling up my sleves to get the work done.

There are some obvious site I need to diavow so I will start with them.   I have not read about how you resubmit disavow but I guess you just add to the list and send it again.  I will try to make this first pass rather comprehensive.

I did read about another post which seems to indicate that one you have your list there is a tool to help you evalute the sites.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-check-which-links-can-harm-your-sites-rankingsI will try to post my experience with trying to use this method.