Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Rankings Dropped After New Backlinks.
-
I have a low-traffic website (under 100 unique visitors per day) and I've encountered a strange issue started yesterday morning. I acquired three back-links, one of these back-links is contextual and the other two are site-wide. The site-wide back-links are from PA 40+ blogs. It looks like the back-links are already indexed by Google.
Despite these new back-links, my rankings across multiple keywords have dropped several positions. I'm new to SEO, but I would assume new back-links would improve my rankings. None of these back-links are low quality links, they are from real established blogs with high domain and page authority values.
Could anyone give me insights into why my rankings may have dropped with new back-links?
-
Hi poke1! If Gaston's replies helped, mind marking one or more as a "Good Answer?" It'll get him some bonus MozPoints, and it's helpful for us.
Otherwise, how can we be of more help?
-
Got it, thank you!
-
The links are new (only 2 or 3 days old) and all of them are DoFollow and all links are from relevant blogs.
In my opinion it's too early to impact that much in rankings.
The site-wide links are branded links (not rich anchor text links), I don't see how branded site-wide links could warrant a penalty.
That's why i've stated that some people believe that it might get you a penalty. It depends. In this case, being branded will cause not harm. You should've said that were branded.
There are many blogs which list their favorite websites on their sidebar, it looks to be common among average bloggers. Should I ask these bloggers to remove the links or should I wait for 2/3 weeks and basically see what happens.
Yeap, let's wait a little longer. And no, in the case that are branded there is harm.
Could it be that Google is just "shuffling" my website around after they noticed new back-links and I am on the downside right now and may rebound? Is this something that happens?
I dont think that this "shuffling" is only related to the backlinks. It may be a reason. There is no garatee that you will remain in the old position, or if you will stay in a different. I'd advise you a little patience. And dont make any major changes so to be able to analyze after.
Best Luck.
GR. -
The links are new (only 2 or 3 days old) and all of them are DoFollow and all links are from relevant blogs.
The site-wide links are branded links (not rich anchor text links), I don't see how branded site-wide links could warrant a penalty.
There are many blogs which list their favorite websites on their sidebar, it looks to be common among average bloggers. Should I ask these bloggers to remove the links or should I wait for 2/3 weeks and basically see what happens.
Could it be that Google is just "shuffling" my website around after they noticed new back-links and I am on the downside right now and may rebound? Is this something that happens?
Thank you for your response.
-
Hi there,
tl;dr; Wait 2 or 3 weeks to make sure that the problem is not caused by the backlinks. I'd worry a lot about those site-wide links.
It's really hard to analyze how much some backlinks have impacted in your SERPs. Even more difficult is to see changes in such short notice. Three things to say here:
- Site-wide links. There are lots of people saying that those asure you to be penalized. My opinion, it depends. You should take special care of your backlink profile It doesn't harm to have some siwte-wide, but it shoudn't be the majority of your links coming from those sources.
- The PA's backlinks. That metric is not thar reliable to ascertain a good/bad impacto in your rankings. There are lots of other analysis to be done. Keep that in mind.
- How did you find out those new backlinks? Dpending on the backlink checker tool, you should check how long have them been there. Also, are them DoFollow?
Remember that rankings may vary for other reasons that yours. It is likely that some of your ranking competitors are gaining strenght or google made some update on the algorithm that is crushing you.
Best of luck.
GR.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Spammy no follow backlinks - what should I do?
There is a individual/company that is creating lots of spam sites in my niche. It doesn't seem that they are trying to rank for any keywords, so I'm a little confused as to their purpose, but here's what they're doing. They scrape the top 10 Google results for each keyword and create a page - so if the niche is "widgets", they scrape the top 10 ranked sites for 'widgets', 'blue widgets', 'red widgets', and so on. A 'results' page is created for each keyword, which is linked from a home page. The results page always contains 10 websites - text is the site metadescription or similar. Each website gets a nofollow link back with the page title used as the anchor text. The host sites all have the keyword in the domain name - e.g www.widgetsxyz.com. The sites are thrown together but interestingly have a very crappy but individual logo (like 90's clipart). The host sites all have high DA/PA due to some very extensive link spam pointing to the sites, with very targeted keywords. There is seemingly no purpose to these sites that I can see - no other 'followed' links on the page or site. Whoever is doing this is churning out tens, if not hundreds of these sites. Any ideas what might be going on here, and whether I should be disavowing these sites (even though no follow). The fear is that they could switch the links to do follow, and get all the major players penalised in one fell swoop. ???
Link Building | | johnohara0 -
Backlinks through dofollow commenting
I'm interested in building backlinks to my photography business site by leaving good, engaging comments on other photographers' DoFollow blogs. Is this a good idea? Is it worth the effort? Through a little research, I've managed to locate more than 40 dofollow photographer blogs that have a domain authority of 35+. The idea is to take an hour or so a week to leave 10-20 comments on their blog posts. Would you consider this a good strategy? I rank on the first and second page of most of my keywords that I'm working on, but I want to rank 1st or 2nd on them. I used the keyword finder tool on google adwords to find the keywords that are the most searched for in my area. Surprisingly the competition is not large, so I'm fairly comfident I can get there. I've already optimized my site substantially and I'm looking into link building. Thoughts?
Link Building | | studio35design0 -
How to index Backlinks Fast in Google!
I Made few backlinks with my keyword but they are not getting index and it has been for 15 days. Do you have any idea that will help me out to solve this problem and also to index back links quickly.
Link Building | | rohitdeveloper0 -
Do citations count as backlinks?
Hello, So I may have a simple question- do citations such as yp and manta for an example count as backlinks? So if they do, would this be a natural link so good for seo? or a citation where it may be a backlink, but not very helpful for seo backlink profile? Thank you to all
Link Building | | Berner0 -
Does this count as a backlink to my category page?
I am ranking high with a certain category page and I am reading that I need backlinks to that page. It is going to be a challenge to get a backlink to that specific category page but how about this? Category page URL: www.mysite.com/category/name Backlink to this URL: www.mysite.com/category/name/specific-blog-post (EDIT: Apparently these types of links don't exist! I went into the category page and clicked on a blog post and it just gave me the www.mysite.com/blah-blah-blah) Will that count as a backlink to the category page? Right now I am only getting backlinks to these blog posts: www.mysite.com/this-is-a-blog-post Any help appreciated! EDIT: Well I guess now my question is worthless. But if you have any input, it would be appreciated.
Link Building | | dealblogger0 -
How important is the originating country of backlinks?
How important is it that you gain backlinks from websites in the same country you're targeting? Scenario: You have a website targeting users in Japan. How important is it that backlinks to your website are from Japanese websites? Do you need a majority of links from Japanese websites to rank well, or will you do OK with 25% Japanese links and 75% links from other countries? According to Majestic, sites for popular Japanese brands like tsutaya.co.jp and seiyu.co.jp get more links from US sites than from Japanese sites.
Link Building | | AdamThompson0 -
How to remove backlinks?
Hey guys, With all this anti over optimization movement going around with Google, I decided to do a link building profile audit. I see some pages with PR 0 and some pages that expired. My websites are not penalized at this moment, however I do want to avoid this at all costs. What can I do? Could a backlink from an expired domain penalize my site?
Link Building | | nrv0 -
Creating Backlinks On Behalf of Client
I'm on my first SEO project with a law firm. I'm at the stage where I am doing competitive backlink research on other law firms that my client gave me. I saw a blog site called typepad. It has a high domain authority so I was going to recommend to my client that they set up an account and blog away! Since it's a law firm, I am not qualified to start blogging on behalf of my client and I know they are extremely busy so now I have to "ride" my client to get busy and start creating content. I feel like I want to do more for them on the blog side to keep things going but not having a law background, probably not doable. Question: Do most SEO's do the blogging for their clients, farm it out or keep pushing their clients to do it? I also want them to sign up with articlebase but the same thing is going to happen. I have to push them to write articles. I guess this is my job? -Bob
Link Building | | Czubmeister0