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
-
Backlinks from local businesses
Hello, I need to make sure I understand this correctly. Will it help my SEO if I: find local businesses with a good DA & low spam score select businesses that are somehow related to mine (Insurance Agency) offer to guest post and include a backlink on their blog ( ask them if they'd like to reciprocate) For example, businesses such as
Link Building | | laurentjb
Roofing companies
Contractors
moving companies
etc Please let me know if there's anything I'm missing? Many thanks1 -
Looking strategy for Backlinks
Hi, I'm a new bee here, Just wondering if we have some good but easy strategies to get a higher rank in PA and DA?
Link Building | | BeriCollection
My Store URL is [https://bericollection.com].
We are selling Shoes, Watches and smart gadgets.
We do shipping worldwide but need help from the community.0 -
Backlinks from The Sun, New Yor Post, etc...
Hello there, Some of my competitors have backlinks from very well-known newspaper websites like New York Post or The Sun. And it is really obvious that their backlinks are paid ones. On these news websites, they don't talk about ghost writing stuff or "partnership" for backlinks. They only write about banner advertising. So I was wondering how they can get a backlink from them.
Link Building | | Veptune
Do some writers sell those backlinks somewhere else, under the table? Are they in contact with SEO agencies who paid them and if this is the case, does their "manager" know it? or does the company directly have partnerships with SEO agencies? Basically, how to get a backlink from the NY Post or The Sun ? Thanks0 -
Why My Domain Authority Dropped
Hello sir i noticed that my DA is Dropped From 27 to 26 Of this website https://www.mytechtalk.org/. What is the reason I don't i try a lot to find a solution but not get . But I notice that in google webmaster tool the domain linking increased every time but on the Moz.com, not domain added even my DA Dropped. Even When i checked my site on https://ahrefs.com/ he shows approx 350 domain with high da and pa. help me i am getting frustrated. Is that Moz is crawling All domain Fairly or not ??
Link Building | | rishu57819 -
Are Sidebar Backlinks worth for SEO?
Hello! Let's use the following example: I have a blog (let's call it Blog A) and I find another blog in the same niche (this will be Blog B) that has higher DA and PA than mine. Will Google penalize me if the Blog B puts a link to my blog in their sidebar? Remember, the Blog A and Blog B are from the same niche. I ask this because Google says that links on sidebars appears in every page and in some pages the link may be useless. But if both blogs are from the same niche, there won't be pages where the links will be from different themes and with less relevance. So, is my thought correct: we can use sidebar links without caring about penalization ONLY if the blogs are from the same niche? Thanks in advance!
Link Building | | btqkelvin0 -
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 -
Hidden Backlinks
Hi, I hope someone can help me with this. We have a competitor who appears to be ranking No1 for a competitive search term with a very lame site and above some authoritative sites. He has been here for some time as well. When we check out his back link profile through OSE, Majestic and Ahrefs they show as only 3 backlinks from no PR sites. However, someone pointed out that they could be using a link network that is blocking every crawler apart from Google, Yahoo and BIng. I would like to know if there is a way to confirm this. For instance I know that we can use screaming frog to mimic Googlebot, however, if there a way to reveal the real backlinks to a site like this using any tools. Thanks
Link Building | | kirstyseo0 -
Is there a way to Rank above wikipedia?
Is there a way to Rank above wikipedia? Please share any strategies.. Thanks
Link Building | | DmitryP0