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.
Too many dofollow links = penalty?
-
Hi. I currently have 150 backlinks, 90% of them are dofollow, while only 10% are nofollow. I recently hit position #10 for my main keyword, but now it is dropped to #16 and a lot of related keywords are gone.
So I have a few questions:
1. Was my website penalized for having an unnatural backlink profile (too many dofollow links), or maybe this drop in positions is just a temporary, natural thing?
2. Isn’t it too late for making the backlink profile look more natural by building more nofollow backlinks and making it 50%/50%?
Thank you!
-
1. Was my website penalized for having an unnatural backlink profile (too many do-follow links), or maybe this drop in positions is just a temporary, natural thing?
- Maybe you experience Google Flux which is normal.
2. Isn’t it too late for making the backlink profile look more natural by building more nofollow backlinks and making it 50%/50%?
- Try to analyze your competitor's backlink profile and analyze them,maybe they build more high-quality backlinks than you. Try also to inspect your ONPAGE score compared to them.
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
-
Is this campaign of spammy links to non-existent pages damaging my site?
My site is built in Wordpress. Somebody has built spammy pharma links to hundreds of non-existent pages. I don't know whether this was inspired by malice or an attempt to inject spammy content. Many of the non-existent pages have the suffix .pptx. These now all return 403s. Example: https://www.101holidays.co.uk/tazalis-10mg.pptx A smaller number of spammy links point to regular non-existent URLs (not ending in .pptx). These are given 302s by Wordpress to my homepage. I've disavowed all domains linking to these URLs. I have not had a manual action or seen a dramatic fall in Google rankings or traffic. The campaign of spammy links appears to be historical and not ongoing. Questions: 1. Do you think these links could be damaging search performance? If so, what can be done? Disavowing each linking domain would be a huge task. 2. Is 403 the best response? Would 404 be better? 3. Any other thoughts or suggestions? Thank you for taking the time to read and consider this question. Mark
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MarkHodson0 -
New Flurry of thousands of bad links from 3 Spammy websites. Disavow?
I also discovered that a website www.prlog.ru put 32 links to my website. It is a russian site. It has a 32% spam score. Is that high? I think I need to disavow. Another spammy website link has spam score of 16% with with several thousand links. I added one link to the site medexplorer.com 6 years ago and it was fine. Now it has thousands of links. Should I disavow all three?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Boodreaux0 -
Is it Okay to Nofollow all External Links
So, we all "nofollow" most of the external links or all external links to hold back the page rank. Is it correct? As per Google, only non-trusty and paid links must be nofollow. Is it all same about external links and nofollow now?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Are All Paid Links and Submissions Bad?
My company was recently approached by a website dedicated to delivering information and insights about our industry. They asked us if we wanted to pay for a "company profile" where they would summarize our company, add a followed link to our site, and promote a giveaway for us. This website is very authoritative and definitely provides helpful use to its audience. How can this website get away with paid submissions like this? Doesn't that go against everything Google preaches? If I were to pay for a profile with them, would I request for a "nofollow" link back to my site?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jampaper1 -
Is it worth getting links from .blogspot.com and .wordpress.com?
Our niche ecommerce site has only one thing going for it: We have numerous opportunities on a weekly basis to get reviews from "mom bloggers". We need links - our domain authority is depressing. My concern is that these "mom bloggers" tend to have blogs that end with .blogspot.com or .wordpress.com. How do I screen for "reviewers" that are worth getting links from and how can I make the most of the community we have available to us?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Wilkerson1 -
Does anyone have any suggestions on removing spammy links?
I have some clients that recently got hit by "Penguin" they have several less than desireable backlinks that could be the issue? Does anyone have any suggestions on getting these removed? What are the odds that a webmaster on these spammy sites are going to remove them, and is it worth the time and effort?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RonMedlin3 -
Would linking out to a gambling/casino site, harm my site and the other sites it links out to?
I have been emailed asking if I sell links on one of my sites. The person wants to link out to slotsofvegas[dot]com or similar. Should I be concerned about linking out to this and does it reduce the link value to any of the other sites that the site links out to? Thanks, Mark
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Markus1111
