Spammy backlinks pointing to my site

Discussion in 'Search Engine Optimization' started by afaast, Oct 30, 2012.

  1. #1
    Hey everyone. I've had someone point 1,194 external backlinks from 249 referring domains to a "fake" members profile page on my vbulletin forum with an anchor text not related to my niche. The backlinks have a bad trust flow and are almost double the amount of back links than my main forum homepage has.

    Would the best way be to just delete the members profile page then all the links will point to a 404 error page? Or is this a case where I should use that new google disvow backlinks tool?

    Cheers if someone can help me on this one!
     
    Last edited: Oct 30, 2012
    afaast, Oct 30, 2012 IP
  2. afaast

    afaast Member

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    #2
    Ok on further searching I've found my answer looks like I'll have to use the google disavow tool. Someone has tried some negative SEO on my site with all those backlinks with the same anchor text.

    I found a great method for finding the links to disavow which anyone interested can read here: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-to-know-which-links-to-disavow-in-google/50709/

    Because they all link to the same URL on my site I can use scrapebox to scrape my all backlinks and find all the offending ones. Then I just add the spammy ones to the google disavow list.
     
    afaast, Oct 30, 2012 IP
  3. Excel 8

    Excel 8 Guest

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    #3
    I suggest change the 404 pages to existing once...
     
    Excel 8, Oct 30, 2012 IP
  4. affilorama

    affilorama Active Member

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    #4
    Hi afaast,

    Thanks for sharing! Yes, the best option is to use the Disavow tool instead of having those backlinks point to a non-existing page on your site. Existing or not, the links still point to a page on your site. I read an article on SEOMoz about the Disavow tool and it's recommended to those who have has negative SEO on their sites.

    Have a good day!
     
    affilorama, Oct 30, 2012 IP
  5. afaast

    afaast Member

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    #5
    Hmm I've just gone through and identified all the URL's and then I did a pagerank check on them out of interest. Turns out 13 of the backlinks are on blogs which are legitimate and the posts actually have pagerank ranging from 1 to 3. Can't hurt to keep those ones I suppose :) I mean the anchor text is related to my niche so what ever I think they will end up benefiting me in the end.
     
    afaast, Oct 30, 2012 IP
  6. andersonsjohn

    andersonsjohn Banned

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    #6
    Good backlinks bring authority and help us rank and bad backlinks can actually get us penalized and removed from the rankings. So it is absolutely vital that we block the bad backlinks, but leave the good backlinks in place.
     
    andersonsjohn, Oct 30, 2012 IP
  7. seo-first

    seo-first Member

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    #7
    suggest you to use disavow tool from google webmaster tools.
     
    seo-first, Oct 30, 2012 IP
  8. ProSence

    ProSence Greenhorn

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    #8
    Of course, we should make use the new tool given by Google, disavow..
     
    ProSence, Oct 30, 2012 IP
  9. afaast

    afaast Member

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    #9
    So I had my list of bad backlinks ready and I was going submit them and now I'm not sure. The reason is that I will be removing about 1/3rd of the total referring domains that I currently have in the fresh index of my site.

    What would people do in my situation?
     
    afaast, Oct 30, 2012 IP
  10. rocksman

    rocksman Member

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    #10
    Yes, I have also suffering by same prob. some spammy sites are pointing to my websites and google doing down my website rank. I think its a crazy techniques of Google. Because if someone create link to spammy sites for his competitive site...and it makes the sites, fallen in rank...thats wrong
     
    rocksman, Oct 31, 2012 IP
  11. Philvault

    Philvault Active Member

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    #11
    You can't stop anyone blasting your site with low-quality links, that's reality. Huge, authority sites get spammy links all the time, yet their rankings remain high. What you can do is to more focus on your link building efforts and let Google do its job of identifying the bad sites.
     
    Philvault, Oct 31, 2012 IP