Getting Out of a Bad Community
SEO Question: When I did a related search on Google it said that my site was related to some gambling sites. How do I help my site no longer be related to these sites?
Answer: It sounds like you may have a spammy link profile that needs cleaned.
Site Content Cleanliness Check:
Do a site:mysite.com search in Google for your domain, while also searching for a few offensive words to ensure nobody has added spammy pages and / or spammy outbound links to your site.
Outbound Link Profile:
The first thing you want to do is look at who you are linking to. If you are linking to any off topic or spammy stuff get rid of those links. If you are not linking out to any industry authorities link out to a few authority sites in your industry to help search engines understand what sites your site is related to.
Clean Up Your Inbound Link Profile:
Stop renting any links that associate your site with bad sites (ie: have co-citation with spam).
The next thing you may want to do is consider looking through your backlinks in Yahoo! while searching for offensive words (ie: casino, poker, gambling) to see if you have any dated offensive links that you may need to request be removed.
Build Up Your Legitimate Inbound Link Profile:
While you are taking down the bad links also look to make sure you have plenty of good links that help put your site in the community it belongs in. Submit your site to a few of the major trusted directories, get other locally or topically relevant authoritative links (industry magazines / bloggers / trade associations), then use tools like hubfinder, touchgraph, MyBlogLog, Alexa related sites, the Google Directory, and other similar sites that help organize link profiles and/or visitor profiles to define communities.
When possible get links from those quality sources. If it seems like your site could not get many links from those quality sources then do what you have to in order to be considered comment worthy and link worthy. If you don't know how to do that, do the following:
- read the book Purple Cow
- read the article When Unique Content is Not Unique
- track the news in your community to see who is getting referenced and linked at (and why)
- participate in your topical community
Comments
RE: The next thing you may want to do is consider looking through your backlinks in Yahoo! while searching for offensive words (ie: casino, poker, gambling) to see if you have any dated offensive links that you may need to request be removed.
How does one approach them most effectively?
What if they refuse to remove them?
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Aaron:
Do you think the problem could stem from your host, other domains sharing the IP address or your Class C?
Could the site literally be living in a bad neighborhood.
Most of the time I have seen the related sites fuction show sites that shared link co-citation data, but good call jonah. I am sure in some cases that can also be a problem.
I remember something like that happening with a (bigger not to be named here) hosting company where their subdomains were getting hi jacked and they were full of spamsense garbage and bad sites. This is great info to keep in mind for helping any new client. Find the obvious problems at first!
In the process of restructuring my link campaign. I had about 300 reciprocal links at one point and now I have about 200 outbound and 100 reciprocal links with in about 7 months.
I assume your main point is to maintain your link campaign and take out the trash when needed.
Just bought the Purple Cow and read the article you referenced. Great help!
Wow, I wish I had had access to this post a few months ago. I had been working super hard on my site, and Google hated me.
Eventually it boiled down to the fact that (being a ding-bat) I hadn't been keeping an eye on my outbound links, and some of them were going to super spammy sites. I cleaned it up, and I could see a difference almost immediately. I still have a long way to go, but understanding how REALLY vital solid, trustworthy link building is is vital.
This is a GREAT post Aaron, thanks
I have to side with Graywolf on this one...acknowledge the obvious but don't exploit the situation. I also have to say the blog post & discussion are important from a rhetorical standpoint, because while the choice to not exploit Britney is obvious, others among us may face a similar situation that is not so clear cut.
For those looking to clean up the outbound link profile on large sites, the MSN/Live linkfromdomain: operator can help you locate bad outbound links you may have forgotten about or never knew were there.
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