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Finding the Bad Links

by longrobnc
6 replies
4 months ago, I started building links for my 2 websites. One is a national site and the other is local. I built links for both sites in the same fashion. Some of the links are from the same sites. The links are made up of paid directories and contexual links in articles. The national site has done very well. It really took off. However, my local site actually lost a lot of good traffic. How can I figure out what link may have caused the issue?
#bad #finding #links
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  • Profile picture of the author YourGoToWriter
    You can use Semrush to check. It has many great features and one of them is to check your backlinks if there any broken links or bad links. You can also a complete website audit using that tool.

    Loren
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    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      Originally Posted by YourGoToWriter View Post

      You can use Semrush to check. It has many great features and one of them is to check your backlinks if there any broken links or bad links. You can also a complete website audit using that tool.

      Loren

      That is not what he was asking for.
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  • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
    Originally Posted by longrobnc View Post

    4 months ago, I started building links for my 2 websites. One is a national site and the other is local. I built links for both sites in the same fashion. Some of the links are from the same sites. The links are made up of paid directories and contexual links in articles. The national site has done very well. It really took off. However, my local site actually lost a lot of good traffic. How can I figure out what link may have caused the issue?

    My initial guess would be that the two things are independent of one another. It just doesn't make any sense that similar links would cause one site to drop and the other to rise.

    There is the possibility that some of the links you grabbed for the local site were bad, but generally Google is not punishing sites for bad links anymore. They are really just ignoring them. In extreme cases, they are penalizing sites.

    I would dig into your rankings and traffic by page. If you can identify which rankings you lost or if there is a specific page or pages you lost traffic for, you might be able to figure out the cause.
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    • Profile picture of the author longrobnc
      Thanks, Mike. I don't think I did a good job explaining the issue. I've been digging in to my analytics and it seems that my organic traffic has actually gone up. The issue is that my local traffic has gone down. Im doing local business on this site and out of town traffic does me no good.

      I have lost some top positions to Home Advisor, Angie's List and Yelp. I'm not sure these positions are regainable. I used to average over 120 Leads a month online. Now, I'm getting 60. My organic leads have tanked and I can't get paid search to bring Leads. Click fraud is absolutely killing me. My call extensions and call only ads are recorded. Out of my last 75 calls, well over 60 are marketing or robocalls. I'm lost.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
    Similiar links are unlikely to be penalizing in any way to a local result BUT they can be less effective because local results take into account local considerations (are you getting links from sites specified by google as relevant to that geo area).

    so the sites that jumped up over you are simply doing better than you doing worse.

    If you aren't you should also be watching mobile results as thats whats being searched through the most particularly local searches.

    If you really are seeing such a huge drop off in leads your entire SEO campaign and content should be revisited as the algo si tweaked every year.
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    • Profile picture of the author longrobnc
      Thanks for the reply, Mike.

      I find this very irritating. I use Ahrefs and I'm getting outranked in many instances by sites with a far lower UR/DR and in some cases with no backlinks. I have 250 reviews and I get my ass handed to me by sites with 5 reviews and no do-follow links.

      This weekend, I started geo-tagging some images on my pages and changed the targeting on my Google Places Page. Not sure if things take effect that fast, but my leads jumped up today.

      What I find baffling is that when my leads are at an all time low my traffic overall has gone up. The traffic value on Ahrefs has gone from a value of $3200 to $6800 in the last 30 days.
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