Backlinks Issue, Looking for Advice Please

10 replies
Hello,

As the only person in my marketing and design department, I have no one to communicate with about SEO or if any problems develop.
I am still new to learning about SEO and would greatly appreciate any advice or help with my current problem.

I found that all of the backlinks for our cleaning business' website are all spam links. Spam websites of foreign sites, pharmaceutical sites, and the like, all irrelevant to our cleaning business are linking back to our website.

What is interesting is that the cleaning business website is only a homepage. There are no other pages located on the site and these backlinks are linking to a redirected 301 page that is made to be associated with the spam site and so it turns into a 404 page not found.

For example, the spam links are linking to our business like: domain.com/_media_/something.assocated.to.the.spam.website

I have read up on this backlink problem to find a solution, but I was returned with multiple different answers. One solution involved changing the page the backlink is connect to but, as stated above we do not have (and we do not want for that matter) a page like that. The second option was to have these links disavowed manually through Google Search Console's Disavow Links Tool.

As someone who has never disavowed links before, I am reading about how this should be done with caution. I am looking for expert advice to help me with advising me on the correct way to solve this problem.

Should my plan of action be to just disavow these links?

I greatly appreciate anyone taking time out of their busy schedule to read about my backlinks issue.
I hope to find the best action to take.
Thank you so much,
SoloSEOjourney

3/25/2021 Update:
I have reached out to the hosting company as it was a concern that the website may have been hacked. Luckily, the hosting company found nothing suspicious with the website having a good domain name reputation.

Thank you to everyone who has replied to this issue and has given me advice.
I am extremely grateful. Thank you all so much.
#advice #backlinks #issue
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  • Profile picture of the author Jamell
    Before you disavow the sites you might want to try contacting the owners of the site requesting removal of their sites only if there are a handful.

    If there are alot of spammy sites linking to your page you might need to disavow but it has to be done correctly.

    Google webmasters has a tool that will help you identify all sites liinking to yours then you can use a tool like semrush or ahrefs to find the spammy links .

    Like I said earlier if there are only a few sites linking to yours use whose .com to contact the owners and if you can't find any information about the owner to only then do you disavow.
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    • Profile picture of the author SoloSEOjourney
      Hi Jamell,

      Thank you so much for responding to my issue.

      This is great advice, I do use ahrefs. That is where I found that there are currently 35 backlinks that do not make any sense.

      On ahrefs when I group similar and select dofollow, 8 links are shown.

      Following your reply, you think I should try to contact the owners of these 8 sites and request removal? Is 8 considered just a handful? As you mentioned in the beginning of your reply that I might want to try contacting the owners if there are a handful. If these are sites that might be considered spam is it safe to try to contact them?

      Thank you again for taking the time to reply to my backlinks issue.
      I greatly appreciate your advice.

      Thank you,
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  • Profile picture of the author Alex Capra
    Hello, I would recommend creating a free account with SEMRush and doing a Backlink Audit. Here you can find the toxic backlinks add them to a disavow file and submit them to google. I have heard there is a bit of a grey area here whether you should be removing backlinks or not but I do it myself. I usually check the websites though to see if they are actually like the same on all the sites or not. You will see when you do it if you haven't already.
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    • Profile picture of the author SoloSEOjourney
      Hi Alex Capra,

      Thank you so much for the advice.
      I greatly appreciate you taking the time to respond to my issue.

      I will look into creating an account with SEMRush and will check the websites.

      Thank you,
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  • Profile picture of the author SirLouen
    Don't waste your time in this case with disavows. You can simply ignore them and it will be fine. Focus on building the right links to the right pages of your site.
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    • Profile picture of the author SoloSEOjourney
      Hi SirLouen,

      Thank you so much for your advice.

      In the case of not disavowing these links and focusing on building the right links, are there any signs I should look for in the future in case I feel like the the site is being negatively affected? For example, is there a specific analytic I should be checking on a regular basis to see if in the future these 8 spam links are causing a true negative effect?

      Thank you very much for taking the time to respond to my issue.
      I greatly appreciate it.

      Thank you,
      SoloSEOjourney
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  • Profile picture of the author SiteCheckerPro
    Did your domain have a history before you? How those links were created at all?
    I would go to DISAVOW as the last resort.
    Before that, I would find all pages on your website that receive spammy links. To find such, I would use MOZ.COM with their one month free trial.
    After I find all the URLs to which those links lead, I would use .htaccess 301 Redirect (on Linux) to a neutral website which such spammy links cannot hurt, like Facebook. Done.

    You are lucky that the links don't come to your index. In this case - DISAVOW.
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    • Profile picture of the author SoloSEOjourney
      Hi SiteCheckerPro

      Thank you so much for your advice.

      No, this domain doesn't have any history before me. These links were not created by anyone I know of or have spoken to. The site only has a homepage, there are no other pages created yet. As stated in my original post these links are linking to pages that were never created and have never existed in the first place.

      Thank you for taking the time to respond to my issue.
      I greatly appreciate it.

      Thank you,
      SoloSEOjourney
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  • Profile picture of the author DABK
    Your site was hacked... might still be.


    If it still is, first thing would be to get the hacker removed (your hosting company can help).


    When that is done, no new pages will be created, old pages will be removed (if any exit) and all the urls of pages that do not exist will, eventually, fall out of google's index without you doing anything else.


    Originally Posted by SoloSEOjourney View Post

    Hello,

    As the only person in my marketing and design department, I have no one to communicate with about SEO or if any problems develop.
    I am still new to learning about SEO and would greatly appreciate any advice or help with my current problem.

    I found that all of the backlinks for our cleaning business' website are all spam links. Spam websites of foreign sites, pharmaceutical sites, and the like, all irrelevant to our cleaning business are linking back to our website.

    What is interesting is that the cleaning business website is only a homepage. There are no other pages located on the site and these backlinks are linking to a redirected 301 page that is made to be associated with the spam site and so it turns into a 404 page not found.

    For example, the spam links are linking to our business like: domain.com/_media_/something.assocated.to.the.spam.website

    I have read up on this backlink problem to find a solution, but I was returned with multiple different answers. One solution involved changing the page the backlink is connect to but, as stated above we do not have (and we do not want for that matter) a page like that. The second option was to have these links disavowed manually through Google Search Console's Disavow Links Tool.

    As someone who has never disavowed links before, I am reading about how this should be done with caution. I am looking for expert advice to help me with advising me on the correct way to solve this problem.

    Should my plan of action be to just disavow these links?

    I greatly appreciate anyone taking time out of their busy schedule to read about my backlinks issue.
    I hope to find the best action to take.
    Thank you so much,
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[11654977].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author SoloSEOjourney
      Hi DABK,

      Thank you very much for your advice.

      I will reach out to the hosting company for help.

      Thank you very much for taking time to reply to my issue.
      I greatly appreciate it.

      Thank you,
      SoloSEOjourney
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[11655009].message }}
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