21 replies
  • SEO
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If my site has dozens of backlinks from sites that are considered duplicate content or farm sites- will these backlinks hurt my site?

I paid people to get me backlinks but now I am afraid those backlinks might be hurting my site as it has gone down in the SERPs

Is there anything I can do about it?

I know what you're thinking, "don't use those people again"
#backlinks #quality
  • Good question. I've heard that google claims you can't get penalized for the quality of the links coming in to your site. If this was possible, you could just build poor backlinks to your competitors site and get them banned. Basically, you can only be effected by things that are in your control. You can't control what sites link to you, so I wouldn't worry about it.
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  • Profile picture of the author DeafAndy
    I agree that they probably aren't hurting you. More likely it is one of two things.

    1. Those backlinks are being devalued as low quality or de-indexed altogether.

    2. You've been hit by the recent algorithm change that has cut traffic in half to some of my sites and doubled it for others.

    The only solution is to build more links. Hopefully some quality links like a guest post.
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    • Profile picture of the author Enfusia
      What's happened is that G has devalued anything it feels is a content farm. It has also thankfully devalued From Domain links (your site linking to your own page) which was giving the Authority sites an unfair advantage.

      Now those links still count but not very much, which is why some people will tell you some of their sites went up and some down.
      They lost value for the content farms but passed old authority sites that were above them only because of the links from site.

      G also made relevant content even more important which is another + for the niche marketer that has not been auto blogging.

      I hope that helps shed light on it.
      Patrick
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  • Profile picture of the author John Williamson
    There is no such thing as a harmful backlink...
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  • Profile picture of the author jonnyhardbaked
    It will not hurt your site. But it will be useless.
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  • Profile picture of the author bermuda
    Incoming links will not probably hurt your website, especially if it already has been powered by enough quality links from good sources. Google may simply devalue some links found pointing at websites these days rather than lowering their ranks because such a thing would create a totally confusing atmosphere online for all admins.
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    • Profile picture of the author pensrule
      Originally Posted by bermuda View Post

      Incoming links will not probably hurt your website, especially if it already has been powered by enough quality links from good sources. Google may simply devalue some links found pointing at websites these days rather than lowering their ranks because such a thing would create a totally confusing atmosphere online for all admins.


      Does any have any input on Spiderizon? Any good/bad results?
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  • Profile picture of the author newbielab
    The links won't hurt. One of my sites that's been on page 1 for months dropped to page 5 with the algo change. I did some digging and noticed that there were tons of sites using my content (they didn't even bother to spin it) which hurt my site. I'm in the process of removing those articles and replacing them with new ones.

    Start investigating your content first and see what's going on.
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  • Profile picture of the author northseo
    Banned
    [DELETED]
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    • Profile picture of the author Speedie
      Getting back links from bad website will not hurt you (it is useless), but if you link to any bad site then your site may get hurt. Hope i am correct.

      Thank You!
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      • Profile picture of the author RedWaterDub
        Originally Posted by Speedie View Post

        Getting back links from bad website will not hurt you (it is useless), but if you link to any bad site then your site may get hurt. Hope i am correct.

        Thank You!
        So Do you mean...If I have a link on my site to a website that has duplicate content, it could hurt my site?

        Because what I did was check the sites above me and used the sites that were linking back to them to link back to me but after I copyscaped them I see some of those links come from sites with duplicate content. I am confused because they obviously haven't hurt the sites that are above me which have the same backlinks. Maybe google hasn't caught up to them yet?
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  • Profile picture of the author TuffeyJ
    You will get high rank soon, I also have the same problem when I hire a link builder but as all links got index my site get good rank.
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  • Profile picture of the author Tim Wallace
    You can't get hurt from these sites, but I think you also can't get high valuable backlinks from thse source because they are duplicate content or farm sites.
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  • Profile picture of the author GyuMan82
    Inbound links won't hurt your site. However if your links are coming from link farms, they probably won't do your site much good anyway.
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    • Profile picture of the author Tashi Mortier
      If I get this right, then you already had all those links before. Then came the Google update and then your site dropped.

      I think what happened is not that your site got punished. But the links are worth less now and though your site naturally ranks lower.

      Link value before: 300 x 10 = 3000
      Link value after: 30 x 5 = 1500

      (Those numbers are totally made up, just for visualization)

      So if other sites didn't have links that were devalued after the update, they just remain the same and yours became less valuable.

      I come to think that "punished" means "link value adjusted". I don't think that your site would drop further down the rankings just by adding new links.
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  • Profile picture of the author anusales
    First of all if you can then please try to remove those links which gives harm to your site. You can mail them, chat or by phone convincing them to remove your link. I know its a sticky one but if u can then it's better. After that start SEO campaign again n this time just do white hat SEO like - Clipmark submission,web 2.0 submission, Forum posting, Social bookmarking,Blog submission, Classified ADV, Article posting and many more updated SEO techniques.
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  • Profile picture of the author talksmart
    How can we understand this websites have quality backlinks.
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  • Profile picture of the author sekarbuffett
    use social bookmarking sites like digg,stumbleupon,reddit,facebook,twitter etc..,i already used and get more backlinks
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  • Profile picture of the author App Developers
    We need to make sure we are creating quality backlinks. It is easy to let this happen and I am always leary about paying anyone to create my backlinks. If you have gone down in the SERPS after giving it a while to reflect in google, I think the proof you need is already there.
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  • Profile picture of the author nunugenius
    at least 10 web 2.0

    and make it linkwheel

    and every web 2.0 should bookmarked it

    ane every rss web 2.0 should bookmarked it too
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    nothing signature

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  • Profile picture of the author rain21
    won't harm your site, but search engines will no count them
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  • Profile picture of the author Devid Farah
    Hey RedWaterDub,

    I'm really sorry to hear that.

    However there isn't that much that you can do but to email the people and ask them to remove the bad links.

    There are really two types of links that trigger a site penalty:

    A) A lot of links from known link farms
    B) A lot of links quickly.

    I have always said that in every website launch strategy, two things must be included, a information product for sale, a mini info product to give away to build a list and finally a budget set aside for PPC.

    Critical to start building traffic. Adding residual revenue sources such as Adsense can come after.

    Good luck!
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