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Negative SEO on my website?

david d
Posts: 11
Joined: 04 Feb 16
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Negative SEO on my website?

I have just discovered over a 1000 links from dragplus.com to my tiny site http://www.mantranslated.com (which are 404'ing because the articles don't exist on my site). These pages also link to a big authority in the dating niche, yourtango.com (which does host the linked articles). See https://dragplus.com/post/id/38139338 for an example.

My guesses:
1. yourtango are doing blackhat back-linking and they've somehow misconfigured it.
2. They're doing negative SEO against my site.

What do you think? Why would they bother - they're huge, I'm a minnow. And do I need to disavow in google?
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maryt
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May I know exactly what you did in terms of link building? The only reason I see if you have left a link on a wrong site, which sends spammy backlinks.

You need to manually contact the site owners to remove the links on their site. If the spammy links are not removed a few days after you sent the email, then you can disavow them. You may refer here for instructions: https://support.google.com/webmasters/a ... 8487?hl=en
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magentoocodewire2015
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Hey, for this you have sent a mail to the web site owner for the removal of the spammy links. This issue may lead to blocking your websites against Google.
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david d
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Joined: 04 Feb 16
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Thanks for the replies.

The key points is that these spammy links have been built BY YourTango, NOT BY ME. For example, they have placed a link to "www.mantranslated.com/article-on-yourtango/", instead of "www.yourtango.com/article-on-yourtango/"

Weird huh? Incompetence on the part of their VA?
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maryt
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david d wrote:Thanks for the replies.

The key points is that these spammy links have been built BY YourTango, NOT BY ME. For example, they have placed a link to "www.mantranslated.com/article-on-yourtango/", instead of "www.yourtango.com/article-on-yourtango/"

Weird huh? Incompetence on the part of their VA?


I clicked on the sites you mentioned above but I could not find your weblinks on those pages. What I mean is if you are building backlinks, you may have left a link on sites that are considered spammy. These sites send your links to more spammy sites like you've mentioned above. It is quite hard to trace it unless you have recorded all the sites you've build your links to.
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david d
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I emailed yourtango.com. I didn't get a reply but it looks like they fixed it overnight - the dragplus links now go to them instead of me (as you've found out).

I have screenshots of the source code showing the wrong links but I'm not sure how to attach an image here. Anyway, doesn't matter. The main thing is that it was a mistake rather than anything malicious. Some poor VA has had to rewrite >1000 article links!

Thanks very much for the input.
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garfield
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Joined: 18 Oct 16
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I'm glad if you have solved the issue, however, if this happens again in future, you should know that you have ONLY 2 options:

1. Fix the damage (manually contact webmasters to remove the backlinks or use a paid service, such as DTOX, which can be very expensive and I really wouldn't recommend it for small sites, AND, once you try to remove as many as possible, you should DISAVOW them in GWMT. That's all you can do.)
2. Abandon your site and start from scratch.

It really boils down to those 2 options, and unfortunately, there's nothing more you can do about it... Negative SEO is probably the worst thing that can happen to anyone...

By the way, there is a third, "secret" option that you have, but this one is exclusive to a very small minority of webmasters.

Wanna know what it is? :D

It's simple - you need to have a buddy who works in Google. Call them and tell them to kick their a** ;-)

david d wrote:I emailed yourtango.com. I didn't get a reply but it looks like they fixed it overnight - the dragplus links now go to them instead of me (as you've found out).

I have screenshots of the source code showing the wrong links but I'm not sure how to attach an image here. Anyway, doesn't matter. The main thing is that it was a mistake rather than anything malicious. Some poor VA has had to rewrite >1000 article links!

Thanks very much for the input.
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carolinemurphy
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Hi there,

I totally agree with maryt. You should manually contact the site owners to remove the links on their site. If they did not remove them in a few days after you sent the email, then you can start disavowing them.
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proxyservice
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When some one makes attempt to lower a site's rankings in the search engines, damaging SEO happens. There are numerous ways that this could be tried. The most typical type of negative SEO that gets mentioned is link based negative Search Engine Optimization, however there are many other practices that unethical people can utilize to try and reduce your positions.
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tampata3
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Thanks for this questions. I also agree with garfield. Anyway, if you face again in future, you should follow her/his post.
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usmanshni23
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The entire SEO industry experienced a major transformation over the past two years. As a result, many online marketers have dramatically changed their strategies. Ranking high in Google for competitive keywords is not as easy as it was three years ago.

Because black hat SEO is harder and harder to execute, and less and less likely to deliver results, a new type of SEO has emerged called “negative SEO.”

This is a guide that will help you understand what negative SEO is and how you can protect your business from becoming a victim. If you are serious about building your brand online and keeping it safe, this is something you should not ignore.
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nickchernets
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Contact the site owners to remove the links, it will be the most effective what you can do
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This topic was started on Oct 23, 2016 and has been closed due to inactivity. If you want to discuss this topic further, please create a new forum topic.