Can do-follow backlinks or a redirected domain hurt SEO?

[cjbay]

I made a new site with a new domain about 6 months ago. It was ranking well and receiving about 100 visitors a day from some content I posted about 5 months ago (40 different pages with content). All of the visitors came from Google and visited different pages.

This month, I started to join do-follow forums, and each day, I would post on each one. I only added a new signature once a day. So I was posting on about 30 different forums on any given day, but only adding my signature link to one each day.

Around this time, I also redirected a parked domain to this website. The parked domain was receiving natural type in traffic.

Today, about a 2 weeks after I started doing these things, my visitors went from 100 to 3. One of my pages that was on Google's first page is now on the 20th page for the same keywords.

Anybody have any advice on what could have caused this? I know do-follow links are usually good, but do you think Google doesn't like too many do-follow signatures posted in a certain amount of time? I tried to keep it down to 1 a day for this reason, but do you think that was too much? Or maybe not enough no-follow links to balance things out so it looks natural?

or maybe the redirect?

p.s. It's not either of the signatures I have posted on this forum. But all the forums were page rank 3 or higher on different topics. I posted to about 12 of them in 12 days.

What's your opinion on this?
Thanks

 

[Entrepreneur888]

Give it a bit, sometimes Google can shift your site around and you will come back ranked higher. Building links to your site from quality sources is important, I think forum links are fine. They are not considered "bad neighborhoods".

Try looking for other relevant google trusted sites that are in your same niche and talk to the admins to see if they will send you one way links, (reciprocal is ok but not as valuable) (You could offer to send them links from another site or strike some kind of deal depending on your niche)

Another thing you could do is shoot up to 10 ezine (or other trusted article directly) article links to your site to see if that shakes it up.

As for the parked page being redirected I'm not really sure If this is a great idea. Why not throw up a mini site and have it linked that way?

Regards,

 

[cjbay]

Thanks for the response Entrepreneur. That gave me a lot of insight, hopefully that's the case and they'll re-rank me again.

Well I did have it redirected to a mini site, which was basically just a 700 word article I wrote, with a few adsense ads around it and a decent design. But Google disabled the ads on that site and said that type of site is not acceptable and warned me not to do it again. I've been using adsense for 3 years and that was the first time that happened. I don't know much about mini sites but thought that would be acceptable since it was original content. I didn't have a main menu or contact page so maybe that was the problem. The visitors are around 12 to 15 years old so I don't think affiliates will work as well. I'll probably just park it again or maybe try someone other than adsense.

Thanks, rep added

 

[enlytend]

Getting knocked back 20 pages is usually a penalty. Things to check:

It's possible they think the links are spammy for some reason - a LOT of that type of penalty is link-related. Did you buy any paid links? Are any of your other links on sites known for selling links? Any of the sites they're on have issues per Google's guidelines?

Any chance your choice of anchor text in the signatures pushed your use of a keyword into the spam zone?

Are you selling links or linking out to any bad neighborhoods? Checked your site against the webmaster guidelines? (Especially the "Quality" section?)

How did you do the redirect? Anything dodgy about the redirected domain? Bad history?

Does webmaster tools report any issues? Any chance there's malware injected into your site?

 

[aotgroup]

hi, whats a do-follow?????

 

[Entrepreneur888]

Thanks for the response Entrepreneur. That gave me a lot of insight, hopefully that's the case and they'll re-rank me again.

Well I did have it redirected to a mini site, which was basically just a 700 word article I wrote, with a few adsense ads around it and a decent design. But Google disabled the ads on that site and said that type of site is not acceptable and warned me not to do it again. I've been using adsense for 3 years and that was the first time that happened. I don't know much about mini sites but thought that would be acceptable since it was original content. I didn't have a main menu or contact page so maybe that was the problem. The visitors are around 12 to 15 years old so I don't think affiliates will work as well. I'll probably just park it again or maybe try someone other than adsense.

Thanks, rep added

Did you have a privacy policy enabled? This is a must with Adsense sites. Also I would go with a bare minimum of 3 pages of original content.

How many blocks of adsense did you have on the page? This could have also been a problem..

All in all I think you are better off building a minisite over redirecting a parked page. You can easily build a few pages, having a contact page is important for ranking, as google has made a big push to discount MFA sites in the last few months.

Regards,

 

[enlytend]

Well I did have it redirected to a mini site, which was basically just a 700 word article I wrote, with a few adsense ads around it and a decent design. But Google disabled the ads on that site and said that type of site is not acceptable and warned me not to do it again.

I missed this in my first reply - redirecting to a site that doesn't comply with their guidelines could easily explain the penalty.

Re Adsense: Not knowing what your site is, I can't tell you why it was banned, but it probably was NOT for lack of a privacy policy because so far they're been very lenient about that. Content? Popups? Traffic source? Read the program policiescarefully and I'm sure you'll figure it out.

 

[stevemack]

We can see there are lot of things happening in search results continuously by changing positions just because of the New Search Engine Caffeine, as these changes are not permanent. You can get your positions back / other reason is that your site is in Sand Box.

 

[thebutler]

New site possible sandbox

I know you mentioned the site was six months old but it still might have been hit with the dreaded sandbox from the big G. Track your keywords that are bringing any traffic and see if they are starting to move up. A site like seoserp.com is good to see all the serp results in one place.

 

[WebIntellects - Rob]

hi, whats a do-follow?????

These are the kinks which allow bots follow them and count them for seo.

 

[webdevelopement]

hi, whats a do-follow?????

These are the kinks which allow bots follow them and count them for seo.

I totally agree with you. Inserted four links in signature and asking what is do follow.

I think redirection is what matters for your domain. Wait for a while and check your SERP hope you will get a traffic again.

 

[irorymen]

well it can happen with many reason . Often 30 signature links in days for a new site is more than enough and if you are getting such number of links per day then you have to varies your anchor text .Hope it is a google dance and site would come back soon

 

[amelen]

I'd recommend giving it some time.. sounds like the google shuffle.

 

[seoservices]

i don't think 30 link per day is too much for a 6 month old website. there may be some other reason try to find out.

 

[weslygibson]

hello dear, same happens with me too. i have a website astrodesigner.com, its keyword was on the 1st page for last 3 months but last 10-12 days it fall to page 15 and yesterday it came back to 1s page, but today when i check it was not on the 1st page. so i will advice you to wait for 4-5 days and then lets see what will happens.

 

[seotogo]

I've had trouble with parked domain redirects in the past and have fixed several customer sites in the rankings just by removing the redirects. This is definitely worth trying.

 

[DoctorTree]

thanks for such a nice discussion
really helpful and i finally came to know that how much do-follow backlinks are improtant

 

[nmr86]

dofollow won't hurt, its impossible to hurt, what if a competitor starts a new site and put dofollow links to you site.. that should be impossible..

to check if links are follow or nofollow you can see this backlink checker tool, which is free to use

 

[Jerry_lowe]

Do-follow links never hurt. But a redirected domain link can hurt.

Never experienced that so can't tell you exactly.

 

[PeterRossy]

yes, they can and they will
all the nofollow external links from your pages intend the quantity of PR juice that comes to your page
Redirects also cut some percent of juice