Bad PBN Link - Be Careful - Massive Negative SEO impact, how?

[OldSeo]

Hello folks,

I bought an expired domain some time ago (unfortunately on Fiverr) and linked it to my main domain after 5 weeks of indexing and maturing. I completely made a new website, wrote new content (other topic than the usual site), so the website has nothing to do with the original page. I used this approach successfully about 5 years ago.

Unfortunately, the following has now happened: the link was set, two days later the ranking with the main keyword rose by 6 positions (from 22 to 16) and currently (11 days after the link was set) the ranking of the subpage has fallen massively (to 46th place). On the graph you can also see that it has also pulled many other subpages down.



How can it be that negative SEO is still possible? I have tracked every link and can say with certainty that the link is the cause. However, the domain is not so bad that it should have such a negative impact. Through experiments, after about 14 days I noticed a drop in the ranking of bad domains and this domain had no negative impact in the experiment, which is why I used it.



Now I plan to remove the link after a few days. Is that a good practice or is that too flashy? That would be two weeks after the link is set. I want to restore the ranking and need to get rid of the link. Do you have any advice on what to do? And why did the link to the subpage (landing page) have such a site-wide negative impact?

Thanks and Regards
OldSEO

 

[tophi]

It could be cool if you update us after the link removal and kw position change, but most important is to investigate why that happened.

 

[tazarbm]

So, how exactly did you link the expired domain to your main domain?? If you 301'd it correctly then that's not the reason for your site's tanking...

Secondly, what does the below quote mean??

I completely recreated the content and the page has nothing to do with the original page.

Because, as far as I know, "recreating the content" means having the EXACT same content as before, that's what "recreating" means, and since you've recreated the content then it should have everything to do with the original page. I'm honestly not following you in this regard, but even so, as far as I know 301-ing expired domains to sites that are not at least remotely relevant to the content of the main domain is bad, especially when redirecting it after 5 weeks only (it's usually recommended to let the expired domain sit with the recreated content for 5-6 months, sometimes more than that) before 301-ing it to your money site.

If I were to guess, I'd say that the fast redirection, coupled with the unrelated niches of both the money site and the expired domain is what has caused your rankings to drop. And if that's the case then yeah, you should probably remove the redirect

 

[OldSeo]

So, how exactly did you link the expired domain to your main domain?? If you 301'd it correctly then that's not the reason for your site's tanking...

Secondly, what does the below quote mean??

Because, as far as I know, "recreating the content" means having the EXACT same content as before, that's what "recreating" means, and since you've recreated the content then it should have everything to do with the original page. I'm honestly not following you in this regard, but even so, as far as I know 301-ing expired domains to sites that are not at least remotely relevant to the content of the main domain is bad, especially when redirecting it after 5 weeks only (it's usually recommended to let the expired domain sit with the recreated content for 5-6 months, sometimes more than that) before 301-ing it to your money site.

If I were to guess, I'd say that the fast redirection, coupled with the unrelated niches of both the money site and the expired domain is what has caused your rankings to drop. And if that's the case then yeah, you should probably remove the redirect

Hi, thanks.

I put a link from the context of an article on the startpage, so no 301. And the content and the website are completely new, so a completely new page, has nothing to do with the page from the past. Thats what I meant.

Wow, 5 to 6 months seems like a long time to me. did you have positive experiences with it?

regards
oldseo

 

[tazarbm]

Wow, 5 to 6 months seems like a long time to me. did you have positive experiences with it?

I never bothered with redirections, because just like you, I hate to wait for that long ... But yeah, it's a long time but that's how things work lately, so nothing to do about it.

But since you've not 301'd the expired domain then the only thing I can think of that might have tanked your site are either the expired domain is penalized, or your rankings are still google-dancing, although the dance should start as soon as the backlink is picked up by google, not 2 weeks later....

Also, let's not forget that about a week ago google have released another core update which has not yet fully rolled out, so your site might have been affected by this update for all we know, so you should give it a bit more time for things to settle. Removing a link is not that hard, and rankings usually go back up after the culprit has been dealt with, so give it 2-3 more weeks if you can afford it, just to be safe. If after 3 weeks nothing changes, I'm almost confident that the expired domain is either penalized, or that the irrelevant content surrounding the anchor text is the problem. Speaking of which, is the anchor text you used to link back to your money site relevant to either the content of the expire domain, or the content of the page that the link points to? Because if it's not relevant to both the source and destination then there's your problem!

 

[OldSeo]

I never bothered with redirections, because just like you, I hate to wait for that long ... But yeah, it's a long time but that's how things work lately, so nothing to do about it.

But since you've not 301'd the expired domain then the only thing I can think of that might have tanked your site are either the expired domain is penalized, or your rankings are still google-dancing, although the dance should start as soon as the backlink is picked up by google, not 2 weeks later....

Also, let's not forget that about a week ago google have released another core update which has not yet fully rolled out, so your site might have been affected by this update for all we know, so you should give it a bit more time for things to settle. Removing a link is not that hard, and rankings usually go back up after the culprit has been dealt with, so give it 2-3 more weeks if you can afford it, just to be safe. If after 3 weeks nothing changes, I'm almost confident that the expired domain is either penalized, or that the irrelevant content surrounding the anchor text is the problem. Speaking of which, is the anchor text you used to link back to your money site relevant to either the content of the expire domain, or the content of the page that the link points to? Because if it's not relevant to both the source and destination then there's your problem!

Thanks, I didnt know that there was a G-update, so maybe thats the reason for the sidewide drop. Yes I think you are right, maybe the domain is penalized. I will create a G webmastertools account and check it. The anchor was relevant and I used my main KW as anchor but it was the first KW-anchor for the landingpage, before I just used different anchor variations and anchors like naked url, click here etc. I will wait a few more days or maybe weeks before I delete the link, I hope it will work. Thanks again

 

[tazarbm]

Thanks, I didnt know that there was a G-update, so maybe thats the reason for the sidewide drop. Yes I think you are right, maybe the domain is penalized. I will create a G webmastertools account and check it. The anchor was relevant and I used my main KW as anchor but it was the first KW-anchor for the landingpage, before I just used different anchor variations and anchors like naked url, click here etc. I will wait a few more days or maybe weeks before I delete the link, I hope it will work. Thanks again

no problem!

If that's your first exact match anchor then the anchor overoptimization is not the issue for sure. So, it comes down to 3 things then...

1. the new google update (in which case you need to wait for things to settle) and then check your rankings again
2. the irrelevancy between the content of the anchor text and the content of the landing page that the anchor text points to (in which case you need to make the content relevant to your landing page)
3. if the above 2 things don't bring your rankings back the expired domain is almost certainly penalized, in which case I recommend you remove the backlink from it and the rankings should come back within a few weeks

Regardless of what the problem is, good luck regaining your rankings!

 

[OldSeo]

no problem!

If that's your first exact match anchor then the anchor overoptimization is not the issue for sure. So, it comes down to 3 things then...

1. the new google update (in which case you need to wait for things to settle) and then check your rankings again
2. the irrelevancy between the content of the anchor text and the content of the landing page that the anchor text points to (in which case you need to make the content relevant to your landing page)
3. if the above 2 things don't bring your rankings back the expired domain is almost certainly penalized, in which case I recommend you remove the backlink from it and the rankings should come back within a few weeks

Regardless of what the problem is, good luck regaining your rankings!

Thanks, so It could be a combined effect: negative Link effect (domain is not penalized, I checked GWT but there is no problem, not sure if it shows up instantly but looks like there is no penalty), but the domain could be toxic, not sure. And also an effect of the update. The website is relevant to my money site and also to the anchor and link, so this should not be a problem. But thanks for your help, I will help a few days and will remove the links. I will update it here.

It's also surprising how well (unfortunately) negative SEO works. Here are two more experiments in advance with purchased expired domains (which of course I don't use). The marked dates are the days when the link was indexed. You can see that the ranking increases immediately afterwards (fakeout) and then the ranking is destroyed in the long term, hopefully only as long as the link is online. This is worrying how easy this is and how well it works.

 

[praetserge]

It could be that the drop had nothing to do with your new domain but the ongoing google update.
Just my 2 cents.

 

[OldSeo]

It could be that the drop had nothing to do with your new domain but the ongoing google update.
Just my 2 cents.

Yes that could be. Do we know anything about the contents of the update? I haven't been able to find out much about it now, only that a negative effect doesn't necessarily mean that you did something wrong, but rather that other pages were positioned better. Bad timing for me to post the link, but the update might indeed have something to do with it.

 

[praetserge]

So far that's pretty much what we know but it's still ongoing.
https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/google-update-may-27th-2022-what-i-have-noticed.1410861/

 

[tazarbm]

Thanks, so It could be a combined effect: negative Link effect (domain is not penalized, I checked GWT but there is no problem, not sure if it shows up instantly but looks like there is no penalty)

not combined, if one of those things trigger penalty / rankings drop there's no need for any combination

Also, as far as I know google don't make all types of penalties public anymore, your domain could still be penalized but you would never know... not officially from google anyway...

The website is relevant to my money site and also to the anchor and link, so this should not be a problem. But thanks for your help, I will help a few days and will remove the links. I will update it here.

that's good then! But few more days might be too little, seriously give it 10-12 days at least...

It's also surprising how well (unfortunately) negative SEO works.

yeah, man, this bothers me too. The little guys always get affected by all meaningless and retarded rules that google invents or doesn't care about, but you try to negative SEO a company like Amazon and see how much they care about this thing...

The marked dates are the days when the link was indexed. You can see that the ranking increases immediately afterwards (fakeout) and then the ranking is destroyed in the long term, hopefully only as long as the link is online. This is worrying how easy this is and how well it works.

the 2nd link is illustrative of what you're saying, but the 1st one not so much