Clean toxic baclinks or start new website

N

nikilauda95

Newbie
Joined
Apr 7, 2024
Messages
6
Reaction score
2
Hi everyone!

I have been out of the SEO game for a while, and I have just found out that my website's traffic has tanked to zero.

Like many others out there, it appears that my website was obliterated by Google Search March 2024 Core update.
SEMRush tells me that since March 6th I no longer rank for ANY keywords (used to be around 13K).

What I also found (according to SEMRush) is that my backlink profile is horrible. I have around 7K toxic backlinks and domains pointing to my website, mostly some crypto blogs from Indonesia, and India.

I am not sure what to do next. Should I try to cleanup toxic backlinks with Google Disavow Tool, or just nuke my 5-year-old website and continue with my life? Is it better to just start with a new website or try to fix existing one? I see a lot of people saying that once your website is penalized by Google there is no coming back.
 
Advertise on BHW
nikilauda95 said:
Hi everyone!

I have been out of the SEO game for a while, and I have just found out that my website's traffic has tanked to zero.

Like many others out there, it appears that my website was obliterated by Google Search March 2024 Core update.
SEMRush tells me that since March 6th I no longer rank for ANY keywords (used to be around 13K).

What I also found (according to SEMRush) is that my backlink profile is horrible. I have around 7K toxic backlinks and domains pointing to my website, mostly some crypto blogs from Indonesia, and India.

I am not sure what to do next. Should I try to cleanup toxic backlinks with Google Disavow Tool, or just nuke my 5-year-old website and continue with my life? Is it better to just start with a new website or try to fix existing one? I see a lot of people saying that once your website is penalized by Google there is no coming back.
Click to expand...
According to my experience lately, it's better to start with new domain and 301 redirect from old domain to new domain, hopefully it will rank again
 
I never understood what toxic links are, but I think they're real and if you have 7k of them well... that's a lot and they might be the culprit... or part of it at least :)

That's one thing...

The 2nd thing, disavowing might, or might not work (it's not always guaranteed), and it can also take months to take effect, especially when you have so many links. So, it's not worth it IMO and should be your last resort and only for sites that you really, really, REALLY care about.

3rd thing... nowadays, sites can lose rankings if they're not updated frequently. Now, what "frequently" means is up for debate, but I would say that there needs to be some activity at least once a month. But that's my opinion, other people will most definitely have different definitions for "frequently".

But the point I'm trying to make is that if you've not worked on, or updated / published content on your site for 5 years then that's a lot of time, and it could be one of the reasons for which you've lost rankings. But the good news is that - if this is the reason for your site's downfall - once you start working on it again it could start picking up rankings quite fast, so it's worth keeping this in mind.

The 4th thing... from what I've heard the March updates (there were 2 of them) have targeted AI content and expired domains. If your site was on expired domain and the current niche of your site is different (or, rather, not closely related) to the niche that was previously on your domain then that's why you lost rankings and there's no known solution to this as far as I know, so you'll have to abandon this project unfortunately...

But if you've been affected by the other update (the one targeting AI content) you might still be able to recover the rankings if you remove / update the faulty content. So, once again, I wouldn't ditch the site just yet....

nikilauda95 said:
I see a lot of people saying that once your website is penalized by Google there is no coming back.
Click to expand...
this is not true! Many times many sites recover either on their own, or by fixing the stuff that google breaks. Those "a lot" of people don't know what they're talking about when they say this. Now, to be honest, oftentimes I don't know what I'm talking about either, but in this particular aspect I am 100% certain :)

nikilauda95 said:
Is it better to just start with a new website or try to fix existing one?
Click to expand...
I guess that it depends on how much saving the website is worth it to you.

Based on what you wrote (and especially if I had to disavow 7000 links and go through 100s of articles to update them) I would not bother with this project, especially if it has many other issues as well (broken links, no / poor siloing, low authority, no / poor topical authority, etc.)

If the site's not bad overall and you still feel like it's a good cash cow you could try to save it. It's your call ultimately, only you know how much the trying to save it is worth.
 
Last edited:
tazarbm said:
I never understood what toxic links are, but I think they're real and if you have 7k of them well... that's a lot and they might be the culprit... or part of it at least :)
Click to expand...
Thanks for a very detailed and informative reply.

The website is 5 years old, but I have been updating it and posting at least 2 new articles every month. It has around 300 articles, mostly affiliate content, no AI, only human written text.

It used to generate $2-3K a month, but since June 2022 income has been steadily declining, and it really tanked in August 2023. Since then I lost interest and pivoted into building a SaaS application.

Yeah, it seems the domain is contaminated with too much junk. There is no way I'm going to manually disavow 7K backlinks.

I think I'm going to kill it and move on. I'll give affiliate marketing another try with a new website, but I think I'll put much less effort than in this project. I had a good run, but I think the SEO game is over for me.
 
nikilauda95 said:
It has around 300 articles, mostly affiliate content, no AI, only human written text.
Click to expand...
if by "affiliate content" you mean product reviews then this might explain the tanking because google have targeted product review sites heavily, and you'd need to abide by google's strict rules if you want to rank product reviews.

If that's not it, then I don't know what you mean by affiliate content...

nikilauda95 said:
It used to generate $2-3K a month, but since June 2022 income has been steadily declining, and it really tanked in August 2023.
Click to expand...
yep, definitely product reviews as there's been a major update in August 2023 that was PRECISELY about this :)
https://status.search.google.com/products/rGHU1u87FJnkP6W2GwMi/history
nikilauda95 said:
Yeah, it seems the domain is contaminated with too much junk. There is no way I'm going to manually disavow 7K backlinks.
Click to expand...
understandable :)

nikilauda95 said:
I think I'm going to kill it and move on. I'll give affiliate marketing another try with a new website, but I think I'll put much less effort than in this project. I had a good run, but I think the SEO game is over for me.
Click to expand...
sites get tanked daily, just because you lost one site doesn't mean that you'll lose the next ones too. But the SEO game has become harder and more expensive indeed, it's part of the reason for which I've quit SEO in January 2022, I just can't keep up with google's (sometimes) downright bully requirements, or to invest my unemployment money into 5-10 links that don't do anything....

Anyway, out of curiosity, what's your site's DR / DA (preferably DR), and how many pages does it still have indexed. Because if google de-indexed your site I would totally give up on it instantly, but if they're still indexed you might be able to recover then if that's what you want...
 
tazarbm said:
If that's not it, then I don't know what you mean by affiliate content...
Click to expand...
Yeah, by affiliate content I meant product reviews and listicles (Top 10 xyz, etc.). The other half consisted of informative articles like how tos, infographics, analyses and guides. The overal distribution was 60:40 in favor of "affiliate content".
tazarbm said:
Anyway, out of curiosity, what's your site's DR / DA (preferably DR), and how many pages does it still have indexed.
Click to expand...
Right now DR is 13. It used to be around 30, but has been dropping since Google started hating me in August 2023.

The site hasn't been de-indexed. Google Search Console is showing that 166 pages that were found are not being indexed, and that 216 pages are being indexed.

I am killing the site. No point in beating the dead horse. There is too much work, and no money. I used to get 50K visitors a month in Q4 2021, now I get 1K visitors in 3 months. Besides, my niche has collapsed, it is oversaturated and sales have plummeted 50% worldwide.
 
nikilauda95 said:
Yeah, by affiliate content I meant product reviews and listicles (Top 10 xyz, etc.). The other half consisted of informative articles like how tos, infographics, analyses and guides. The overal distribution was 60:40 in favor of "affiliate content".
Click to expand...
seems like valuable content, it's not fair to lose the rankings. But then again, google doesn't give a rat's ass about fairness and quality, they only care about money, so I'm not surprised they tanked you to make room to hackers, programmers and rich fellas...

The 60:40 ratio might be one of the reasons for the tanking, though. If you ever intend to try restoring the site you should start by keeping a 1:5 or even 1:10 affiliate to non-affiliate content ratio, which is pretty easy to do if you remove all affiliate links from some of the pages.

nikilauda95 said:
Right now DR is 13. It used to be around 30, but has been dropping since Google started hating me in August 2023.
Click to expand...
hmm, I don't know what to say here. I mean, if it was still 30 it might have warranted some testing, but if it dropped to 13 it might not be worth the trouble anymore. Hard to say what to do about it...

nikilauda95 said:
I am killing the site. No point in beating the dead horse. There is too much work, and no money. I used to get 50K visitors a month in Q4 2021, now I get 1K visitors in 3 months. Besides, my niche has collapsed, it is oversaturated and sales have plummeted 50% worldwide.
Click to expand...
well, it's settled then :)
 
Last edited:
nikilauda95 said:
Hi everyone!

I have been out of the SEO game for a while, and I have just found out that my website's traffic has tanked to zero.

Like many others out there, it appears that my website was obliterated by Google Search March 2024 Core update.
SEMRush tells me that since March 6th I no longer rank for ANY keywords (used to be around 13K).

What I also found (according to SEMRush) is that my backlink profile is horrible. I have around 7K toxic backlinks and domains pointing to my website, mostly some crypto blogs from Indonesia, and India.

I am not sure what to do next. Should I try to cleanup toxic backlinks with Google Disavow Tool, or just nuke my 5-year-old website and continue with my life? Is it better to just start with a new website or try to fix existing one? I see a lot of people saying that once your website is penalized by Google there is no coming back.
Click to expand...
Before you decide to give up on your website, try removing the bad links using Google's Disavow Tool. There's still hope to recover from the penalty.
 
Think of it twice before scrapping it all the effort and cost invested during the last five years. Yes, indeed, it does look like a real nightmare to cope with those 7K toxic backlinks, but something not beyond anybody's power. It's a bit of a process, but in simple terms, really telling Google to ignore these links. Abandoning your website is, in other words, starting from scratch. That is such a great step, considering the brand and authority that you will have built.
 
NeedMyLink said:
Think of it twice before scrapping it all the effort and cost invested during the last five years. Yes, indeed, it does look like a real nightmare to cope with those 7K toxic backlinks, but something not beyond anybody's power. It's a bit of a process, but in simple terms, really telling Google to ignore these links. Abandoning your website is, in other words, starting from scratch. That is such a great step, considering the brand and authority that you will have built.
Click to expand...
I agree. You can still move on to a new domain if the cleanup doesn't work or doesn't produce the desired result. But starting from scratch will take lots of time and effort to reach the same level again that your old site had before the Google massacre.
 
You should disavow toxic sites that send too many links to your site with the Semrush tool. Additionally, use the Semrush keyword tool to identify words with average search volume and low competition for the content you will create and write content accordingly. You must ensure that your content rises easily in the rankings. You will gradually rise as traffic comes in.
 
Thanks everyone for advice.

I have decided to give my website another chance. I am doing an extensive backlink audit and disavowing all of the junk that has accumulated.

Time will tell was it worth it.
 
just learning but how does this happen? Did you find overseas people to do this and they weren’t monitored and then the negatives started adding up
 
aoeii2000 said:
just learning but how does this happen? Did you find overseas people to do this and they weren’t monitored and then the negatives started adding up
Click to expand...
Honestly, I don't know.

I have neglected my website for some time, because I have been working on other projects.

Recently I checked stats for my site on Semrush and GSC, and found a ton of toxic backlinks and suspicious domains referring to my domain. Most of them are from Asia.

Some say it could be an SEO attack where a competitor uses a network of low ranking sites to deliberately target your domain and crush your DR.

Another explanation could be that I have been writing a lot of YMYL articles and maintaining good DR, but this attracted a lot of low ranking sites looking to increase their ranking.

In short, I don't know.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Still learning so I’ll look into my things too. Is it the free semrush or paid account to look into these backend links? How do you know they’re ‘toxic’
 
aoeii2000 said:
Still learning so I’ll look into my things too. Is it the free semrush or paid account to look into these backend links? How do you know they’re ‘toxic’
Click to expand...
It is free Semrush. Once you create a new project with your domain and you connect GSC it will show the total number of toxic backlinks. However, if you want detailed output it will only show the first 10 most toxic backlinks. If you want to see more you have to upgrade to paid account.

This is why I'm using SEO services from another company which is much cheaper and offers API access, but you need to know how to code in Python or Java to access all the data. Once I pull the data from their database for my domain, I filter all the backlinks with spam score higher than 70, save them to a list, and upload them to Google Disavow tool. We'll see if it will work.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
It depends on how toxic your backlink footprint is.

As you probably already can tell, if you have read this forum for long enough, there is only so much you can do with Google's disavow tool.

Sometimes your backlink network is just so polluted with spam, that it would be better for you to start a new website.

It also depends on how well your traffic is going.

You said that your traffic is stacked to zero, so you really have nothing to lose.

The sandbox does exist, but I'm sure you already know that coming in.

You just come up with a better site with less emphasis on backlinks.

I know this sounds crazy, but I actually build sites with no backlinks.

I focus on the quality of my content and I focus on quality internal link building.

I've had great results so far.

I have been penalized in the past, but things are going well, considering my structure.

If anything, learn from your mistakes, and make sure you don't buy crappy backlinks if you intend to buy backlinks again in the future.
 
Think it will be great for you to create a logical internal linking structure within your website to guide users to relevant content and distribute link equity across your pages. Also internal links help search engines crawl and index your website more effectively.
 
Advertise on BHW
You must log in or register to reply here.
Sign up now!

Main Menu

Home Main Forum List Black Hat SEO White Hat SEO BHW Newbie Guide Blogging Black Hat Tools Social Networking Downloads

Marketplace

Content / Copywriting Hosting Images, Logos & Videos Proxies For Sale SEO - Link building SEO - Packages Social Media Social Media - Panels Web Design Misc

Making Money

Affiliate Programs Hire a Freelancer Making Money Pay Per Click Site Flipping

BlackHatWorld

BHW Merch Forum Suggestions & Feedback Introductions Lounge Dispute Resolution

Other

Domain Name Forum IM Journeys Web Hosting Newsletter
Back
Top