Did I just commit SEO Suicide With My Sites?

kma9090

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Hi,

I think I have really messed up with Google.
I created 2 new sites about 5 months ago and concentrated on really great unique content. I was pleased with the way things were going and Google seemed to agree.

I then did a couple of (in hindsight) dumb things..

1. I used to own a forum that got loads of spam comments over a few years unattended, it was in a similar niche so I redirected the forum to my main site and thought no more of it until recently.
I then started to wonder where my traffic had gone, checked WMT and found there were 350,000 backlinks pointing to the forum that was redirected to my main site.
The backlinks were all spam comments from other spam forums and blogs.

2. I purchased a few domains from Godaddy which seemed fine. I redirected the purchased domains to my other main site and thought no more of it until recently.
I then started to wonder where my traffic had gone, checked WMT and found there were 950,000 backlinks. The majority of the backinks were from just 2 websites which had my purchased domain in the footer of every page. Great for traffic..

So did I just do a double SEO suicide job on my 2 main sites?
 
1. YES if it had 350k spammy BL's
2. No, not if it only had BL's from 2 refeering domains

What you should do now:

1. STOP the redirect on website 1
 
I have disavowed the 2 main URL's and also redirected the domains to a 3rd site which have text links back to my main sites. This was a few weeks ago though and still no sign of change, my traffic keeps going down.
 
As I said, I disavowed and redirected the domains to a spare domain and just popped a text link back to my main site.

So, any idea how long before I should start to see changes. The links are all still in GWT.
 
I think suicide is a bit light, what you did is more like a hara kiri.. remove the redirects, and try to build a few high quality links manually to balance it out.
 
"Begin at the beginning," the King said, very gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop."

― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
 
Well if nothing else this is a nice little case study. Sorry to hear you are getting whipped in the SERPS but we do appreciate you sharing your results, keep us posted on any changes.
 
Well if that is the main reason that you are experiencing changes in your rankings it should hopefully be an easy fix.
 
Remove the redirect.
WMT is not really accurate on giving you your backlink information, use Ahrefs for that.
If you are able to spend money, using Link Detox may also be good (it's quite expensive though, I recommend using Ahrefs and Google Disavow Tool)
 
I agree with getwhatuwant... I am quite interested with your results. Please share them.
 
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