CasesSEO
Negative Case Study: Link Blink and the Significance of Controlling Your Site’s Link Profile
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Comprehensive analysis and assessment of the website's condition with subsequent SEO, aimed at effective promotion of the online store in the American market.
Identify why the site is stagnating despite efforts in promotion and even displaying negative dynamics in certain metrics. Find a solution to the problem.
Website Before the Start of the Project, During the analysis of the backlink profile, we discovered a phenomenon known as “link blink.”
”Link blink” is an SEO term used to describe a situation where a link to your website appears and disappears intermittently.
It was revealed that the client's website was receiving numerous low-quality inbound links that would “drop off” as soon as they began to be indexed. This indicated that the client was facing a challenge known as negative SEO. Negative SEO occurs when someone deliberately attempts to degrade the ranking of your website in search engine results. One of the methods employed is to create numerous poor-quality backlinks. Interestingly, our suspicion fell on a multinational marketplace. Firstly, a large corporation can afford such manipulations. Secondly, its recent prominence in our client's niche had been noticeable. In our case, these low-quality links were established on compromised websites:
Low-quality links were being created on hacked websites. On average, this project was receiving 100 - 150 such links per month. Moreover, it is evident that malicious actors were placing links on placeholder images for product listings (although there were relatively few such products).
A “product placeholder” is a temporary page or image used on a website in place of actual product information. This is typically done when product information is not yet ready for publication or when a product is temporarily unavailable.
When website owners discover a breach, they fix their websites, and the link “disappears.” However, the issue is that it has already made its way into the index.
This had a negative impact on the position of our client's online store in search results because many bad links can appear suspicious to search engines. The website was stagnant and even showed a negative trend in all metrics.
Upon analyzing the niche, it became evident that the top 10 websites in the niche faced similar issues, except for those using CDN. However, malicious actors have learned to bypass this limitation today: they place links not on images but on products, attempting to mimic natural links.
Here is an example of a competitor's link profile that also suffered:
Indications of link flickering were identified in highly competitive niches in the US and European markets. These issues primarily targeted websites within the top 10 rankings.
Our work aims to rectify the issues associated with link flickering and position your website as a leading contender in the highly competitive online marketplace.
Our Intervention We halted the site's decline within six months of work, restoring positive dynamics in all key metrics.
Site performance over the last 30 days:
The issue of “link blink” demands active resolution:
Continuously monitor and analyze site's condition and link profile to ensure stable and positive search engine promotion.
In the long term, providing high-quality and valuable content for site visitors is paramount. This will increase user engagement, enhance behavioral factors, and build trust with search engines.
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