Too many links from my forums to a member’s website

[PaulineK]

One of my members said that her Google Search Console shows 6,000+ links from my website (which runs only my forums) to her website. It is the top site linking to her. She is worried that this number of links from one site may hurt her rankings. I ran her site through MOZ and it does not rank my website in the top 10 sites linking to her.

On my forums she has 400+ posts since 2014. She also has a link to her website in the sidebar of my homepage (advertisement).

Any idea why Google is showing so many links? Or what I can do to figure this out?

Thanks!

 

[Sim]

it's probably a canonical URL issue - Google thinking there are multiple pages linking when they are just variations of the same page.

Do you have "Use full friendly URLs" turned on in your site options?

Either way - it's not something to be overly concerned about - sounds like she has run some kind of SEO system over her site and this is one of the recommendations it came up with. I get similar requests occasionally from people - concerned that too many links from my sites will affect their page rankings.

If she is concerned, she should remove the link from her signature - which is presumably where all the links are coming from. It's not really your problem - it's their problem and something they can fix themselves by simply removing the links.

 

[PaulineK]

Do you have "Use full friendly URLs" turned on in your site options?

Yes I have that turned on.

Someone suggested that I change the link to her site from my homepage to be “nofollow”, which it should have been anyway because it is paid advertising. I’ve done that and will see if that makes a difference. If not, then I will get her to change her signature as you suggest.

Thanks!

 

[beerForo]

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[motowebmaster]

This might help. I've used it to remove old links to sites like photobucket where unmaintained albums were converted into photobucket serving ads instead of the images.

Link Checker for XenForo 2.x by AddonsLab

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[PaulineK]

If she is concerned, she should remove the link from her signature - which is presumably where all the links are coming from. It's not really your problem - it's their problem and something they can fix themselves by simply removing the links.

Links in signatures are "nofollow" automatically. This is her signature (below).

I think the problem comes from the homepage link which is a widget and where I did not set nofollow. I still wonder why Google shows 6000+ links from my site to hers but MOZ shows nothing like that.

<aside class="message-signature">
  <div class="bbWrapper"><div style="text-align: center"><a href="http://www.european-experiences.com" target="_blank" class="link link--external" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">European Experiences</a> | <a href="https://bonnieux-apartment.com" target="_blank" class="link link--external" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">Our Bonnieux apartment</a><br />
<a href="https://slowtraveltours.com/blog/" target="_blank" class="link link--external" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">Slow Travel Tours blog</a> | <a href="https://www.facebook.com/kathy.c.wood.7" target="_blank" class="link link--external" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">Find me on Facebook</a> | <a href="https://www.facebook.com/European-Experiences-158992528703/" target="_blank" class="link link--external" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">European Experiences on Facebook</a>&#8203;</div></div>
</aside>

 

[Miri]

I think the problem comes from the homepage link

That was exactly what I wanted to tell you. Add a noffollow to that link. Eventually, ask your user if he can check the source pages of the links, to see if your "WIDGET" is actually present or not in all the links he checks.

This is a direct link, your user should change the 2 capitalized words with related websites:

*HISWEBSITE
*YOURWEBSITE

https://search.google.com/search-console/links/drilldown?resource_id=https%3A%2F%2FHISWEBSITE.com%2F&type=DOMAIN&target=&domain=YOURWEBSITE.com&hl=en

 

[PaulineK]

That was exactly what I wanted to tell you. Add a noffollow to that link.

Thanks! I’ve done that now. I will post again if that does it.