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Jonathan Clensy

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How do I remove unwanted backlinks from one of my own domains?

Hi,

I am trying to improve the SEO for the website www.money4yourmotors.com. As well as the .com domain we also own www.money4yourmotors.co.uk. The .co.uk site is bound to the same folders as the .com site in IIS and I have set up a URL Re-write rule in IIS to redirect all visitors to the .co.uk site to the .com site.

My issue is that when re-viewing what backlinks the .com site has (using SEO Profiler) every page from the .co.uk site is being listed as a backlink and as they all have a Link Influence Score of 0% I think it may be affecting the overall quality of the links.

Does anybody know why the .co.uk pages would be listed as backlinks and would you know what I would need to do to remove them?

Kind regards,

Jon
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Lucas Bishop
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Your "SEO Profiler" tool simply doesn't realize that the two domains are related. They really are two completely different domains... only you know their relation.

Can you filter out the money4yourmotors.co.uk results from the analysis? Or exclude it from being analyzed in the first place?
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Jonathan Clensy

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Hi Lucas,

Thank you for your response. My main worry was that the Google ranking for the .com site was being negatively affected by all these backlinks from the .co.uk site.

From what you have said am I right in thinking that this wouldn't be the case as Google won't really see these as backlinks (if I google link:money4yourmotors.com nothing from the .co.uk site is being listed) and that in fact it is just an issue with how SEO Profiler is interpreting the information (I am able to filter out the .co.uk results in the report)?

Thank you

Jon
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Dan McFadden
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Hi Dan,

Thanks for the response.

I've just tried a few re-directs based on what you are saying and what I found was:

If I navigate direct to say: www.money4yourmotors.co.uk/sell-my-car/about-us it correctly re-directs to the https .com version of the site.

However if I navigate to https://www.money4yourmotors.co.uk/sell-my-car/about-us where the https is specified then I can see the Cert error and 404 that you are reporting.

I am using the URL Rewrite tool in IIS, the rules I am using are:

<rule name="redirect .co.uk to .com" stopProcessing="true">
                  <match url="(.*)" />
                  <conditions>
                    <add input="{HTTP_HOST}" pattern="^www\.money4yourmotors\.co\.uk$" />
                  </conditions>
                  <action type="Redirect" url="https://www.money4yourmotors.com/{R:1}" redirectType="Permanent" />
                </rule>
              
                <rule name="Redirect to https" enabled="true" patternSyntax="Wildcard" stopProcessing="true">
                  <match url="*" negate="false" />
                  <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAny">
                    <add input="{HTTPS}" pattern="off" />
                  </conditions>
                  <action type="Redirect" url="https://{HTTP_HOST}{REQUEST_URI}" redirectType="Permanent" />
                </rule>

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I guess the issue must be in these 2 rules somewhere - can you spot anything that looks wrong?

Thanks,

Jon
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Hi Dan,

Thanks for sending this through - I've applied the 2 rules the way you suggest and all seems good.

The only problem I'm having now is if someone tries to navigate to https://www.money4yourmotors.co.uk - this brings up a 'not secure' 404. Is there a way I can amend the rules so that this would also re-direct to https://www.money4yourmotors.com?

Thanks,

Jon
You can apply the above listed solution and here is the best an easy one.

If You want Google not to consider links pointing to .co.uk domain and you still want to redirect the domain to .com.

Then use a 302 redirect from .co.uk to .com. Thus it won't impact on your link profile and won't give you any link juice anymore.

Or if you have some good links for the old domain then mail them to change it to the new domain. Or you can hire someone who can work on your backlink profile.

Thanks
K
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@Dan Yes, you're right 301 is for the SEO purpose. I had suggest to use 302 which is temporary redirect and don't pass any value to the new domain.

So, if they use 302 their bad links to previous domain won't impact the authority of new domain. This is what I want to tell.

But there are other option if they want to add Old domain value to the new domain.

Thank You
Thanks Dan for such a detailed/complete answer.

Jon