Removing thousands of shady backlinks?
-
Hey guys,
We've been hired to redesign a website that has thousands of backlinks created by a (possibly) shady offshore company, and I'm wondering if anyone out there has experience dealing with a deletion of this size and type. Is it as simple as just disavowing the whole lot?
Thanks,
Jason
-
The site is ranking well and was not affected from Penguin. However, we believe the amount of bad backlinks (ranging from hundreds to thousands) will hurt the site's ranking soon. Our client has yet to receive any manual warning from Google as well.
-
Jason
You have some great detailed answers from Marie and Marcus. I guess the question I'd like to ask is, Why are you looking into this ? Did you get to a point where your site is not ranking as well before ? Or is it that you got an actual un-natural links warning ?
That could help justify what the next steps should be.
-
Marie:
Sorry, but I couldn't resist responding to this one. It's not the answer that's confusing, it's the situation. I like to compare modern SEO to fixing Macs (what I did in my previous lifetime). Sometimes you have to get out the goat entrails and burn the incense.
Sometimes there isn't an easy answer. Strangely enough on my site (which I inherited 3 months ago), the "bad" links don't seem to have really damaged it, as we have a Domain Authority of 63. Go figure.
Jim
-
The answer depends on whether or not the site has a manual penalty against it. If there is a message in WMT of unnatural links then it won't be enough to just disavow. You've got to go through a whole process of trying to manually remove links and reporting your efforts to Google and then disavowing the rest.
If you want to simply have those backlinks nofollowed then disavowing the whole lot will do the trick.
However, be careful if you're disavowing all of the links. I have seen cases where people went disavowing links willy nilly and did more harm than good. If the plan is to simply start over with a clean slate then go ahead and disavow. The problem is that these links will still be present in your backlink profile whether you use OSE, ahrefs, majestic or even WMT. They will simply be treated as nofollowed by Google.
But if you are trying to save some of the existing rankings then whether or not you disavow can be a complicated decision.
For example, the links could be shady, but if the site hasn't been affected by Penguin then you may not have to remove them. Some of them could actually be helping. Remember, Penguin is an algorithm and doesn't catch EVERYTHING.
Or, for another example, if the site has been affected by Penguin for certain keywords then you may not be able to rank for those keywords until you get rid of Penguin. But here's the problem - no one really knows with certainty how to do that. Some SEOs will tell you that disavowing all your links will clear it. Some will tell you that Penguin has already disavowed all of your links and all you need to do is get some good links. There are very few (if any) case studies that really show a site what to do.
How's that for a confusing answer? LOL!
-
Hey Jason
In a word, no, no way that simple. Google are simply not going to process that disavow unless they see you (or your client) have made a considerable effort in the removal of those links. In all likelyhood, it will take a good few months and some considerable effort to show that you have gone to lengths enough to satisfy them.
There are a bunch of tools that can help, but ultimately, there is still a lot of manual work involved in any clean up.
Few pointers.
Tools worth bothering with.
- Removeem
- Rmoov
- Link Detox
None of these will do the job for you and in all likelihood, you will want to use all three. Beyond that, if there is a redesign you can 404 old pages on the other site to kill inbound links but if most of your shady links are pointing at the homepage, there is not a lot you can do about them other than clean up and attempt a disavow.
You are going to have to document the whole process from putting together a list of candidate links for removal & collecting email addresses through to every removal request. I would also suggest possibly going beyond just the email and looking at phone numbers, letters and anything else you can do to show the level of effort required.
Depending on the history and any penalties you are going to want to submit your disavow and a reconsideration request detailing all of your tireless and persistant efforts.
In summary, it's not terribly hard or complicated, but there is just a whole bunch of work involved to do the job properly and to a level that Google is going to be happy with and don't expect results over night. My advice would be to brief your client that a honest clean up could take up to three months and three reinclusion requests along with a considerable investment in man hours to do the job properly.
This is a good job for an intern or apprentice. Well, let me rephrase that, it's a good job to give to an intern or apprentice, it's likely going to be quite a sucky job for them to have to do but baptism of fire and all!
Hope that helps!
Marcus
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Client suffered a malware attack. Removed links not being crawled by Google!
Hi all, My client suffered a malware attack a few weeks ago where an external site somehow created 700 plus links on my clients site with their content. I removed all of the content and redirected the pages to the home page. I then created a new temporary xml sitemap with those 700 links and submitted the sitemap to Google 9 days ago. Google has crawled the sitemap a few times but not the individual links. When I click on the crawl report for the sitemap in GSC, I see that the individual links still have the last crawled date from before they were removed. So in Googles eyes, that old malicioud content still exists. What do I do to ensure Google knows the contnt is gone and redirected? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | sk19900 -
Backlink Redirection as Backlink Building Strategy?
Just checking in - i'm working on a site with tons of broken backlinks from high authority sites. For instance, I've discovered that some 90% of their backlinks are broken, and these are from highly recognizable, name brand magazines, newspapers, blogs and the like. Right now, the site has a Domain Authority of 48 (better than most in the industry from what i am learning) yet as the site has been around for years and has gone through 5 redesigns, there is an absolute ton of solid inbound backlinks that are getting 404's. Using Screaming Frog (list mode) I've also learned there are a ton of 301's that turn out to be redirecting to 404 pages so that also starts to add up. I always knew this was a problem / opportunity and I've always considered it a high priority to fix (301) broken links of this sort to improve ranking (you know, using htaccess or WordPress Redirection tools) -- and to avoid multiple redirects wherever possible. In fact, I consider it a basic all-win, no-lose strategy. I always assumed this was the case and I also assume this will continue to be so. However, as a professional, I always want to double check my assumptions every now and then... Is this still considered solid strategy? Are there any issues that one should look out for?
Technical SEO | | seo_plus0 -
Is it good practice to update your disavow file after a penalty is removed.
I was wondering if you could use the disavow file by adding to it - even after your site has recovered from a partial site penalty. As a recurring SEO procedure, we are always looking at links pointing to our Website. We then ascertain those links that are clearly of no value. In order to clean these up, would it be good practice to update your disavow file with more of theses domains. Is the disavow file just used for penalty issues to alert google of the work you have done? (we have had penalty in the past but fine now) Would this method help in keeping high quality links to the fore and therefore removing low quality links from Googles eyes? I would welcome your comments.
Technical SEO | | podweb0 -
Removing a URL from Search Results
I recently renamed a small photography company, and so I transferred the content to the new website, put a 301-redirect on the old website URL, and turned off hosting for that website. But when I search for certain terms that the old URL used to rank highly for (branded terms) the old URL still shows up. The old URL is "www.willmarlowphotography.com" and when you type in "Will Marlow" it often appears in 8th and 9th place on a SERP. So, I have two questions: First, since the URL no longer has a hosting account associated with it, shouldn't it just disappear from SERPs? Second, is there anything else I should have done to make the transition smoother to the new URL? Thanks for any insights you can share.
Technical SEO | | williammarlow0 -
Google Reconsideration Request (Penguin) - Will Google give links to remove?
When Penguin v1 hit, our site took a hit for a single phrase (i.e. "widgets") due to the techniques our SEO company was using (network). We've since had those links cleaned up, and our rankings have not recovered. Our SEO company said they submitted a reconsideration request on our behalf, and that Google denied it and didn't provide which links we needed removed. Does Google list links that need removing if they are still not happy with your link profile?
Technical SEO | | crucialx0 -
Block or remove pages using a robots.txt
I want to use robots.txt to prevent googlebot access the specific folder on the server, Please tell me if the syntax below is correct User-Agent: Googlebot Disallow: /folder/ I want to use robots.txt to prevent google image index the images of my website , Please tell me if the syntax below is correct User-agent: Googlebot-Image Disallow: /
Technical SEO | | semer0 -
How to handle URL's from removed products?
Hi All, I have a question about a fashion related webshop. Every month about 100 articles are removed and about the some amouth is added to the site. Most of the products are indexed on brandname and type (e.g. MyBrand t-shirt blue) My question is what to do with the URL / page after the product is removed. I'm thinking about a couple of solutions: 301 the page to the brand categorie page build a script which shows related articles on the old URL (and try to keep it indexed) 404 page optimized for search term with links to brand category any other suggestons? Thanks in advance, Sam
Technical SEO | | U-Digital0 -
Removing GWT Geo-Targeting
Hi, if I have a website in Google Webmaster Tools > Geographic Target set to United States, but I want to promote it in other specific countries, 1. Do I have to change the geo-targeting in GWT so it does not target a specific country? (discarding the option of adding sub-domain to GWT) 2. If I remove the GWT geo-targeting would it affect my rankings in the US? Thank you
Technical SEO | | andresgmontero0