Removing spam back links (Using GWM and SEOMOZ)

[tradestreet]

Hi,

I have noticed that I have got some unwanted spammy back-links. I want to get rid of them. From what I read on Internet, there are two ways to doing it.

1. Using disavow tool in GWM.
2. Contacting individual webmaster and asking them to remove the mentions or links.

I have already added the links in the disavow tool and Google has accepted the request.

Is it necessary to ask those webmasters to remove the link as well?

[Carson-Ward]

Google says that you should use the disavow tool as a last resort after asking the webmasters to remove the links, and even then only if you think it's hurting your rankings.

I obviously can't tell without looking at your links, but I see a lot of people worrying about spam links when they probably shouldn't be. It's normal to get some less-than-perfect links in your profile, and they're probably not going to hurt you if you aren't building them yourself.

[Njave_MCP]

From what I know both will work. And from some info they both work just about the same time as Google still has to index those websites again. Will they do it and the link is not found or will they disavow it, that's just a matter of perspective. From a safety point of view the manual deletion is the 100% safe way they are removed, but disavow tool is the perfect action against those links if you don't wish to waste time to remove something you haven't created in the first place. Thanks!

[tradestreet]

Hi,

Thanks for the answer. Well. To be precise my question was

Does using "Disavow Tool" can solve my problem or I have to contact the webmasters asking them to remove the links and the mentions personally.

[Njave_MCP]

Hello! That honestly depends on the level of paranoia you have and the need to remove them manually so they don't show up anywhere. From my experience it's best to disavow them, wait a few weeks for the algorithm to refresh and move on! And bear in mind, one solid, healthy and authoritative link will serve almost enough juice that dozens of low quality spam links will not be valued at all. This is the case with today's link building, you always have the issue of getting a 50-60 spammy links just through some low quality bookmarking website scraping content from other sites of the same nature. Thanks!