Should I Disavow Links if there is No Manual Action
-
Hello,
I just recently took on a client that had hired a very black hat seo and used their service for roughly two years. He outsourced link building and the link profile is full of spun articles and blog commenting on chinese websites etc…
The anchor texts/pages used for all this spamming no longer rank, but there is no penalty in Webmaster tools manual actions.
I was thinking about disavowing some of the obviously spammy backlinks that exist but would that be raising a red flag that could lead to a manual action and even more negative movement?
Have you ever heard of anything like the situation i'm dealing with where its obvious the pages have been hit but there is no manual action? What do you all think/suggest? And Should I disavow some terrible links and potentially open a can of worms?
-
There are many link-based algorithmic actions that can hit a site, including Penguin, so just because you don't have a warning of a manual action doesn't mean that you're not in trouble. I can't see the data, but this doesn't seem to be speculative - you're basically saying that certain pages and keywords have clearly been devalued.
If you've ruled out technical issues with the pages (including duplicate/thin content issues), and you know the spammy links are targeting these pages, then I think disavowing is probably a good way to go. Ideally, try to have some of the links removed first, as that will make Google take the request more seriously (and disavow is basically a request, although it's semi-automated).
It's entirely possible, too, that you're already headed for a manual action, so even if you do nothing, the situation could get worse. If you were unaffected, I might suggest pruning some of the bad links and focusing your future link-building on better tactics, but you're already taking damage.
-
As Jeff say, there's no problem with proactively disavowing low quality links to your domain.
-
In the past, the disavow tool was the "tool of last resort." You weren't supposed to use it unless you'd had a manual action.
But Google's Matt Cutts has broken from the previously stated mantra on the disavow tool, and now is encouraging Webmasters to use it if they are worried if a link is from a bad domain, due to poor SEO (or someone else trying to hurt your site by creating bad links):
Hope this helps!
- Jeff
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
-
What is the best strategy for dissolving an innocently created link network with over 100 websites?
Hello Moz Community, Over many years 120 websites were created all under a couple different organizations around the globe. The sites are interconnected via anchor text and domain name links and some redirect to larger sites. The teachings have a central theme and many tools, training programs, events, locations and services are offered on many different websites. Attached is a slice of a Majestic Link Graph showing the network. God bless Majestic for this new tool! We are looking for solutions that are efficient and effective in regards to usability, rankings and being achievable. Thank you so much for your help! Donna EJhNPqT
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Awakening-Mind0 -
Whether to disavow fettish sites
Hello, In one niche, all competitors have fettish backlinks. Some of these sites have related products on them, some are just information, but some border on porn sites. I'm wondering which if not all of these I should disavow. There's quite a few. We're doing a non-manual penguin recovery based on link building like paid links, unnatural anchor text and doorway sites. Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Companies creating spammy links to charge money to delete them?
Hi all, Yesterday I was checking out ahrefs.com and realizing that one of our main competitors was getting new spammy links to its website from junk directories, rusian forums, porn sites etc. I found it to be weird but I thought that maybe they hired a black hat company without knowing it. Today I began finding the same type of spammy links pointing to our site. I'm completely sure we did not create them.I was checking out some of the new directory links and their listings consist of new pages including only our company's website and absolutely no descriptions. I did a little more research and find out that many of those new directories/listings belong to the same company ( seems to be located in Argentina, but I'm not sure). I also remembered paying that company long time ago to delete two links to our website that were included in their directories. I have to tell you, I'm completely out of my mind and I really don't know what to do. The two possibilities I can think about are: 1- A competitor has hired somebody to point spam to our site, to our other competitor, and may be some other competitors in the industry.(because as I tell you before our main competitor in the area is getting new spammy links too) 2- These black hat companies that own directories and other junk websites are pointing spam to us to get paid to remove links. Whether is #1 or #2 is getting out of control and I really don't know how to manage it (except from disvowing links as soon as I find them). I would appreciate suggestions/advise. Thanks. Ana
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | anagentile0 -
Link Espionage?
Can anyone tell why pages like this are linking to our site? http://iga.edu/facebooktabs/images/inscribirse/formulario/en/noclosingcost.html This .edu page looks benign, however if you read it, it wont take long to see what appears to be machine generated content related to finance. It has ONLY ONE outgoing link and it to my site. To me it seems to be an attempt to make us look like a link buyer. We aren't! There are dozens of these type of pages linking to us. Here's the text around the link to our site, ERATE.com Apr the origination fee alone will cost you at closing however what your broker isn t should you pay a loan origination fee or get a no fee mortgage when refinancing refinancing mortgage rates scandal could cost you a year arkansas california colorado connecticut delaware. Any insight and opinions are welcome. Jeff Howard
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | corlin0 -
Technorati links. good? or bad?
Hi all After an unnatural link warning I am about to do my third reconsideration request after having my previous two turned down. I have manually removed hundreds of spammy links (thousands if you include sitewide) and used the disavow tool on hundreds more where I could not get them manually removed. The backlinks I have remaining now all seem to be genuine. There are quite a few backlinks from technorati, I thought these were ligitimet links but am now thinking should I remove/disavow them. Does anybody have any opinions?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | shauny350 -
Massive rank drop for 'unnatural links' . Help!
Hi Everyone, I work for a company called Danbro - www.danbro.co.uk Recently a massive penalty lead to a huge drop across all keywords in Google including the brand name. Since we have conducted a massive clean up; (requesting competitors to remove duplicate content, removing some poor quality links etc etc) We still have not seen any improvement whatsoever nor has Google responded. Has anyone ever received a positive response from Google? Since we sent a reconsideration request our ranks actually went worse!! Any advice would be great
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Townpages0 -
Opinions Wanted: Links Can Get Your Site Penalized?
I'm sure by now a lot of you have had a chance to read the Let's Kill the "Bad Inbound Links Can Get Your Site Penalized" Myth over at SearchEngineJournal. When I initially read this article, I was happy. It was confirming something that I believed, and supporting a stance that SEOmoz has taken time and time again. The idea that bad links can only hurt via loss of link juice when they get devalued, but not from any sort of penalization, is indeed located in many articles across SEOmoz. Then I perused the comments section, and I was shocked and unsettled to see some industry names that I recognized were taking the opposite side of the issue. There seems to be a few different opinions: The SEOmoz opinion that bad links can't hurt except for when they get devalued. The idea that you wouldn't be penalized algorithmically, but a manual penalty is within the realm of possibility. The idea that both manual and algorithmic penalties were a factor. Now, I know that SEOmoz preaches a link building strategy that targets high quality back links, and so if you completely prescribe to the Moz method, you've got nothing to worry about. I don't want to hear those answers here - they're right, but they're missing the point. It would still be prudent to have a correct stance on this issue, and I'm wondering if we have that. What do you guys think? Does anybody have an opinion one way or the other? Does anyone have evidence of it being one way or another? Can we setup some kind of test, rank a keyword for an arbitrary term, and go to town blasting low quality links at it as a proof of concept? I'm curious to hear your responses.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AnthonyMangia0 -
Why Does Massive Reciprocal Linking Still Work?
It seems pretty well-settled that massive reciprocal linking is not a very effective strategy, and in fact, may even lead to a penatly. However, I still see massive reciprocal linking (blog roll linking even massive resource page linking) still working all the time. I'm not looking to cast aspersion on any individual or company, but I work with legal websites and I see these strategies working almost universally. My question is why is this still working? Is it because most of the reciprocally linking sites are all legally relevant? Has Google just not "gotten around" to the legal sector (doubtful considering the money and volume of online legal segment)? I have posed this question at SEOmoz in the past and it was opined that massively linking blogs through blog rolls probably wouldn't send any flags to Google. So why is that it seems that everywhere I look, this strategy is basically dismissed as a complete waste of time if not harmful? How can there be such a discrepency between what leading SEOs agree to be "bad" and the simple fact that these strategies are working en masse over the period of at least 3 years?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Gyi0