Lost rankings after disavowing links
-
About two months ago, I received an unnatural inbound links message from Google. Then I disavowed 58 (the worst ones) and now I can see that right after the date I submitted my disavow file I'm losing rankings. What would you suggest?
I don't really want to revoke my disavow file because it has totally bad links.
I have this idea to build 58 links from high quality sites (instead of the 58 I disavowed). Do you think it'll work faster (if at all) or I just need to remove my disavow file?
-
Nope. still no luck (
-
Vince/Tom/Michael,
Any updates?
I just did a second round of disavowing and am seeing a substantial drop.
-
Vince,
I too have seen the same after using disavow. I did not have a manual penalty, but noticed some ranking drops related to Penguin, or Panda, or whichever was spammy links. I got rid of a bunch of low quality links and noticed a drop, not instantly but after about 1 month.
My question for you Vince, is have you seen an improvement since then? I am hoping you have!
-
Thanks, David. Yeah, I totally feel like I should not have done that but your shared experience gives me hope.
-
Thanks for your reply, Tom. Thing is, I added my bad links to the disavow tool but I did not send a reconsideration request because because disavowed links seem to be triggered by major algo updates as well. It looks that mine was triggered by the one that happened on July 18. Do you think I still need to email Google and ask to reconsider?
-
Like you Vince, I went through the process of disavowing a number of links with Google and Bing and yes a week or so later I started to see a big rank dips. The links had been sending traffic that skewed my bounce rate and visitor page time rate, quite literally adding 1000's of visitors a month. Now after a few months the site has returned to its normal monthly stats and rankings are back to normal. But it took about 2-3 months for this to all work through.
I know how you feel 'Why did I do that? darn it' but I think like Tom says it's better to stick out and not remove the disavow file and focus on building good content for people to link too.
David
-
Hi Vince
What happened when you disavowed the links? Have you submitted a reconsideration request and has the penalty been revoked?
Until you get a message saying the manual penalty has been lifted, it won't matter what you do to your rankings or links - they'll keep on going down.
I'd definitely keep the disavow file in there (and add to it if needs be) and keep filing reconsideration requests until the penalty has been lifted.
It's worth noting as well that sometimes these bad links will be powering up your site. I mean, one of the reasons people use bad links, for black-hat reasons, is because they can and do work. However, they're not sustainable in my eyes. If you've built a site with bad links, you're effectively a ticking time bomb and that's probably not the healthiest way to do business - at least in my opinion.
So disavowing those links could quite conceivably been the cause for the drop in rankings (even if you didn't have a penalty), but you're much healthier in the long run. My recommendation - after getting that penalty removed first and foremost - would be to replace those links with high quality and authoritative ones, as you have mentioned.
Hope this helps.
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
-
When I click an outgoing link from Analytics - why are they all broken?
On one of my websites, if I visit the Behavior > Site Content section of Anayltics any link I try to open is broken. Google Analytics is appending the domain before every URL causing it to open in a popup but as a broken link. Example: Trying to click a link to a page on the website at this URL: http://www.thisisanexample.com/test.html But in the Analytics popup browser this is what it tries to load: www.thisisanexample.comhttp://www.thisisanexample.com/test.html So I can't preview any of the content within Google Analytics. I feel like this is a settings issue somewhere... Any ideas?
Reporting & Analytics | | ShawnW0 -
Why don't i have a page rank for charlesvapor.com
www.charlesvapor.com has been up for 5 months and the seo work is completed; i do not have page ranking foir this site and i want to know a little about why; is their any help figuring it out?
Reporting & Analytics | | prostene13590 -
Difference between External Followed Links and Total External Links?
Hello, could someone please elaborate on what is meant by "External Followed Links" vs. "Total External Links"? Does "External Followed Links" mean the number of links that are generating traffic to the site? Or is there some other way to conceptualize it? Any help would be appreciated! Thank you in advance.
Reporting & Analytics | | lincolndigitalgroup1 -
Can 500 errors hurt rankings for an entire site or just the pages with the errors?
I'm working with a site that had over 700 500 errors after a redesign in april. Most of them were fixed in June, but there are still about 200. Can 500 errors affect rankings sitewide, or just the pages with the errors? Thanks for reading!
Reporting & Analytics | | DA20130 -
Are Click-Through rates & Bounce Rates as Ranking Metrics ?
There are lots of articles around but I would prefer to see what everyone here has to say about it. Are they ranking metrics ( directly or In-directly )? If they are then how to get it right? Can i depend on Google In-page analytic? What is an acceptable Bounce rate for a home page ? What is an average click through rate for your landing page ? thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | conversiontactics0 -
What does "on first page" mean in seomoz ranking reports?
Hi - When reports here show numbers of keywords appearing "on first page", there must be some implicit assumption made about the number of results listed per page. 1. Can anyone tell me what that assumption is? Is it 10? 20? 2. What about universal results Local links? If the answer to number one is, for instance, 20 results per page, then are there any assumptions made about the number of universal results Local links included? I'm just trying to understand what the reports mean. Thanks, Tim
Reporting & Analytics | | tcolling0 -
Posting on blog comments with anchor text on high ranked pages effective?
So i've identified some blogs which have a fairly high ranking and lots of traffic. They also allow anchor text in the name field. Does it make sense for me to comment on these blogs, or does google treat these with less authority that true page links? Any advice is greatly appreciated! TIA
Reporting & Analytics | | symbolphoto0 -
Quantifying link building efforts
Does anyone have a way to quantify the value of link building efforts? I am trying to devote resources to improve our link building initiatives but is there any way to correlate it to page rank etc? I know you can't tie it down directly but any rough gauge or studies in the past that people may be aware of? Any thoughts on how you would tackle this question? I need to demonstrate the value it provides in a slightly more scientific manner than saying "it just helps". Thanks,
Reporting & Analytics | | NicB1
Nic0