Should I disavow links to a dead sub domain?
-
I'm analyzing a client's website today and I found that they have over 300 spammy sites linking to a subdomain of their main site. So for example, say their site is clientsite.com, well they have hundreds of links pointing to deadsite.clientsite.com.
That subdomain was used at one time as a staging site, and is no longer active.
Are those hundreds of spammy sites hurting or potentially hurting my client's SEO? Or is it a non-issue because the links point to a dead subdomain?
We believe that that staging sub domain site was hacked at one time, and thats where all those spammy links came from.
Should I disavow them?
-
You said this:
"Would disavow even be of any use though? I though that a disavow file had to be for the specific domain, so adding a disavow to all those links wouldn't do anything"
When you disavow at the domain level, you also cover ALL the subdomains on that domain as well (even if they are deleted). So the best practice in this case, even if the domain isn't there anymore would be to just disavow those links.
John Mueller clarified this in a Google+ thread back in 2014.
-
Thanks. There are no links being shared between the main domain and the subdomain, and none of those links actually point to the main domain.
Would disavow even be of any use though? I though that a disavow file had to be for the specific domain, so adding a disavow to all those links wouldn't do anything.
-
I would recommend disavowing all the spammy links just to be on the safe side. However subdomains can be treated as a seperate site all together and if there is no instance of internal links being placed on the subdomain pointing to the main domain you may be fine. However I like to be safe so I would probably disavow the backlinks.
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
-
Moving Pages Up a Folder to come off root domain
Good Morning I've been doing some competitor research to see why they're ranking higher than us and noticed that one who seems to be doing well has changed their url structure so that rather than being www.domain.com/product-category/product-subcategory/product-info-page/ they've removed levels so for instance they now have: www.domain.com/product-subcategory/ and www.domain.com/product-info-page/ basically everything seems to come off the root domain rather than having the traditional structure. Our rankings for the product-subcategory pages, which are probably what most people would search for, are just sitting below the first page in most instances and have been for a while I'm interested to know other people's thoughts and if this is an approach they've taken and had good results?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Ham19790 -
Link Getting Deleted for Few Days
If a link gets deleted for few days and re-appears... Will Google treat it as a "new link" or give it the same old link-age.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Akshayshr0 -
Exchange link from sites in same google account
Hi everyone, Anybody have experience when you have some websites which stored in Google Webmaster Tool and they exchange links between sites. So is it good for sites? We are hosted on different server. Thank you so much
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Jeepster0 -
WP Datar site shady linking to my site
Hello, I have done some research on this but cannot find a solid answer to my question. After recently reviewing my "not found" errors in webmaster tools, I see that a site called "WP Datar" has linked to a number of our pages that actually do not exist. I am wondering first, if this will harm our site, and second, what is the best way to get those links from their site taken down? I tried emailing, but of course, the email address listed on the site did not work. 🙂 Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | lfrazer0 -
Competitor outranking you with link spam. What would be your next steps?
FYI: I've already searched the forums for previous posts on this topic and although some are helpful, they don't tend to have many responses, so I'm posting this again in the hope of more interaction from the community 😉
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | adamlcasey
So can I please ask the community to tell me what course of action you would take, if this was happening to you? We have been ranking in position 1 for a major keyword in our space for the past 18 months. Today I logged into my Moz account and to keyword rankings to find that we have dropped to 2nd. So I placed the competitors website; who's now in 1st position, into OSE and looked under the "Just Discovered" tab. There are 258 newly discovered links, 95% of which use keywords in the anchor text!
So I reviewed the rankings for all of these other keywords being targeted and sure enough they are now dominating the top 1-3 spots for most of them. (some of which we are also attempting to rank for and have subsequently been pushed down the rankings) Their links are made up of: Forum and blog comments - always using anchor text in the links Article's posted on web 2.0 sites (Squidoo, Pen.io, Tumblr, etc) Profile page links Low quality Press Release sites Classified ad sites Bookmarking sites Article Marketing sites Our competitors sell safety solutions into the B2B market yet the topics of some of the sites where these links appear include: t-shirts sports news online marketing anti aging law christian guitars computers juke boxes Of the articles that I quickly scanned, it was clear they had been spun as they didn't read well/make sense in places. So my conclusion is that they have decided to work with a person (can't bring myself to call them an seo company) who have provided them with a typical automated link building campaign using out dated, poor seo practices that are now classified as link spam. No doubt distributed using an automated link publishing application loaded with the keyword rich anchor text links and published across any site that will take them. As far as I was aware, all of the types of links we're supposed to have be penalised by Google's Penguin & Panda updates and yet it seems they are working for them! So what steps would you take next?0 -
Can i send a disavow if a detect a spam link
I have detected than one web domain is generating 2400 links to my site should a use a disavow tools, as it is imposible to have contact from webmaster and no response to your emails My web as not been warned or penalized, but i dont like this link, and i want to inform google of that,. If google acepts the disavow file, should i still see on my webmaster tools that web links, or will they desapear thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | maestrosonrisas0 -
Owning multiple domains across similar fields
We have a printing website specializing in a single field but had added other products to it along the way, we are looking at adding a second site (redesigned from the ground up) that with cover everything (so will inevitably cover some of the same keywords) is this ok. We are considering some of the other things such as putting both sites on different IP's and also wondered about the registration details (would it be ok to have them under the same company?). Just to make it clear they will not be used for cross link or any other such things so just wanting to know if they could end up on page one for some of the same keywords and Google would be ok with this. Thank you for your time.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
New website :301 redirection of a established domain
Hello , I am launching a new website which would host user generated content . Based on my brandname i have purchased a new domain . In order to improve SEO rankings i was considering to purchase a good quality domain (have gr8 link backs) and then perform 301 redirection of the domain to the new brandname.co.in domain . Does this work ? Is there any harm in doing this ? . Does the Link juice pass naturally ? Warm Rgd
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ShoutOut0