Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Should I keep, or disavow PA 1 DA 0 backlink?
-
Hi,
I am doing link cleaning, and still a bit new to this, and would appreciate the community's help

So, I have a site which has quite a lot of low DA (or no DA) follow backlinks. BUT,
- the links are from my niche
- the sites are not spammy
- the anchors are okay
- and they are from good Geo location for me
The only negative thing is that these sites are a bit "dead" meaning that there is no new content, and thus there is no traffic or clicks coming from them.
Should I keep those links or disavow them?
To me these links are natural, but do they help me at all....
FYI I have plenty of good DA links. But what do you guys think, if I disavow all these low DA backlinks, does Google think that I am trying to manipulate my backlink structure to look better than it naturally is?
Cheers guys and girls!

-
Thanks Gaston! Good to keep this in mind.
-
I don't think that Moz doesn't care about when the content was published.
Keep in mind that Moz and Ahref mostly weight and analyze their backlink profile, thus it's possible that they haven't discovered any backlinks and their metrics can be low.Hope it helps.
Best luck.
GR -
Thanks Gaston for your response!
It sure helps in decision making.I guess I'll just filter and disavow really spammy backlinks with viagra and other medicine anchor texts.
Yeah, I have also noticed big differences with different tools. Quite often for example Ahrefs gives 0 DR and 0 UR, and Moz gives 25 DA and 12 PA on the same domain / url. This has been the case quite often with some old blogs with no updates in couple years. Maybe Moz doesn't care when was the latest content added to the site. Or maybe Ahrefs gives much less value to sites which don't get new content, and puts the score down much more.
-
Hi Risto,
Google said it many times that they are pretty good at detecting bad links thus they encourage us to disavow links only when a manual penalty has hit your site or when you dont trust Google's algorithms and/or do know that those links are really hurting you.
That said, my personal opinion, don't bother at all.
Also, please keep in mind that private metrics as PA, DA, TF, CF or whatever do not reflect what google sees. Those companies with their algorithms try to simulate what Google understands so don't fully rely on them.Hope this helps.
Best luck.
GR
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 creating a sub-domain, does that sub-domain automatically start with the DA of the main domain?
We have a website with a high DA and we are considering sub-folder or sub-domain. One of the great benefits of a sub-folder is that we know we get to keep the high DA, is this also the case for sub-domains? Also if you could provide any sources of information that specify this, I can't see to find anything!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Saba.Elahi.M.0 -
Why some domains and sub-domains have same DA, but some others don't?
Hi I noticed for some blog providers in my country, which provide a sub-domian address for their blogs. the sub-domain authority is exactly as the main domain. Whereas, for some other blog providers every subdomain has its different and lower authority. for example "ffff.blog.ir" and "blog.ir" both have domain authority of 60. It noteworthy to mention that the "ffff.blog.ir" does not even exist! This is while mihanblog.com and hfilm.mihanblog.com has diffrent page authority.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rayatarh5451230 -
Backlink audit - anyone know of a good tool for manually checking backlinks?
Hi all, I'm looking at how to handle backlinks on a site, and am seeking a tool into which I can manually paste backlinks - is there a good backlink audit tool that offers this functionality? Please let me know! Thanks in advance, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
How to outrank a directory listing with high DA but low PA?
My site is at 4th place, 3 places above it is a gumtree (similar to yell, yelp) listing. How can you figure out how difficult it would be outrank those pages? I mean obviously the pages would have low PA and they are top based on the high DA of the site. This also seems to go back to keyword research and difficulty, when I'm doing keyword research and I see a wikipedia site in top 5 rank, or a yell.com or perhaps an article in forbes.com outranks your site. Typically the problem seems to be Google giving a lot of credit to these pages rankings based on the high DA rather than PA of the pages. How would you gauge the difficulty of that keyword then if the competition are pages with very high DA which is impossible to compete with but low PA? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | magusara2 -
Moving to a new site while keeping old site live
For reasons I won't get into here, I need to move most of my site to a new domain (DOMAIN B) while keeping every single current detail on the old domain (DOMAIN A) as it is. Meaning, there will be 2 live websites that have mostly the same content, but I want the content to appear to search engines as though it now belongs to DOMAIN B. Weird situation. I know. I've run around in circles trying to figure out the best course of action. What do you think is the best way of going about this? Do I simply point DOMAIN A's canonical tags to the copied content on DOMAIN B and call it good? Should I ask sites that link to DOMAIN A to change their links to DOMAIN B, or start fresh and cut my losses? Should I still file a change of address with GWT, even though I'm not going to 301 redirect anything?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kdaniels0 -
Disavow first (and link removal outreach second) as tactic?
I need to remove/disavow hundreds of domains due to an algorithmic penalty. Has anyone disavowed first and done the outreach thing second as a tactic? The reason why I was considering this was as follows: Most of the websites are from spammy websites and unlikely to have monitored accounts/available contact details. My business is incredibly seasonal, only being easily profitable for half of the year. The season starts from next month so the window of opportunity to get it done is small. If there's a Penguin update before I get it done, then it could be very bad news. Any thoughts would be much appreciated. (Incidentally, if you are interested in, I also posted here about it: http://moz.com/community/q/honest-thoughts-needed-about-link-building-removal)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Coraltoes770 -
50,000 backlinks in webmaster tools from one site???
Hi All, I'm new to evaluating backlinks, but I just saw I got over 50,000 links from a backlink that was added on ONE page at this site here: http://www.netnewspublisherDOTcom. I presume this is not a good thing, and if I contact them to remove the one link on the one page, it won't solve the other 49,999 links that Google is seeing pointing to us, so what do I do??. Should I contact them and ask to remove it and see if they don't and then disavow? Or would you just tell Google to disavow the whole site? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mlm120 -
Why SEOmoz says to keep title tag not more than 65 character?
Why SEOmoz says to keep title tag not more than 65 characters? I have this question that what is the disadvantage if my meta title is 150 character? Why everyone focus in keeping it short ? If i put all my important keywords in starting of title tag say in first 65 characters and keep the title 100-150 character how can it hurt my website? Google will consider 65 character, right but it won’t penalize me for having 110 character then please explain Why we focus so much… 🙂 I know i used too many why 🙂 just to tell i am nt a lawyer 😉 just trying to act like one 🙂 , just kidding.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ShashankGupta0