Spammy inbound links: Don't Fix It If It's Not Broken?
-
Hi Moz community,
Our website is nearing the end of a big redesign to be mobile-responsive. We decided to delay any major changes to text content so that if we do suffer a rankings drop upon launch, we'll have some ability to isolate the cause.
In the meantime I'm analyzing our current SEO strengths and weaknesses. There is a huge discrepancy between our rankings and our inbound link profile. Specifically, we do great on most of our targeted keywords and in fact had a decent surge in recent months. But Link Profiler turned up hundreds of pages of inbound links from spammy domains, many of which don't even display a webpage when I click there. (shown in uploaded image)
"Don't fix it if it's not broken" is conflicting with my natural repulsion to these sorts of referrals. Assuming we don't suffer a rankings drop from the redesign, how much of a priority should this be? There are too many and most are too spammy to contact the webmasters, so we'll need to do it through a Disavow. I couldn't even open the one at the top of the list because our business web proxy identified it as adult content.
It seems like a common conception is that if Google hasn't penalized us for it yet, they will eventually. Are we talking about the algorithm just stumbling upon these links and hurting us or would this be something we would find in Manual Actions? (or both?)
How long after the launch should we wait before attacking these bad links? Is there a certain spam score that you'd say is a threshold for "Yes, definitely get rid of it"? And when we do, should we Disavow domains one domain at a time to monitor any potential drops or all at once? (this seems kind of obvious but if the spam score and domain authority alone is enough of a signal that it won't hurt us, we'd rather get it done asap)
How important is this compared to creating fresh new content on all the product pages? Each one will have new images as well as product reviews, but the product descriptions will be the same ones we've had up for years. I have new content written but it's delayed pending any fallout from the redesign.
Thanks for any help with this!
-
Can share your domain?
-
Thanks, I think I started checking that out but will go back and complete it.
We haven't built any PBNs but we do have an affiliate marketing program through Commission Junction and have found poor quality links as a result of that in the past so there's a likely culprit for some. We also have a direct competitor in the same state who knows digital marketing well, so it's possible they've tried to sabotage our link profile a bit.
-
I will expand on this but don’t do a disavow (unless google told you to disavow or you made them using a PBN) it’s not going to help you ask them to remove the bad links google is most likely ignoring.
I will explain more in 4-6 hours.
search moz for the most recent WBF ab this Cyrus does an awesome job of explaining why.
hope this helps,
Tom
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
-
Since July 1, we've had a HUGE jump in errors on our weekly crawl. We don't think anything has changed on our website. Has MOZ changed something that would account for a large leap in duplicate content and duplicate title errors?
Our error report went from 1,900 to 18,000 in one swoop, starting right around the first of July. The errors are duplicate content and duplicate title, as if it does not see our 301 redirects. Any insights?
Moz Pro | | KristyFord0 -
When will links appear
When will links appear? Hi I submitted one of our products to a range of beauty bloggers and all of the reviews came back, really positive, along with links to our site. However when I run a back link report in open site explorer only one of these links is showing up even though the links all went live at about the same time. Can any one explain this in discrepancy?
Moz Pro | | Hardley10 -
I can't submit a private question
I'm trying to submit a private question but I get an error saying: We're sorry, but something went wrong. We've been notified about this issue and we'll take a look at it shortly. Cornel
Moz Pro | | Cornel_Ilea0 -
Crawl started on the 18th of December and still hasn't completed!
As the title states I started a crawl over 2 weeks ago now and it still hasn't completed. Does anyone know why this could be? Thanks
Moz Pro | | cttgroup0 -
Why can't I find uipl?
Hi guys, I'm working with the API at the moment. I have most of the information I want, but I cannot find the uipl in any of the returned data using several methods. The methods I have tried are: http://lsapi.seomoz.com/linkscape/links/www.google.co.uk?Scope=page_to_domain&AccessID=xxx&Expires=xxx&Signature=xxx http://lsapi.seomoz.com/linkscape/url-metrics/www.google.co.uk?AccessID=xxx&Expires=xxx&Signature=xxx I can't seem to find how to get the uipl. Any ideas? Thanks in advance!
Moz Pro | | ClickConsult0 -
How to Link build for our site
Hello, A client of mine has a site that gives advice to people. It's moderately competitive. It's a content site. Using Open Site explorer, I looked up competitor's top pages and backlinks, and there were things such as sites that were heavy on directories, sites heavily on editorial mension, sites on juicy topics that I don't want to cover, and the rest was pretty much junk. Just so that you know, I only link build with quality websites that look strong, long term, have a nice design, are high quality, and are not a directory (with a few exceptions) What's the standard way to link build with a site like this? We've got 7 articles of good content that is from me spending hours learning about the subject and using my skills as a life coach. Right now I'm just adding quality content and social media. I am not a top expert in the field, but I'm learning as much as possible. How do we link build?
Moz Pro | | BobGW0 -
OSE lists dead links
Going over the link profile of a competitor who gets 5x the traffic we do.... of course frustrated that the majority of their links are spam blogs (full of words but don't communicate anything) and forum profiles. Thanks Google for telling me what not to do, then rewarding my competitor for doing it shamelessly. Question regarding sites listed by Open Site Explorer as linking to said competitor, but that don't even load when I visit their url. Some go to a godaddy parked page, like the domain name expired long ago. Is this simply a limitation of OSE, and can I assume Google has indexed differently and therefore awarding no link juice from these urls?
Moz Pro | | jotham20