To disavow or Not to disavow is the question?
-
OK,
I have done some analysis of my site and it seems quite clear that I have been hit by Penguin and this is largely down to my link building strategy.
My question now is;
1. Do I try to undo the damage by disavowing toxic links I have identified, or
2. Do I just accept what is and ensure that from here on in I follow natural backlink acquisition?
Thanks
-
I don't know if removing bad links will work for me or not as I've only just completed the process. I now plan on using the disavow tool to remove the links I didn't get removed by my own efforts.
The removeem.com tool did help me identify potentially harmful links. It's a tedious task so using a tool like Removeem over Site Explorer and manual removal requests was the way I chose to go.
-
Thanks C Benbow.
Whilst you say that the natural policy of using removeem.com has not worked in your case, did you find the removeem tool useful for identifying toxic links in the first place?
If so I might use the tool to identify the toxic links rather than sifting through site explorer results and then go straight to disavow process with the links removeem highlights.
Thanks
-
Hi
I'm in a similar position to you and have been trying to get my site back since about Sept 2012. Over the last 4 weeks, I've been through the process of requesting link removal of low quality links using the RemoveEm.com tool. I now have a report detailing sites I've contacted, how many times and whether the link has been removed. My site has lost rankings rather than being completely dropped from the SERPs so I may need to use the disavow tool rather than just do a re-index.
So my answer would be,
1. Try removing poor quality links yourself first and perhaps use a tool to help do this www.removeem.com. Then use the disavow tool
2. A natural policy going forward has not helped my site.
See http://moz.com/community/q/is-there-anyway-to-recover-my-site-s-rankings -
You should contact the webmasters of those websites where you have spammy links and ask them to remove them.
If that fails, you can create a list of domains and use the disavowl tool.
This is how Google recommends us to do it.
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
-
SEO traffic + backlinks question
Let's say I want to write a guest post for a website that is relevant to my website. Should i guest post on a website with high traffic but the traffic country is not mine? (eg// My website sells products in Canada only, should i guest post on a high traffic site from India?) Or would it be better to find a lower traffic website to guest post on but their organic traffic comes from Canada? Thanks!
Link Building | | chrisjordan0i10 -
Odd. Unique seo question - Can you help?
This should be an interesting question - gobble up all those MOZ POINTS folks : ) Our company website is real estate based. We have nearly 30,000+ paid members on the inside that put up real estate listings (properties for sale). The members do this on their own. From an SEO stand point it sort of feels like we have a huge team of content creators putting up unique content for us. To see what I'm talking about I'll drop some links so you can review: In this first link you'll see a member of ours advertised on the NYTIMES and the clickable anchored text waterfront leads back to us or I should say the members listing. See the link below: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/realestate/city-island-a-quainter-side-of-the-bronx.html This second link is the listing page for our member that the anchored text led to. https://www.nystatemls.com/profiles/NY/SAINT_ALBANS/NEW_YORK_ESTATES_GROUP_INC/Dale_Davids/68966/listings/ When I use MOZ i can see that we got some serious link juice from the above. **This is what is happening naturally: ** When someone joins as a member the public profile of their name & office is ranking in the SERPS. Example: Higgins Realty / it's ranked #1 and brings back 100 visitors per month. https://www.nystatemls.com/agency/NY/BROOKLYN/HIGGINS_REALTY_GROUP_LLC/5575/ When someone creates a listing with our system and publishes it the address is ranking. Think of this on a mass scale. Even though they are small niche names, offices, keywords it's generating traffic. & every once in awhile the name of an office is closely related to a major keyword and we pick up something that generates say 500 to 1,500 visitors per month. When someone advertises their public profile or their listing depending on the site they advertise on or the anchored text they use it's helping our domain. Again, all of this is happening on its own we aren't pushing SEO. This simply is real estate agents and brokers doing their job and in return our Domain Authority and Page Rank is climbing. Our monthly traffic is climbing. The number of keywords we rank for is increasing. This situation must be unique because wouldn't you say that in most cases with a website they have a blog. Someone needs to write good content then try to get it linked. But in our situation our members are creating (unique content) and publishing it. How do we capitalize on this though? or I should say capitalize in a bigger way? To help everyone benefit would it be to possibly teach the members some basic SEO. What if the name of their public profile was key worded or what if we explained advertising that listing, Sharing it, getting it on other sites would benefit them. To have them link back to their profile or listing page. Maybe give them a list of suggested sites? Maybe give them a list of possible anchored texts they could use which would be keywords we want to rank for? What are your thoughts? Do you have any clever or creative ideas that would help all parties? If you want to do some research our main website is www.nystatemls.com you can review the ranking keywords, linking domains that sort of thing. Thanks for the input - Chris After
Link Building | | Cfarcher0 -
Citation, Google Plus and SEO questions
Hi, I have a website www.gemslearninginstitute.com. We offer different after school programs for kids located in Canada. I have a very basic knowledge of SEO. I have a few questions. Just wondering if someone can please help me. We offer UCMAS Mental Math Program, Tutoring and Chess School/Coaching and runs a Chess Club. I would like to boost my google ranking and get more local traffic. 1- My citation is not consistent. Which program should I use to correct the citation and delete duplicate or inconsistent listing automatically. 2 - Should I do the citation with my company name only “GEMS Learning Institute” or Should I do like this “GEMS learning Institute – UCMAS-Tutoring-Chess”. Which one is better? 3- Right now I have two different google plus business pages. One with the name of “GEMS Learning Institute” and the second one is UCMAS. Should I have only one page as GEMS and delete the UCMAS. 4- I am not sure how to check if my site is penalized by google. 5- How can I measure things which are working on not? Can you please recommend next steps should I take after doing citation to improve the ranking? Thanks in advance and appreciate help.
Link Building | | fslpso0 -
SEO Training Question
Hi Iv been asked iv to host a basic SEO training session for some employees who have never had any experience in SEO before. Obviously SEO covers so many things and it would be imposisble to run through everything in a single training session. I was curious as to what you guys think would be the best use of the time for the training session? Thanks in advance
Link Building | | TheZenAgency0 -
A few questions about unnatural links
i have just had another reconsideration request rejected by Google. In my rejection message they have given me 3 examples of unnatural links, but two of them I have had nothing to do with. My website is http://www.seoco.co.uk Here are the 3 links they mentioned: http://www.pyjamapeople.com/articles/authors/107/David-Eaves http://www.timeandattendance.co.uk/blog/?tag=access-control http://www.worx.at/blog/und-punkt/ the 1st one is just a website that republished one of my articles, I never submitted there or anything. Do I need to contact every single website that republished one of my articles and get those removed? Are they not classed as natural? Also, the page is not even cached by Google, why are they telling me to get rid of links that are not even in their index? The 2nd link is a client site and is definitely unnatural, I removed my link from the main part of the site a while ago but the blog footer was not updated, I will take care of that one. The 3rd link is a totally natural blogroll link that I had nothing to do with. What do you think I should do about it? Should I mention to Google on my next reconsideration request that it is in fact natural, or should I just bite the bullet and get it taken down? Also, there are a few pretty decent links out there that I am thinking about getting taken down on good sites, what do you think I should do with these two: 1. http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly-resources/search-engine-optimisation/directory-submission.shtml 2. http://www.webpronews.com/10-reasons-why-i-hate-shout-outs-on-digg-2007-10
Link Building | | Eavesy1 -
Do the bots crawl the top of the page first - directory listing question
Hi all, I've purchased a link from a good PR4 website, but they added my link to the bottom of a lengthy page. They offered to up-sell me to get to the top of the page, where I'll be 10 or 12 links down. One of my direct competitors is at the top, so I'm happy with the directory choice (they spank me in rankings). The only reason I'm on this directory is to purely capture link juice. So knowing all of that, my question is, should I go ahead and pay to be on the top, assuming that Google bots crawl a page from the top down? It's important to me for the bot to log this link quickly. Or is paying to be at the top pointless, because the bot will just as quickly crawl to the bottom of the page and pick up the link anyway? Thanks! T
Link Building | | 800GoldLaw0 -
Question about links on blogs
I have a number of blogs, but I'll use this one as an example: http://www.totalpackers.com/. If you look in the left column, we have "friends" links and "more Packers" links. In every case, these were links that we traded or links to our own sites. We get traffic from a number of these sites because of the link exchange, but I'm worried having these is hurting our SEO (as well these sites posting our links). It's crossed my mind that I should remove all these links from our site and ask that our links be removed from their sites. Would that be overreacting? Or is this something I should do? Any insight would be appreciated. Thanks, Monty
Link Building | | montymcmahon0