Should you do a disavow even if you don't have a manual penalty?
-
If you are working on a website which has a history spammy links, but no manual penalty by Google... is it still worthwhile to still go through the link removal and disavow process?
Thoughts appreciated.
-
Thanks Sam and Matt,
Great responses and I'll now get going on disavowing the project I'm working on.
Much appreciated.
-
I agree with Samuel's response. Yes, you should disavow the bad links. Why wait to drop in rankings and see how long it takes to regain them? Given the time available you should always be creating the best profile you can and now that Google has given us this tool, use it.
(Just a note - we've proactively disavowed over 1200 clients link profiles and have NOT seen a negative effect on them. We have seen some good results even for those who didn't "have a penalty.")
-
The short answer? Matt Cutts, the head of Google's web-spam team, says, "Yes!" Look at this article. Here's the main quote:
"If you are at all worried about someone trying to do negative SEO or it looks like there's some weird bot that's building up a bunch of links to your site and you have no idea where it came from, that's the perfect time to use disavow as well," Cutts said. "I wouldn't worry about going ahead and disavowing links even if you don't have a message in your webmaster console."
The long answer? In my opinion, I would agree. If you think that there's even a chance that you could be hit by a penalty now or in the future, then I would disavow. Obviously, you want to prevent this from occurring long before it would ever happen. And if you are questioning whether your links may cause your site to get hit, then you likely have a problem simply because you're asking yourself the question.
However, it always depends on the site itself. If you or a bad SEO have done things like bulk directory submissions with exact-match anchor text, then you surely want to disavow them as soon as possible. But if you only have a few questionable links, then it's less urgent. But I would disavow any and all of them and start focusing on earning links (rather than building them) through content and PR (as I wrote in this Moz post).
Good luck!
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
-
Google isn't crawling my website page
I have been trying to get indexed my inner page's title tag but still I cannot see this. It has been almost a week. I have done "Fetch as Google" even though I cannot see this. What can be the reason?
Link Building | | ksmith880 -
I've watched a few backlinks disappear from our inbound link search.
After inquiring to Moz.org about this, they suggested this might be due to a new feature that was rolled out, however, this 2 year old backlink still hasn't shown up and I'm a little concerned. Has anyone else experienced this?
Link Building | | Deacyde0 -
Should I disavow spammy links that are showing in Open Site Explorer but not showing in Google Webmaster Tools?
Howdy Mozzers, After carrying out a backlink audit for a client, Open Site Explorer shows a range of outrageously spammy links for guys wanting a bit of assistance in the bedroom area, and so on. Hopping over to Google Webmaster Tools, there is no reported trace of said spammy links (for either of the www/non-www versions of the site). There are also no manual webspam actions found on the www/non-www Google Webmaster Tools accounts for this website. So my question is: do I carry out a pre-emptive strike and go down the disavow process of requesting removal from the spammy sites, and then submit a disavow request to Google after allowing a suitable period of time for the junky/compromised website to (not) respond? Or do I just leave it alone? Thanks in advance for your wise words of wisdom and pearls of clarity.
Link Building | | wh-seo0 -
Disavow Links - how do you know if it's worked?
I asked another SEO company to analysis my link structure (as I was too busy!) As I was flat lining on some work I was doing. They said I potentially had an algo penalty and that i need to do a disavow , even though I had no messages from Google saying I had unnatural links. stupidly I agreed to the disavow. Looking at Webmasters tools it seems they've submitted a bunch of links. Since they've done this traffic dropped by 60%, ranking dropped massively. In google Webmasters all the links which are meant to be removed are still showing. How do I know if the actual disavow has been done? And should I do a reconsideration request? Even though Google hadn't flagged an issue ??
Link Building | | Cocoonfxmedia0 -
Disavow links
I am working on an account that has had several seo companies
Link Building | | JasperSEO
over the past year so around every corner I discover something new. One the
things I have found are that majority of links to the site is coming from an
outside blog but digging deeper I found that the blog is actually on the same
server as clients. Should I disavow links from that blog or should I leave it
alone?0 -
Is it better to link back to the root domain, or the specific page you're optimizing for?
I'm working on a project our site - building links for iPhone Repair. For the term "iphone repair miami" - is it more ideal to link to the root domain (xxx.com) or to the subpage that is about iPhone Repair (xxx.com/iphone-repair)? I would imagine the latter - but obviously that page has less authority than the root. Thanks!
Link Building | | preemo0 -
Can't rank with certain keywords for the life of me
I have a website http://www.freescrabbledictionary.com in which functions as a scrabble dictionary lookup and word finder for scrabble. There are many keywords that rank well for this niche but the main ones I target are Scrabble Dictionary Scrabble Cheat Scrabble Word Finder Scrabble Help I used to rank well for all these keywords, I am 4th with scrabble dictionary currently but with the other 3 am no where near the top. On March 24th I dropped off the map for scrabble cheat, scrabble word finder and scrabble help. I actually dropped to 9/10th for scrabble dictionary on that date as well but since then I have been able to hold on steady to 4th. I can't figure out why I can't rank for those other keywords anymore. Its almost like Google has penalized me for those keywords. I have contacted Google a few times to ask if I have any penalties and they have told me that I don't. Even though in my backlinking I have targeted these keywords I can't seem to rank for them no matter what I do. The only idea I have come up with is that Google has re-associated those other 3 keywords in a group and separated scrabble dictionary on its own. I have other sites I have created in the same niche and I have noticed if the URL contains "word", "Finder" and/or "cheat" I can rank in the 3 keywords within about a week all the way up to the second page. My main site FSD has the highest DA and PA compared to my other sites. Any idea why I can't seem to rank for those other 3 keywords anymore?
Link Building | | cbielich0