Are these sites spammy links or should I just let it go?

[blackrino]

I have a new client who had an old SEO firm that I believe was putting spammy links together for them. The firm has very good links mixed in with them so I am wondering if it even matters. They are ranked 4/10 and have a DA of 47. So it doesn't seem it is really hurting them too badly.

Below are some examples of some of the sites I found in the Open SIte Explorer. I wanted to get another opinion on if the below hurt/help/does nothing. I was thinking it hurts more than helps. Topic of his website is a marketing firm.

http://directoryol.com/united-states/page-17.html

http://360surfcamp.com/links-37

http://www.kdbx.rojo.jp/kdbx/index.cgi?action=kategorie&k_no=1&mk_no=0&page=10681

Thoughts? Should we use Google's disavow tool or just leave it alone?

[Chris.Menke]

Start putting your disavow file together.  And where are you getting your list of those links from?

[blackrino]

Those were just samples. There are hundreds of these types of links!

[Chris.Menke]

The couple links that you shared are low quality but just those few would not incur a penalty for your site.  If a high percentage of your links were similar to those it would be good cause for concern and prompt action on the disavow tool.

Don't go by DA or PR to determine if you've been impacted negatively by your link profile.  Go back over the history of your organic keyword traffic and note whether that traffic has dropped significantly and not recovered. If it has, purge with the disavow tool and start working on building real authority.  If it hasn't, target the lowest quality links with the disavow  tool and keep building real authority.

[WilliamKammer]

In Webmaster Tools you can see if there are any manual action penalties. Just because there are none there doesn't mean the site isn't penalized, but if there is something there, then it's time to take action right away.

This little tool can help indicate as well if you don't see a manual action, but without historical data like analytics and ranking reports, it becomes more difficult: http://feinternational.com/website-penalty-indicator/

[blackrino]

Thanks William - how can I tell if they have been hit with a penalty? In web master tools?

[WilliamKammer]

Some SEOs say not to disavow until you know you're hit with a penalty, but I like being proactive.

These links are definitely spammy. These are the kinds of links that take down websites, and when I get a new client with a lot of this kind of stuff, I'll submit a proactive disavow report.

Recovering from a link spam penalty isn't exactly the easiest or fastest thing in the world, so making sure it never gets to that point is important.