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.
Will Removing or Disavowing Toxic Links Improve MOZ Domain Authority?
-
The vast majority of the 140 domains that link to our website are very low quality directories or and other toxic links. Only about 20-30 domains are not toxic (according to Link Research Tools confirmed by out manual inspection of these links).
Would removing some of these links improve of MOZ Domain Rank? What if we cannot remove them, can NOZ detect a disavow file?
In general would improving the ratio between good quality and poor quality links improve domain authority?
Thanks,
Alan -
Hi Lauren:
Do on page factors influence Domain Authority as much as building back links? This is a really key question!
I need to decide whether to invest resources in building back links or improving on site SEO. How about internal links? How much do they contribute to domain authority? At the moment my site lacks internal links, would adding them in a relevant manner improve domain authority?
While I greatly appreciate your last response it is somewhat ambiguous.
Thanks, Alan
-
Hi Again Lauren:
According to Rand Fishkin's post:
https://moz.com/community/q/da-pa-fluctuations-how-to-interpret-apply-understand-these-ml-based-scoresDomain Authority is predominantly determined by backlinks from other websites rather than on site SEO factors (content quality, internal linking). This contradicts your response somewhat which make things really confusing. Now I don't know whether to allocate resources towards building backlinks from other domains or whether to work on improving internal links and contents.
If you could please clear this up it would be much appreciated.
Thanks,
Alan
-
Hi Lauren:
Thanks for your response. I was under the impression that domain authority was solely determined by external backlinks. So, are you saying that domain authority can be increased by improving the internal linking structure between pages and improving the quality of pages?
Our site has many, many "orphan" pages. From what you are saying, improving the internal linking structure would improve our Domain Authority, is that correct?
Also MOZ shows certain title tags, URLs and descriptions as too long, some are duplicate and some missing. Would correcting these help improve domain authority?
Is it safe to say that improved Domain Authority would increase the likely hood of improved ranking?
Thanks,
Alan -
It's worth considering whether you should disavow links if you haven't seen a manual penalty.
We generally only recommend disavowing links in the following situations:- For sites that have made links for SEO purposes on a large scale
- For sites that previously had a manual action for unnatural links
- For sites under obvious negative SEO attacks
If you see some weird links you probably do not need to be disavowing links.
When Google takes action either manually or algorithmically against a site for unnatural linking, it's because the site has been actively trying to manipulate Google rankings on a large scale. If you made a couple of directory links in the past, it's currently unlikely you'll get a penalty.Disavowing a link doesn't take it away so they will still appear as backlinks to your site within the Moz tools. The fact that Google disregards them in relation to your site does not take them off the sites they are on, so best practice is to approach the webmaster first and request the link be removed. If you get no response then disavow.
We always recommend manual investigation of a site to ensure it is a link that is causing harm to your site. When a link is disavowed it can be very difficult to regain that link equity.
To understand how to improve DA (Domain Authority) it can help to get some insight into how we gather our data, which I'll include below. Sorry in advance for the long message!
To calculate DA, we index the web by following links using a crawler. Our crawler is built on a machine-learning based model that is optimized to select pages like those that appear in our collection of Google SERPs. We feed the machine learning model with features of the URL like the backlink counts for the URL and the PLD (pay-level domains), features about the URL like its length and how many subdirectories it has, and features on the quality of the domains linking to the URL and PLD. So, it's not based on any one particular metric, but we're training the crawler to start with high-value links.
In terms of improving your Domain Authority, with the information above in mind, it's best to look at both you on-page SEO to make sure you've covered the basics.
Then you also want to look at your off-site SEO and building more links more links to your site.
There are lots of different areas of Link Building to explore, from patching up broken links, improving your internal link profile, and good ol' fashioned content creation.
Here is a great video by our founder Rand which goes over some easy link building tactics to get you started.You can read more about disavowing links this here: https://moz.com/blog/do-we-still-need-to-disavow-penguin
Sorry for the long response, I hope this helps!
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
-
Unsolved Why is my website Backlinks Lower on Moz than on SEMRush?
Hi, I'm new to Moz and I am trying to find out why my website Birmingham Roofers has 7 backlinks on Moz it has 21 on SEMRush. However, I read somewhere online in one of your blog post that it crawls in real time.
Moz Bar | | ajegunle1 -
Limit MOZ crawl rate on Shopify or when you don't have access to robots.txt
Hello. I'm wondering if there is a way to control the crawl rate of MOZ on our site. It is hosted on Shopify which does not allow any kind of control over the robots.txt file to add a rule like this: User-Agent: rogerbot Crawl-Delay: 5 Due to this, we get a lot of 430 error codes -mainly on our products- and this certainly would prevent MOZ from getting the full picture of our shop. Can we rely on MOZ's data when critical pages are not being crawled due to 430 errors? Is there any alternative to fix this? Thanks
Moz Bar | | AllAboutShapewear2 -
Moz not updating the spam score metrics
Hi Experts, I have done everything to come over the following metrics flagged as spam on my website by Moz, few months ago. But, Moz has not updated the spam score yet. ✓Low MozTrust or MozRank Score - improved from 2 to 4.5
Moz Bar | | jamesh.rich01
✓Large Site with Few Links - My website have more than 6K backlinks
✓Small Proportion of Branded Links - My website have a good amount of branded backlinks
✓Thin Content - Every webpage on website has more than 500 words content
✓External Links in Navigation - There is no external link in navigation other than social media links
✓No Contact Info - The proper address has alreay been placed on website footer
✓Low Number of Pages Found - I am wondering if there are any standard score or number of links to reach to remove these flag?
Also, please suggest some ways that will help me improve moz spam score at faster rate. Thanks for your help in advance!"0 -
I want to uninstall the Moz SEO toolbar. How do I do this?
I installed the Moz toolbar and I don't understand it and it covers up important parts of websites and makes them inaccessible. I want to get it off my computer. I installed it in chrome. How do I get it off?
Moz Bar | | Bonnie761 -
How to bulk check the ranking for more than 800 domains?
I got a list of 800 domains that my company owns and I want to check every domain for it's SEO value. Some of these domains where never used, but I don't know which weren't used... Do you know a tool for this? Something where I can upload the list in excel?
Moz Bar | | Becki1230 -
Pinterest Back Links Showing For One Website But Not Other in OSE
Hello, I have verified my business websites on both of my pinterest accounts for the following websites Http://www.prickettproperties.com and Http://www.ChicFamilyTravels.com The backlinks for prickett shows up in OSE, but not for ChicFamily. I am curious as to why that is? Thanks in advance for your help
Moz Bar | | Prickett0 -
Is Moz Analytics still available to all MozCon attendees?
I thought all Mozcon attendees were going to get access to Moz Analytics even after the convention was over. I can't seem to find were to access it from my campaigns manager dashboard and the Analytics landing page says im on queue to get access.
Moz Bar | | AmberHanson0