Disavow 60% of the external links?
-
Hi guys,
We just discovered that our website got a 16% Spam Score based on MOZ reports, while less than 1 year ago we had a good 1% if I'm not mistaken. Therefore we ran an audit of the external links to our website and discovered that about 60% of them are irrelevant such as:
- referral page not available anymore (or not found, or domain not accessible)
- irrelevant web directories for our business
Impossible to contact the owner of these pages or remove the links towards our website.
Is the Disavow tool an acceptable option in this case? Could this lower our Spam Score and make a better impression in "Google's eyes"? 60% seems quite a lot of backlinks, but they are also not relevant, and we want to focus on creating better quality referrals in the next months.I would really appreciate an opinion on this, and how would you proceed in this case.
-
Don't disavow any links before talking to an seo consultant about whether the links should be disavowed or not
Many businesses have tried to disavow links themselves, and sometimesthe links might not have needed disavowing. So do contact an expert seo consultant or an SEO Agency first for advice before you disavow any links.
-
Hi A
Well done, you are 100% on the right track. Go get em.
Regards
-
Thank you very much for all your insights! I'll look into each of them and it's good to know there's no need to disavow most of the referral links. The website is doing pretty well actually (ranking keeps improving in the last months), so I guess the next step would be to focus on building better quality links. Thanks again for all your opinions!
-
Check this post out. In reference to a similar question.
Basically the TLDR is that unless it looks like blatant PBN/SPAM/Manipulation google doesn't seem to concerned. I have plenty of backlink that are 75% spam score and higher. Obviously I don't recommend looking for links that are super high spam score but I would put your effort into link acquisition as opposed to link cleanup.
-
Hi there!
Thanks so much for the question! I do want to make sure to point out that Spam Score is not dependent on your backlinks. Spam Score is the percentage of sites with similar characteristics to yours which have been banned or penalized by Google. We calculate this based on 27 common factors we identified.
Disavowing links isn't the best way to improve your Spam Score in Link Explorer. If you're looking to improve that score, I would recommend understanding the 27 factors that make up this score and working on improving those: https://moz.com/help/link-explorer/link-building/spam-score
In addition, disavowing links will not remove the links from you backlink profile in Moz. Since disavowing a link doesn't take it away, it would still appear in our link index.
We also have a great blog post which may help: https://moz.com/blog/do-we-still-need-to-disavow-penguin
I hope all this info helps! If you have further questions or if you need anything else, please feel free to reach out to help@moz.com
-
Hi
Disavow should be a last resort.
The Spam score is a guide ONLY. It is a wake-up call to investigate. As you have done examine each link where possible individually. It appears no action is required based on your findings.
That said the first queries are - is your site ranking well? have there been any large dips or a noticeable decline? Can you clarify?
I add if so then need to undertake a full technical audit, so not a disavow yet..
Regards
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
-
My link research tool is not working
Hello Dear i am facing a problem that my link research tool is not working is there any body else who has the same problem like me need help
Link Explorer | | Arenapile0 -
Sudden surge in discovered links
Hi everyone, Recently Moz discovered a lot of old backlinks to my url. Some of them don't even exist anymore. I don't understand how Moz has found these links, even if they don't exist? And why did Moz find them suddenly all at once? Can anyone help me with this question? Thanks!
Link Explorer | | Online_Marketing_Monkey0 -
Moz Pro Tools Inbound Links
Is there a way to get a date of when a inbound link was created from a external website. And if so is there a way to add that to the Moz Pro tools reports on a csv file.
Link Explorer | | willakawillow221 -
No incoming links from DMOZ in my report
Hi, I am confused, after so much years of waiting, some months ago I got listed in the DMOZ http://www.dmoz.org/World/Español/Tiempo_libre/Turismo/Blogs/ (My blog is Charcotrip) The problem is that when I check the incoming list in the MOZ report, the DMOZ link is totally absent, I don't get it. Does anyone knows why can this happening? (is not that my blog get recently listed, now it has been there for a while). Thanks!
Link Explorer | | Gaolga0 -
Why I am not seeing any inbound link to my website?
While using the Open Site Explorer tool, I don't get any resultfor Inbound Links, while with other services and the Webmaster Tools I can see which websites are linking to mine. What I can do to see these results here on the MOZ analytics software? The website is http://b5footballcup.com Thanks for the support. Luca
Link Explorer | | lucab50 -
OSE not picking up all internal links?
Hi! I've been checking a few pages in OSE. For example: https://www.holidayhypermarket.co.uk/holidays/last-minute This, according to the tool, has only 6 internal links. However, a Screaming Frog crawl picks up 700+, which is about right seeing as there is a link in the footer. What do you think could be behind the discrepancy?
Link Explorer | | Blink-SEO0 -
Open Site Explorer doesn't show local directories or citation links?
Why is it that when I run a link analysis for my local business sites I don't see any links from Yelp, Google+, Facebook, any local citations? Regardless of them being follow or no follow isn't the hyperlink to a website from a Yelp profile considered a link? Same with any other local business directory? I know the company is listed on a few dozen because I can see it manually but it's not showing up in Moz? Why is it that all local directories and citations with website are omitted? And since it is not there, where is a good place to go to discover these things? I have tried whitespark. It was okay but honestly I wasn't terribly impressed. The data was good, the UI was just okay, but with smaller clients it was an initial check and then very occasional checks that needed to happen. We would go months without using it.
Link Explorer | | bricegump0 -
Does Open Site Explorer recognise nofollow links?
In the backlink profile for my site on OSE, I'm seeing a lot of links that are paid advetorials and I know go through DoubleClick. I was informed that links going through Doubleclick automatically become NoFollow links. If the above is true, should I ignore these links? If they are NoFollow, they don't really contribute to my backlink profile? THANKS!
Link Explorer | | whis0