Should I bother disavowing nofollow backlinks?
-
Hello!
I am about to go through the list of backlinks in our profile and sort out what we want to disavow. A question I had is, should I both disavowing nofollow backlinks, even if they look spammy? Or should I just focus on cleaning up the dofollow's?
Thanks!
-
Some great responses here and although I agree with contacting webmasters first and requesting manual removal of links, I think its good to mention what to do if you are hit with a negative SEO blast where all the new links are from spammy blog networks and de-indexed domains etc where conveniently, there are no contact details on site or with WHOIS.
In this case, its probably better going down the disavow route using caution and common sense before submitting final disavow file.
-
Actually, the Rmoov tool is great for automatically pulling WHOIS data and managing the email process.
It is important to understand Rmoov is a tool for 1 part of the process. You still need to compile a comprehensive list of all your site's links, and then carefully identify those links. Rmoov is designed to automate a portion of the webmaster outreach phase, but there is still manual work to be done as well.
-
Great point Ryan, the WHOIS lookup is a perfect tool to start your manual removal process.
Ryan, here is a link to GoDaddy's WHOIS search: http://who.godaddy.com/whoischeck.aspx
-
Thanks for the responses guys. I understand the disavow tool is supposed to be a last resort and I really think we're there. We were hit with penguin and have done anything possible to date to recover our rankings and have gotten no where.
I am going to compile a list of links I think need to be removed and then I might find someone who offers a service to review them.
Thanks!
-
Both Luis and MJ are correct.
Should I bother disavowing nofollow backlinks?
No. You also do not need to disavow any links which are 302 redirected to your site.
The Disavow tool is only to be used as a very last resort. There seems to be a lot of confused webmasters who have a difficult time accepting this idea.
As MJ shared, you need to make every effort to remove the links first. Webmasters should be contacted via their WHOIS email address, any email address found on the website, and their Contact Form (if available) prior to using the Disavow tool.
-
Since the disavow tool basically tells Google to nofollow the links, I would recommend first focusing on the bad dofollow links in your back link profile.
Also, as a fist measure, I would not use the Google disavow tool. Instead, I would reach out to all of the websites containing bad dofollow links and request them to be removed. I would give each link at least three attempts before considering the disavow tool.
I suggest manual attempts before using the disavow tool because using the disavow tool is basically like telling on yourself. Your are turning your website into Google for having a spamming back link profile. I do realize that the disavow tool is a much better option then getting hit with a penalty, but I am a fan of at least trying to take care of it yourself before turning a website over to the mercy of Google.
-
I think this tool puts the nofollow attribute so would not need to use it in that kind of link.
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
-
Will deindexing a subdomain negate the benefit of backlinks leading to that subdomain?
My client has a subdomain from their main site where their online waiver tool lives. Currently, all the waivers generated by users are creating indexed pages, I feel they should deindex that subdomain entirely. However, a lot of their backlinks are from their clients linking to their waivers. If they end up deindexing their subdomain, will they lose the SEO benefit of backlinks pointing to that subdomain? Thanks! Jay
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MCC_DSM0 -
Thought FRED penalty - Now see new spammy image backlinks what to do?
Hi, So starting about March 9 I started seeing huge losses in ranking for a client. These rankings continue to drop every week since and we changed nothing on the site. At first I thought it must be the FRED update, so we have started rewriting and adding product descriptions to our pages (which is a good thing regardless). I also checked our backlink profile using OSE on MOZ and still saw the few linking root domains we had. Another Odd thing on this is that webmasters tools showed many more domains. So today I bought a subscriptions to ahrefs and instantly saw that on the same timeline (starting March 1 2017) until now, we have literally doubled in inbound links from very spammy type sites. BUT the incoming links are not to content, people seem to be ripping off our images. So my question is, do spammy inbound image links count against us the same as if someone linked actual written content or non image urls? Is FRED something I should still be looking into? Should i disavow a list of inbound image links? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | plahpoy0 -
Competitors ranking with multiple sub-domains with no backlinks
Hi Moz, We are currently doing SEO for a hand therapy company called the Hand Therapy Group. They rank well, however, one competitor, Sydney Hand Therapy, is ranking higher than them for the term "hand therapy Sydney" (which is one of our highly focused keywords) with three different URLs (their home page, contact page and about page) despite the latter two pages have no backlinks. I understand why Google might see their homepage as being more relevant because their name is Sydney Hand Therapy (even though the Hand Therapy Group have more backlinks) but why do the other two URLs rank so well? Any help/info/advice would be brilliant! Cheers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wearehappymedia1 -
Disavowing Affiliate Links - Domain or Actual Affiliate Link?
Hi everyone, Hope you're all having a great day, I have a question in regards to a site which I am about to disavow. Over the past 2 months a certain page of ours has dropped from the 2nd page, all the way to the 7th. I haven't been able to diagnose why, however, yesterday I discovered that a site has been using an Lafitte link on his sidebar, the link is a do-follow. Webmaster tools indicates that this site has linked to us over 24,000 times. I understand that this link could potentially ruin our rankings - however, in terms of disavowing, what is the best approach here? Do I disavow their domain, or do I disavow the actual affiliate link also? The link is placed within an image, once the image is clicked it redirects you to another link for a second then redirects to our money site. We have got in touch with our affiliate program and they have made the link a no-follow, however, we are pretty certain this site is causing issues for us and we want to go ahead and disavow. Thanks, Brett
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Brett-S0 -
Site recovery after manual penalty, disavow, SSL, Mobile update = but dropped again in May
I have a site that has had a few problems over the last year. We had a manual penalty in late 2013 for bad links, some from guest blogs and some from spammy sites. Reconsideration requests had me disavow almost all of the incoming links. Later in 2014, the site was hit with link injection malware and had another manual penalty. That was cleared up and manual penalty removed in Jan 2015. During this time the site was moved to SSL, but there were some redirect problems. By Feb 2015 everything was cleared up and a an updated disavow list was added. The site recovered in March and did great. A mobile version was added in April. About May 1st rankings dropped again. Traffic is about 40% off it's March levels. Recently I read that a new disavow file will supersede an old one, and if all of the original domains and URLs aren't included in the new disavow file they will no longer be disavowed. Is this true? If so, is it possible that a smaller disavow file uploaded in Feb would cause rankings to drop after the May 3 Quality update? Can I correct this by disavowing all the previously disavowed domains and URLs? Any advice for determining why the site is performing poorly again? We have well written content, regular blogs, nothing that seems like it should violate the Google guidelines.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Robertjw0 -
Blog comments - backlinks - question
Hi, I see that many good websites have backlinks from very good blogs/sites which are relative. What I noticed that everyone use their real name or generic name in comments. They do not use the keyword for the name. So later they get backlinks with anchor text of their names... So, my question is this good technique ? Do I have any benefits from these backlinks for my website ? With such a technique, whether it is enough just to leave your real name or may I periodically put the keyword for the name ? Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ivek990 -
How to remove the certain backlinks completely ?
Hello, I have deleted certain backlinks manually a few months ago. they dont longer exist. but even today Google Webmaster tools and MOZ backlink tool shows this backlinks. Why ? what i need to do to remove them completely ? Thank you 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ivek990 -
Is this link follow or nofollow? Does it pass linkjuice?
I have been seeing conflicting opinions about how Google would treat links using 'onclick'. For the example provided below: Would Google follow this link and pass the appropriate linking metrics(it is internal and points to a deeper level in our visnav)? =-=-=-=-=-=-= <div id='<a class="attribute-value">navBoxContainer</a>' class="<a class="attribute-value">textClass</a>"> <div id="<a class="attribute-value">boxTitle</a>" onclick="<a class="attribute-value">location.href='bla</a>h.example.com"> <div class="<a class="attribute-value">boxTitleContent</a>" title="<a class="attribute-value">Text Here</a>"><a href<a class="attribute-value">Text Here</a>"><a ="blah.exam.cpleom">Text Herea>div> ``` =-=-=-=-=-=-= An simple yes/no would be alright, but any detail/explination you could provide would be helpful and very much appreciated. Thank you all for your time and responses.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TLM0