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
-
Very unsure about thousands of backlinks from jesse tree
Google Search Console shows 4K backlinks from jessetree.net (i do not see this backlink in Moz inbound links though). I have been tracking backlinks from this domain for half a year and it fluctuates between 1K and 6K is the highest I have seen it, not sure what is causing the link count to change. We are using Google's disavow tool against this domain and have been for 5 months. Does anyone have any idea what jesse tree is and any insight into this odd (to me) backlink situation?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ElykInnovation0 -
NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW Mistake
One of our top organic landing page was set as "NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW" by "mistake". I took me about a week to realize this after I saw a drop of traffic on that page. I looked on Google to see if it was indexed and my fear were confirmed! After finding our that it was switched to "NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW" I switched it back to "INDEX,FOLLOW" and did an index request in our Google Search Console. Anyone else has run into a similar issue? Did you ever got the page inxed again?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FrankViolette2 -
Changed all external links to 'NoFollow' to fix manual action penalty. How do we get back?
I have a blog that received a Webmaster Tools message about a guidelines violation because of "unnatural outbound links" back in August. We added a plugin to make all external links 'NoFollow' links and Google removed the penalty fairly quickly. My question, how do we start changing links to 'follow' again? Or at least being able to add 'follow' links in posts going forward? I'm confused by the penalty because the blog has literally never done anything SEO-related, they have done everything via social and email. I only started working with them recently to help with their organic presence. We don't want them to hurt themselves at all, but 'follow' links are more NATURAL than having everything as 'NoFollow' links, and it helps with their own SEO by having clean external 'follow' links. Not sure if there is a perfect answer to this question because it is Google we're dealing with here, but I'm hoping someone else has some tips that I may not have thought about. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HashtagJeff0 -
If linking to contextual sites is beneficial for SE rankings, what impact does the re=“nofollow” attribute have when applied to these outbound contextual links?
Communities, opinion-formers, even Google representatives, seem to offer a consensus that linking to quality, relevant sites is good practice and therefore beneficial for SEO. Does this still apply when the outbound links are "nofollow"? Is there any good research on this out there?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | danielpressley0 -
Disavow Links & Paid Link Removal (discussion)
Hey everyone, We've been talking about this issue a bit over the last week in our office, I wanted to extend the idea out to the Moz community and see if anyone has some additional perspective on the issue. Let me break-down the scenario: We're in the process of cleaning-up the link profile for a new client, which contains many low quality SEO-directory links placed by a previous vendor. Recently, we made a connection to a webmaster who controls a huge directory network. This person found 100+ links to our client's site on their network and wants $5/link to have them removed. Client was not hit with a manual penalty, this clean-up could be considered proactive, but an algorithmic 'penalty' is suspected based on historical keyword rankings. **The Issue: **We can pay this ninja $800+ to have him/her remove the links from his directory network, and hope it does the trick. When talking about scaling this tactic, we run into some ridiculously high numbers when you talk about providing this service to multiple clients. **The Silver Lining: **Disavow Links file. I'm curious what the effectiveness of creating this around the 100+ directory links could be, especially since the client hasn't been slapped with a manual penalty. The Debate: Is putting a disavow file together a better alternative to paying for crappy links to be removed? Are we actually solving the bad link problem by disavowing or just patching it? Would choosing not to pay ridiculous fees and submitting a disavow file for these links be considered a "good faith effort" in Google's eyes (especially considering there has been no manual penalty assessed)?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Etna0 -
Links from random sites: Disavow?
I am looking at the links to my site from GWT. I see a bunch of random sites I've never heard of. I never made an effort to get links from these sites. Sites like | http://www.xlx.pl | Also found one porn site! Should I just ignore these or disavow them?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | inhouseseo0 -
I want to Disavow some more links - but I'm only allowed one .txt file?
Hey guys, Wondering if you good people could help me out on this one? A few months back (June 19) I disavowed some links for a client having uploaded a .txt file with the offending domains attached. However, recently I've noticed some more dodgy-looking domains being indexed to my client's site so went about creating a new "Disavow List". When I went to upload this new list I was informed that I would be replacing the existing file. So, my question is, what do I do here? Make a new list with both old and new domains that I plan on disavowing and replace the existing one? Or; Just replace the existing .txt file with the new file because Google has recognised I've already disavowed those older links?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Webrevolve0 -
Best way to clean up a nasty backlink profile?
A new client of mine sadly has a TON of terrible links (3800 links from 1500 domains) which are pointing to landing pages that have been created specifically for manipulating engines. Besides contacting these sites and asking to have the links removed the only solution I can think of it to delete these pages and let them 404. Obviously I am not thrilled about that but I'm not sure what else to do. Does anyone have any other ideas for how to clean up this backlink profile? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LukeMontgomery0