How do I know what links are bad enough for the Google disavow tool?
-
I am currently working for a client who's back link profile is questionable. The issue I am having is, does Google feel the same way about them as I do?
We have no current warnings but have had one in the past for "unnatural inbound links". We removed the links that we felt were being referred to and have not received any further warnings, nor have we noticed any significant drop in traffic or rankings at any point.
My concern is that if I work towards getting the more ominous looking links removed (directories, reciprocal links from irrelevant sites etc.), either manually or with the disavow tool, how can I be sure that I am not removing links that are in fact helping our campaign?
Are we likely to suffer from the next Penguin update if we chose to proceed without moving the aforementioned links? or is Google only likely to target the serious black hat links (link farms etc.)?
Any thoughts or experiences would be greatly appreciated.
-
This is another tricky situation. I think the message you have received is not about Penalty, it is just a precautionary message send to you just to inform that the link profile does not look natural and needs some pruning. What I believe is that if the links not coming from low quality link pages, directories, forums, web 2.0 sites etc [I am assuming that they are at one point built by an SEO company], you need to get rid of them.
_Take it as precautionary measure because your link profile has already raised the flag of spam and therefore, it is your duty to clean it. It is better safe than sorry. And Losing one or two keyword rank is far better than losing all the visibility altogether. _
-
This post can help http://www.seomoz.org/blog/googles-disavow-tool-take-a-deep-breath
There are many free and paid tools that can help determine if you need to delete a link
http://cyrusshepard.com/boom-1-email-60-bad-links-gone-4-tools-for-easy-link-cleanup/If you understand Spanish this post can help
http://luissobrevilla.com/como-eliminar-backlinks-de-mala-calidad/
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
-
About link building in 2015?
I don't think we still can use the same link buildings tools of years ago. So, how relevant is this article (from 2009):
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | nans
http://moz.com/blog/17-ways-search-engines-judge-the-value-of-a-link Or is there any update? Nancy1 -
Are links on a press page considered "reciprocal linking"?
Hi, We have a press page with a list of links to the articles that have mentioned us (most of which also have a link to our website). Is there any SEO impact with this approach? Does Google consider these reciprocal links? And if so, would making the links on the press page 'nofollow' solve the issue?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mikekeeper0 -
Getting Back Links When I Cannot Add Outbound Links to My Site
I have a collection of websites that I do not control in terms of content or page creation/editing. As a result, I have no way to add links to outside sites on any existing or new pages. Given this, how can I go about finding and requesting other sites link back to our sites/pages if I cannot offer them a link to their site in return? I know that content is a link driver, but I do not control the content, so I cannot develop new content to help drive links. I appreciate any help/advice any experts can provide.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | dsinger0 -
Is it bad to no follow all External LInks at the same time?
I am working on more than 40 EMDs. They are good quality brand sites but they all are interlinked to each other through footer links, side bar links. (and they dont have much of linking root domains) Now Some of those sites have been renovated with new templates and these new sites has very few external links (links going out to our own sites) but some of these old sites has 100s of external links (all these external links of course link to our own sites). But anyways, we are planning to no follow all those external links (links that are linking to our own sites) slowly to avoid penalty? question is, can it be bad to implement no follow to all those links on those sites at the same time?Will Google see it as something fishy? (I don't think so) Also, Is it good strategy to no follow all of them? (I think it is) What you guys think ?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Personnel_Concept0 -
How to idesntify "inorganic" links
I am intending to remove spammy link of my website http://cellspyexpert.com/ which has been ranking well but I noticed a sudden drop in its ranking. I took a lot of care while building links, I tried to get links from relevant high authority websites with high page rank. I used profiling and guest blogging method only and never participated in any link scheme but received following message in google webmaster tools " Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links to http://www.cellspyexpert.com/" I got this message on 19<sup>th</sup> Sep and ranking dropped on 6<sup>th</sup> Oct 1- Is this EMD issue?? I am pretty sure it is not because of EMD (Exact match domain) as I have been using phrase match, brand name+phrase and other anchor texts. I used exact match also but only 2%. 2- If it is bad quality, inorganic link issue?? Then I am intending to remove inorganic links so that I could send reconsideration request but facing problem in detecting inorganic links. Please advise!!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | shaz_lhr0 -
How Would You Go About Building a Private Link Network?
Assuming you need to build a private link network from scratch, how would you go about doing it? I am not looking for some shady tactic, but rather something that would be white hat, yet will help in our SEO efforts. Thanks in advance.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ConversionChamp0 -
Has anyone seen this kind of google cache spam before?
Has anyone seen this kind of 'hack'? When looking at a site recently I found the Google cache version (from 28 Oct) strewn with mentions of all sorts of dodgy looking pharma products but the site itself looked fine. The site itself is www.istc.org.uk Looking in the source of the pages you can see the home pages contains: Browsing as googlebot showed me an empty page (though msnbot etc. returned a 'normal' non-pharma page). As a mildly amusing aside - when I tried to tell the istc about this, the person answering the phone clearly didn't believe me and couldn't get me off the line fast enough! Needless to say they haven't fixed it a week after being told.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | JaspalX0 -
Penalized In Google ?
Hello Guy´s. Im terrible sad because we make an amazing SEO job for this client: www.medabcn.com And the website was hacked.. Message from the hosting platform: "It would appear that malicious individuals have found a way to upload spam
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | maty
pages as well as backdoors to your site(s). We
have disabled the page(s) in question (via removing their permissions, e.g..
chmod) until you are able to address this matter." Result: we loose all our SERP Somebody of yours was in a similar situation ? Notes: I was on Google Webmaster an anything seem to be normal. The domain was relative new, maybe a late sandbox efect ? Thanks a lot for your help. Matias0