Unnatural Links Removal - are GWMT links enough?

[BeytzNet]

Hi,

When working on unnatural links penalty, is removing and disavowing links shown on the GWMT enough or should the list be broaden to include OSE and Majestic etc.?

Thanks

[ShaMenz]

Hi BeytzNet,

The answer to that question really depends on another question:

Are you looking for a short-term solution that may or may not get your current penalty lifted, or are you genuinely interested in dealing with links that really shouldn't be there?

If you're after the band-aid solution then you can try going with the arrogant suggestion from some Googlers that only links which offend Google at this point in time need to be dealt with. (Given Google's current propensity for adding to its list of what is "unnatural", their attitude borders on sadistic.)

If you really want to get some control over your backlink profile and future proof your site in the face of changing spam targets, impending Penguin updates and whatever else may be coming down the line, you might find it useful to try this little exercise:

Download backlink data from as many of the following as possible (free download limits for the tools you don't subscribe to will give you enough of a sample)

• Google Webmaster Tools
• Bing Webmaster Tools
• Open Site Explorer
• Majestic SEO
• ahrefs
• Raven Tools (pulls in data from Open Site Explorer & Majestic SEO)

Open each csv, select all and change text color so that the data for each list is a different color.

Copy and paste the content of each into one Excel spreadsheet so that all of the URLs are in one list.

Deduplicate the list.

Check out the different colored URLs left in your list...the takeaway is that every tool will bring you different link data. If you want a true picture of your backlink profile, you are now much closer to having it.

Incidentally, Google is not the only search engine to apply manual penalties. Others just don't talk about it as much as Google does. You might also find it helpful to read this post from Ryan Kent about identifying the source of your link penalty.

Hope that helps,

Sha

[MarieHaynes]

I don't usually worry about removing/disavowing those links.  Google is concerned about the links that you have personally made (or an SEO on your behalf) in order to increase pagerank.

It's pretty common to have a lot of them.

[BeytzNet]

Thanks Marie,

Question - 
Going through my link profile I have encountered dozens of links from different SEO sites that analyzed my domain - whether on its own or showing it as a competitor to another site on the same niche.

Weirdly, these are dofollow links (dozens!).

Should I disavow them?

Obviously these are not requested links of any kind. These sites are kind of aggregation sites that show practically any site worth mentioning.

[BeytzNet]

Thanks Ben. This is the article I remember seeing.

[BenRWoodard]

That's great information and process.

[MarieHaynes]

Thanks Ben for that article.  A few days ago I was searching for that and couldn't find it!

The vast majority of SEOs will tell you that you need to include links from as many sources as possible.  However, John Mueller (a Google employee) recently said that in the majority of cases, focusing on the links in your WMT is enough.  I could not find the thread where he said this, so I asked in WMF if someone could find it.  Here is the thread.

In the past I have used a combo of links from WMT and also from ahrefs.  However, for the current sites that I am working on I am just using WMT.  If for some reason we do not get reconsidered then I will go back and add links from other sources.

I think the reason why people say to get links from all sources is that historically WMT has only given you a sample of your links.  But in the last few months or so, in the "Download latest links" section they give a much larger number.  Don't be fooled by the fact that it says, "Latest links".  I have seen sites where this list included thousands of links going back as far as 2008.

[BenRWoodard]

According to Google Search Quality engineer, Uli Lutz, you only need to include the links in GWMT.  Here is an article with more information on that.