Best practice to disavow spammy links

[Mark_Ch]

Hi Forum,

I'm trying to quantify the logic for removing spammy links.
I've read the article: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-check-which-links-can-harm-your-sites-rankings.

Based on my pivot chart results, I see around 55% of my backlinks at zero pagerank.

Q: Should I simply remove all zero page rank links or carry out an assessment based on the links (zero pagerank) DA / PA. If so what are sensible DA and/or PA metrics?

Q: What other factors should be taken into consideration, such as anchor text etc.

[MarieHaynes]

I would never get rid of links simply based on pagerank (or DA/PA).  I would evaluate my links based on whether or not they were natural or self-made.

The first thing you need to decide though before slashing links is whether or not your links are actually hurting you.  If your rankings dropped it doesn't necessarily have to be because of spammy links as there are many algorithm factors that could be in play.

Now, if your rankings dropped significantly on a Penguin refresh day, then yes, you could consider removing or disavowing the links.  Most SEOs agree that the key to recovering from Penguin is to do that.  You may not even have to remove them.  Just disavowing is likely enough for Penguin.  But no one can say for sure because Penguin hasn't refreshed since the disavow tool was released.

But be careful messing around with the disavow tool.  I've seen sites that had other issues such as Panda or site structure issues that went and cut a bunch of potentially spammy links out and damaged their rankings even further.

[Mike.Goracke]

1. It appears that their are. Duke Tanson wrote a really good article regarding using the disavow tool. He shares that the tool he used for this task was http://tools.seogadget.co.uk/ - stating, "I got all the contact details of the domains I wanted to remove using this tool."

2. If you know for certain the links are negatively impacting your site, I would probably send a couple of emails to the webmaster over the course of a week or two. This would show that you have tried multiple times to resolve the issue and give the webmaster time to resolve the issue for you. If multiple weeks have passed with no reply, you may have to take matters into your own hands with the disavow tool.

Hope this helps.

Mike

[Mark_Ch]

Thanks for your reply.

I have a couple of further questions.

Q: Are there any free tools or free online services that I can use to gather a live email address for a given site.

Q: Additionally, how long from sending "Removal Link" email before using Disavow?

[Mike.Goracke]

Yup. Those look pretty spammy.

You should first try to contact the webmaster of these sites and request that your links be removed.

Google wants you to try as hard as you can to personally get your links removed from spammy sites prior to using the Disavow tool. It is also recommended that you save email correspondence between yourself and these webmasters to prove to Google you are actively trying to clean up your backlinks.

Does that help?

Mike

[Mike.Goracke]

If they have a PR of 0, it would probably be worth your time to contact the webmaster and request you link be removed.

I do not believe that getting those types of backlinks removed would do any harm on your site. It would probably be more beneficial than anything.

Good luck.

Mike

[gfiedel]

Mike, this is very helpful information for me as well.

I'm curious - I also discovered I have links with 0 PR and have been wondering if I should put some time in to get them removed. Not with the disavow tool, but by writing to the webmaster or  seeing if there is sanything on those sites that allows me to request that my link be removed. I also have not received any messages or warnings in GWT about penalties.. I did have a major drop in The SERPs for a couple of my keywords -still healthy for others and my business name URL. Do you feel it could do harm if I were to try to get the links removed?

[Mike.Goracke]

Matt Cutts says that you should use the disavow link tool very carefully and only in certain circumstances.

I found this article very helpful: 6 Things To Think About Before Disavowing Links from Search Engine Land. It states, "If you haven’t actually been penalized and you start disavowing your links, you’re essentially outing yourself to Google that you manipulated the system. Make sure that you equivocally know you were penalized and it’s not just some random fluctuation in rankings, a sitemap or indexing problem, or an accidentally no-indexed page."

And according to Google Webmaster Tools , "This is an advanced feature and should only be used with caution. If used incorrectly, this feature can potentially harm your site’s performance in Google’s search results. We recommend that you disavow backlinks only if you believe you have a considerable number of spammy, artificial, or low-quality links pointing to your site, and if you are confident that the links are causing issues for you. In most cases, Google can assess which links to trust without additional guidance, so most normal or typical sites will not need to use this tool."

Hope this information answers your questions.

Mike