Has anyone had experience with the Disavow Links tool? If so did you notice positive results from it?
-
I recently noticed a large number of backlinks from low authority directories coming in for one of my clients. These links were either purchased from a competitor or from a directory service site that knows we might be willing to pay to have bad links removed. I've contacted the website admin and they require a payment of $.30 per link to have them removed from their directory. Has anyone had a similar experience? I'm also considering using the disavow tool but I've heard the outcome of using this tool is usually bad. I'd appreciate any feedback, thanks!
-
I am trying to put together a set of rules to help decide which links directory is harmful & warrants a removal.
- directory has xxx & gambling listing
- Directory is no longer in google database (site:domain.com shows no results). I take this as google penalty.
- Directory's home page & page where my link exists has low Mozrank, PR
- My link is site wide on the directory
Suggestion & recommendations welcome.
-
The thing with the disavow tool is that Google doesn't necessarily count all the links you submit as bad. If they think you have submitted a link by mistake then they will ignore it. That is why people are encouraged to get them taken down rather than just use the disavow tool. There is no point submitting a reconsideration request if you haven't had an unnatural links warning, if anything you are just drawing attention to yourself!
-
I don't really completely understand what you mean by "bad", as long as you can prove you tried to remove them your self (I.e emailed the site owner) then it correct procedure would be disavow which would then remove anything that link may pass onto your site.
Obviously it could be seen as bad if you remove good links and remember your link profile will be made up of low links its how a natural link profile will look if you only had high PR sites pointed to you it would look suspicious and would no doubt get you a penalty.
Are the back links really causing you to loose more than if you were to remove them ?
Hope this help.
-
Hope that helps Aaron.
-
Many webmasters, such as yourself are cautious and hesitant to use the disavow tool.
I would document that you contacted the webmaster and they required a payment of $.30 per links to have them removed, and send that info over to google after you use the disavow and put in a reconsideration request.
"Use the disavow tool like a machete" - Matt Cutts
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/what-to-expect-in-seo-in-the-coming-months/#comment-86419
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
-
Advise / Help on Bad Link Removals
Hey everyone.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TheITOteam
Im new to the community and new to backlinks - hence the question to the community today.
I would like help understanding options and work load around back links and removing them.
I have a client with over 8000 back links as a few years ago he paid someone about £10 to boost his rankings by adding thousands of backlinks.
We fear this is having a bad effect on their site and rankings organically as 90% of these back links have a spam score of over 50% and also no follows. My questions to the community (if you could be so kind to share) are:
1. Whats the best way to decide if a Backlink is worth keeping or removing
2. Is there a tool to decide this or assist with this somewhere on the internet? Ive had advise stating if its not hurting the page we should keep it. However, again...
How do I know what damage each Backlink is causing to the domain? I appriciate anyones time to offer some advice to a novice looking to clear these1 -
Should I disavow this Link?
I am trying to clean up my link profile to get rid of a partial penalty and am not sure to do with one of the links to my site http://www.seoco.co.uk The link is 100% organic and has come from a foreign language site that published an infographic that I did: http://www.clasesdeperiodismo.com/2012/12/23/la-evolucion-de-las-redes-sociales-este-ano-en-una-infografia/ The thing is that in the link to my homepage they have used the anchor text SEO as opposed to my company name. I have already sent them an email and asked them to change the anchor text but they haven't responded so I am guessing they probably wouldn't respond to a removal request either. Should I disavow it?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Eavesy0 -
Inbound Links Inquiry for a New Site
For a site that is only one to two months old, what is considered a natural amount of inbound links if you're site offers very valuable information, and you have done a marketing push to get the word out about your blog? Even if you are receiving backlinks from authority websites with high DA, does Google get suspicious if there are too many inbound links during the first few months of a sites existence? I know there are some sites that blow up very fast and receive thousands of backlinks very quickly, so I'm curious to know if Google puts these kind of sites on a watchlist or something of that nature. Or is this simply a good problem to have?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
Is there a paid link hierarchy?
It seems like the more I learn about my competition's links, the less I understand about the penalties associated with paid links. Martindale-hubbard (in my industry) basically sells links to every lawyer out there, but none of the websites with those links are penalized. I'm sure you all have services like that in your various industries. Granted, Martindale-hubbard is involved in the legal community and it's tied to Lexis Nexis, but any small amount of research would tell you that paid links are a part of their service. Why does this company (and companies that use them) not get penalized? Did the penguin update just go after companies that got links from really seedy, foreign companies with gambling/porn/medication link profiles? I keep reading on this forum and other places that paid links are bad, but it looks to me like there are fundamental differences in the penalties for paid links purchased from one company vs another. Is that the case or am I missing something? Thanks, Ruben
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Can image links help improve my backlinking profile?
I recently spent some time looking at the backlink profile of a leading UK food & clothing retailer and noticed that a high number of their backlinks for very competitive search phrase's consisted entirely of image backlinks. 50% of the links contained no alt text and other 50% contained a mix of just the targeted keyword or a phase containig one mention of the targeted keyword. Has anyone had any experiance of this type of marketing producing any positive effect on SEO or search engine rankings?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BigJonOne0 -
Cross linking websites of the same company, is it a good idea
As a user I think it is beneficial because those websites are segmented to answer to each customer needs, so I wonder if I should continue to do it or avoid it as much as possible if it damages rankings...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mcany0 -
Link idea? good or bad?
OK so my website ranks fairly well for keywords i would say 50-60 % are ranking in the top 3 my DA is 15 and PA is 28 I have a few other sites that i blog on that i own they have a DA of 11 and PA of 20 i was thinking of just guest posting on those using a keyword Anchor text that im not ranking for and seeing what that would do. I was thinking of creating a few other sites and just blog about random stuff for 3-6 months generate traffic and start guest posting redirecting links back towards me. Is this bad?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | gslc0 -
When asking for links, what are good incentives to offer?
New to SEO and want to stay clean, What are white hat incentives you can offer in exchange for links? Giveaway for their readers? Give them helpful advice? Record video of me drinking a gallon of milk within 5 minutes?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | 10JQKAs0