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
-
Whether to disavow fettish sites
Hello, In one niche, all competitors have fettish backlinks. Some of these sites have related products on them, some are just information, but some border on porn sites. I'm wondering which if not all of these I should disavow. There's quite a few. We're doing a non-manual penguin recovery based on link building like paid links, unnatural anchor text and doorway sites. Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Google Analytics shows wrong position
1 For a particular targeted keyword Google Analytic shows Avg position as 20 for 10 Impresions . On the other hand other Tools like Rank Tracker/Authority Labs shows no Ranking at all . When I Manually check Google results, that particular page is not listed at all in Google Search for that particular keyword in Top 400 search Results. Its almost 30-40 days back done Optimization for that keyword, no Keyword stuffing (2%) or nothing blackhat. Keyword has just 300+ search per month . MOZ and other Tools like MyWebsite Auditor shows no major issues with On Page SEO , overall good score for onpage SEO . Any one has any ideas as why this happens or happened to someone before . Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Aus0070 -
Could lots of links pointed to 301 & 302 redirects be a problem?
Hello, We've got hundreds of links found in screaming frog that are pointing towards 301 & 302 redirects. Could this be hurting rankings? We've got very few 404s. A lot of the problem is breadcrumbs of categories pointing to 302s, but the original category pages that are 302ed are not indexed so we may be OK. We can't change the 302 redirects, it's part of the cart. Could all these non-updated hyperlinks be the cause of continual ranking drop in Google? We've gone from the top 3 to the second page for our main terms. Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Spam linking site how to report
I have a spam linking site that is generation thousans of links to my site. Even if i have a good link background, this is the only spammy i have, each week number of links comings from it increases by 500 , i know have 3000 links for that site and 1800 for other sites, but that one keeps growing What should i do, i dont want that link it is imposible to remove as webmaster does not respond
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | maestrosonrisas0 -
Will Google perceive these as paid links? Thoughts?
Here's the challenge. I am doing some SEO triage work for a site which offers a legitimate business for sale listing service, which has a number of FOLLOWED link placements on news / newspaper sites - like this: http://www.spencercountyjournal.com/business-for-sale. (The "Business Broker" links & business search box are theirs.) The site has already been penalized heavily by Google, and just got pushed down again on May 8th, significantly (from what we see so far). Here's the question - is this the type of link that Google would perceive of as paid / passing page rank since it's followed vs. nofollowed? What would you advise if it were your site / client? From everything I've read, these backlinks, although perfectly legit, would likely be classified as paid / passing pagerank. But please tell me if I'm missing something. My advice has been to request that these links be nofollowed, but I am getting pretty strong resistance / lack of belief that these links in their current state (followed) could be harming them in any way. Would appreciate the input of the Moz community - if they won't believe me, and the majority here agrees about nofollowing, maybe they'll believe you. Thanks! BMT
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CliXelerate1 -
Which links should I remove?
What is your general approach when removing links for a new client? Just taken on some new work and found links that I wouldn't dream of building now (unrelated domain name, blogroll, single word, exact match anchor, dead sites). However some of these are brand anchor links, and some of the pages have decent Page Rank (2/3/4). Obviously I don't want to remove links that might actually be helping the site in a weird way. It would be good to get an idea of other peoples approach to link removal - what goes, what stays etc?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Coolpink0 -
Thought on optimising the perfect keyword location link
My site works a bit like a directory, so say I have a page called "Ice Cream Vendors" - on that page I would talk a bit about Ice Cream Vendors, then I will have a list of Ice Cream Vendor Locations. My list of locations can be quite big depending on the product and the amount of locations they occur in - when you click a location, it goes to a page showing all "ICeCream Vendors" in that location. So Currently I will have a table on the page a bit like this: ICE CREAM VENDOR LOCATIONS
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | James77
New York
Miami
Las Vegas This is all perfectly nice, simple and usable - BUT it is not producing perfect keyword links - for perfect keyword links the list should be like this: ICE CREAM VENDOR LOCATIONS
New York Ice Cream Vendors
Miami Ice Cream Vendors
Las Vegas Ice Cream Vendors Now I have my perfect anchor links - BUT it looks rediculous and is NOT user friendly. So What do I do?
1/. Build it for users and not have perfect anchor links, and loose in SEO?
2/. Build a perfect SEO links and make it less usable and looking spammy? OR 3/. Deliver the search engine the perfect SEO links, and the user the userfriendly version? In this I mean I could do the following:
SE's (and screen readers I think would see):
ICE CREAM VENDOR LOCATIONS
New York Ice Cream Vendors
Miami Ice Cream Vendors
Las Vegas Ice Cream Vendors Users would See
ICE CREAM VENDOR LOCATIONS
New York
Miami
Las Vegas Now in my view I am doing nothing wrong - I am mearly giving the user the most userfriendly version and I am giving the SE more information on the link, that the user doesn't need. So - In my view I am doing something that is honest - but what are your thoughts?? Has anyone tried to do this? Thanks0 -
Are there *truly* any white-hat link-building tactics?
With our new knowledge -- yielded from J.C. Penney, Forbes, Overstock, content farms, et al -- that the link graph/link profile can be algorithmically mined by search engines to uncover non-natural patterns of links occuring over time, is there any level of link-building that is safe to engage in? If so, then what are those "bright white"-hat tactics that are 100% safe for a site to use?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jcolman0