Disavow Issues
-
Hi
We have a client who was hit by Penguin about 18 months ago.
We disavowed all the bad links about 10 months ago however this has not resulted in an uplift in traffic or rankings.
The client is asking me whether it would be better to dump the domain and move the website to a fresh domain.
Can you provide thoughts / experience on this please?
Thanks.
-
Just wanted to clarify (for the sake of others who may read this post) that the question was in regards to Penguin and I think in your situation, you're dealing with manual penalties. With Penguin, there is no reconsideration request. You've got to clean up the best you can and then hope that things improve when Google refreshes the Penguin algorithm.
It's still up for debate whether removing links (as opposed to disavowing) is important for Penguin. My current advice is that if a link is easy to remove then do it. But, otherwise I disavow. While you're right that it is important to show Google your efforts in regards to link removal for a manual penalty, no one is going to look at your work for an algorithmic issue.
I asked John Mueller in a hangout once whether disavowing was as good as removing for Penguin and he said, "essentially yes". However, because there are potential problems that could come up with the disavow tool (such as improper formatting or taking too long to recrawl to disavow), if you can remove the link that's not a bad thing to do.
-
Hi Paul,
I realise it's been a couple of weeks since this was submitted, but I wanted to follow up. At my former agency, we went through a few reconsideration procedures for new clients. We managed to be successful with all of them, but some took quite a long time (August - February being the longest).
We have found that disavowing alone is not nearly enough to make a difference - it is far preferable for the links to be removed. Unlike Claudio below, we have had a far higher rate than 5%, but it all depends on where the links come from. Sometimes it's hard to even find a live email address to contact webmasters, and some people want payment to remove links (worth doing if the payment is not too high). We crafted templates and _always _followed up within two weeks if we did not get a response from first emailing someone for a link removal with another specifically crafted email template.
It's true that if you cannot remove links, it is still worthwhile demonstrating to Google that you attempted to do so, with email screenshots or at least a list of the sites you contacted. They want to see effort. They want to see that you removed, or attempted to remove, the vast majority of the bad links. It's time consuming and tedious, but it's worth it if you get the penalty removed.
As I said, the longest process we went through was over six months, but the site in question had a TERRIBLE backlink profile that was the result of years of abuse by bad link builders. We're talking removing thousands of links. However, it came through - the penalty was removed and the client's rankings are on the rise.
I hope this helps. The short version is: remove remove remove. You won't maintain a penalty if there are no more bad links holding the site back, and those links aren't helping it rank anyway.
If you'd like some advice on how to decide which links to remove and which to keep, please let me know. In the meantime, check out this post from my former colleague Brandon at Ayima. It's a good resource for link analysis.
Cheers,
Jane
-
Does the site have a good base of truly natural links? There have been very few reported cases of Penguin recovery. But, the ones that I have seen recover are ones that have had some excellent links left once the bad ones were cleaned up.
-
Did you have a manual penalty? Did you get it revoked? or did you assume you had a Penguin issue and were proactive about it to avoid a manual penalty?
-
Recovery from Link Penalty (manual or algorithm) procedure:
1. Collect inboud links from Google Webmaster Tools + Moz link explorer + Link Majestic.
2. Include all domains in a Excel worksheet.
3. Contact site owners asking for link removal (usually 5% of sucess, but the effort counts for Google).
4. Wait several weeks for the removal of the links.
5. Fill a disavow file and upload it to Google https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main?pli=1
6. Wait for 3 or 6 weeks and start a link building campain starting with a few links per week and increase it if you can (only natural links comming from authority sites related to your niche).
Recovers from Content problems.
1. Look for repetitive title and descriptions, use Google Webmaster Tools and Moz.
2. Look for pages with similar or identical content and fix it.
3. Look for pages with less than 200 words of convent and add content or simply remove them (404).
4. Add new fresh and original content.
Google will consider your effort and it will be increasing your rank step by step.
I hope it helps
Claudio
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
-
Content Issues: Duplicate Content
Hi there
Technical SEO | | Kingagogomarketing
Moz flagged the following content issues, the page has duplicate content and missing canonical tags.
What is the best solution to do? Industrial Flooring » IRL Group Ltd
https://irlgroup.co.uk/industrial-flooring/ Industrial Flooring » IRL Group Ltd
https://irlgroup.co.uk/index.php/industrial-flooring Industrial Flooring » IRL Group Ltd
https://irlgroup.co.uk/index.php/industrial-flooring/0 -
Is Pagination & thin text issue affecting our traffic?
We at Pricebaba, have different price lists for different brands of phones for which we have done pagination. We are worried if we're suffering from the thin text issue. Could you help us check if it's done correctly? Pricelist page link: http://pricebaba.com/mobile/pricelist/samsung-price-list
Technical SEO | | RuchitaMahimkar0 -
Disavow to all domains?
Hi there, I have several versions of my domain setup in Webmaster tools. Should I upload my disavow file against all of these domains? For example.....
Technical SEO | | niallfred
If I find a link pointing to: http://www.mydomain.com from: http://www.somespammysite.com do I need to add a disavow file in Webmaster tools for all my domain versions or only the version the offending links points towards? So... Only
http://www.mydomain.com
Or
http://www.mydomain.com
http://mydomain.com
https://www.mydomain.com
https://mydomain.com0 -
64,476 Links from a PR1 Site - Should I Disavow???
We recently discovered in Google Webmaster Tools that a Chinese website with a page rank of 1 has 64,476 links to various pages of our website which is about 120,000 pages in size. Their site covers the same topic as our site - technical information about plastics. My question is, should I let things take its natural course or would it be better to 'block' their site using Google Disavow?
Technical SEO | | Prospector-Plastics0 -
Campaign Issue: Rel Canonical - Does this mean it should be "on" or "off?"
Hello, somewhat new to the finer details of SEO - I know what canonical tags are, but I am confused by how SEOmoz identifies the issue in campaigns. I run a site on a wordpress foundation, and I have turned on the option for "canonical URLs" in the All in one SEO plugin. I did this because in all cases, our content is original and not duplicated from elsewhere. SEOmoz has identified every one of my pages with this issue, but the explanation of the status simply states that canonical tags "indicate to search engines which URL should be seen as the original." So, it seems to me that if I turn this OFF on my site, I turn off the notice from SEOmoz, but do not have canonical tags on my site. Which way should I be doing this? THANK YOU.
Technical SEO | | mrbradleyferguson0 -
Base HREF set without HTTP. Will this cause search issues?
The base href has been set in the following format: <base href="//www.example.com/"> I am working on a project where many of the programming team don't believe that SEO has an impact on a website. So, we often see some strange things. Recently, they have rolled out an update to the website template that includes the base href I listed above. I found out about it when some of our tools such as Xenu link checker - suddenly stopped working. Google appears to be indexing the the pages fine and following the links without any issue - but I wonder if there is any long term SEO considerations to building the internal links in this manner? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Nebraska0 -
Duplicate Content issue
I have been asked to review an old website to an identify opportunities for increasing search engine traffic. Whilst reviewing the site I came across a strange loop. On each page there is a link to printer friendly version: http://www.websitename.co.uk/index.php?pageid=7&printfriendly=yes That page also has a link to a printer friendly version http://www.websitename.co.uk/index.php?pageid=7&printfriendly=yes&printfriendly=yes and so on and so on....... Some of these pages are being included in Google's index. I appreciate that this can't be a good thing, however, I am not 100% sure as to the extent to which it is a bad thing and the priority that should be given to getting it sorted. Just wandering what views people have on the issues this may cause?
Technical SEO | | CPLDistribution0 -
Issue with 'Crawl Errors' in Webmaster Tools
Have an issue with a large number of 'Not Found' webpages being listed in Webmaster Tools. In the 'Detected' column, the dates are recent (May 1st - 15th). However, looking clicking into the 'Linked From' column, all of the link sources are old, many from 2009-10. Furthermore, I have checked a large number of the source pages to double check that the links don't still exist, and they don't as I expected. Firstly, I am concerned that Google thinks there is a vast number of broken links on this site when in fact there is not. Secondly, why if the errors do not actually exist (and never actually have) do they remain listed in Webmaster Tools, which claims they were found again this month?! Thirdly, what's the best and quickest way of getting rid of these errors? Google advises that using the 'URL Removal Tool' will only remove the pages from the Google index, NOT from the crawl errors. The info is that if they keep getting 404 returns, it will automatically get removed. Well I don't know how many times they need to get that 404 in order to get rid of a URL and link that haven't existed for 18-24 months?!! Thanks.
Technical SEO | | RiceMedia0