Should you do a disavow even if you don't have a manual penalty?
-
If you are working on a website which has a history spammy links, but no manual penalty by Google... is it still worthwhile to still go through the link removal and disavow process?
Thoughts appreciated.
-
Thanks Sam and Matt,
Great responses and I'll now get going on disavowing the project I'm working on.
Much appreciated.
-
I agree with Samuel's response. Yes, you should disavow the bad links. Why wait to drop in rankings and see how long it takes to regain them? Given the time available you should always be creating the best profile you can and now that Google has given us this tool, use it.
(Just a note - we've proactively disavowed over 1200 clients link profiles and have NOT seen a negative effect on them. We have seen some good results even for those who didn't "have a penalty.")
-
The short answer? Matt Cutts, the head of Google's web-spam team, says, "Yes!" Look at this article. Here's the main quote:
"If you are at all worried about someone trying to do negative SEO or it looks like there's some weird bot that's building up a bunch of links to your site and you have no idea where it came from, that's the perfect time to use disavow as well," Cutts said. "I wouldn't worry about going ahead and disavowing links even if you don't have a message in your webmaster console."
The long answer? In my opinion, I would agree. If you think that there's even a chance that you could be hit by a penalty now or in the future, then I would disavow. Obviously, you want to prevent this from occurring long before it would ever happen. And if you are questioning whether your links may cause your site to get hit, then you likely have a problem simply because you're asking yourself the question.
However, it always depends on the site itself. If you or a bad SEO have done things like bulk directory submissions with exact-match anchor text, then you surely want to disavow them as soon as possible. But if you only have a few questionable links, then it's less urgent. But I would disavow any and all of them and start focusing on earning links (rather than building them) through content and PR (as I wrote in this Moz post).
Good luck!
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
-
Disavow domain ignored
Hi We did a domain disavow some months ago and webmaster tools told us those links were not pointing at us anymore. But suddenly the same domain has appeared again in our external links list according to webmaster tools. Our disavow document still contains that same domain as a disavowed domain, so we don't understand why is still being taken into account. Thanks
Link Building | | Canexel0 -
Can 302's Negate Spam Link Profile?
To make a long story short, the previous SEO company we hired spammed us on LOTS of crappy links, many of which are still indexed. We're currently in the act of removing these links before we receive a manual spam penalty/notification + building new, stronger links to balance out our profile. While most of these garbage links were sent to our homepage, many are linking our Services page (and a bunch to our .com/sitemap.html for some reason, lol). Now we're in the midst of updating our entire website and the permalinks are going to change. While I'd normally 301 our old links to the new ones, Id rather not bring the horrible link profile with it if at all possible. Would a simple 302 redirect effectively dodge the bad juju from these spam links to our Services page since they pass 0 juice? Any thoughts on this would be appreciated. Thanks!
Link Building | | kirmeliux0 -
100% whitehat , Site not perorming even not at 100th page
many of my blogpost are not ranking with same title , no where in google , both sites have same problem topcreativedesigns.com lovelyquotes.org my other sites are performing well but these do have serious problem i have made no back link/ spam comments etc please advise me what should i do.
Link Building | | Ghazanfar780 -
Angies List and Judy's Book and other sites
How much SEO weight do sites like Judy's Book or even Angie's List have. I do see the links in the linking reports but I am not sure if I should classify them as paid directories for inclusion. Also a second part of the question is do most of you still recommend the use of paid directories for link building? Yahoo Directory, BBB and so on?
Link Building | | runnerkik0 -
Any benefit to others' links in my blog comments?
I recently started a blog for my client. So far the response has been decent but, as should probably be expected, most of the commenters want to put a link to their own site in the comment. Do I have anything to gain by allowing these comments to stay on the page?
Link Building | | AmericanOutlets1 -
Links to my website don't show up on OSE
Hello folks, I made some links to my website: www.mediavatar.com.br , but on OSE it doesn't appear. Such as: http://www.meusdownloads.com.br/p.jsp?ppID=0128 Why this above link does not appear on OSE? Probabbly its a newbie question, but my knowledge about link building is not that much. Thanks.
Link Building | | augustos0 -
Outbound links and their pro's and con's
So I was wondering if there was a general consensis regarding the amount of outbound links you have coming from your domain to other domains and if there is a correlation between the more you have going out, the more (for want of a better word) damage you can do to your domain. EG: is a site with good domain authority better to keep the short leash on handing out links to external sites? Does this make the link juice from the site more valuable?
Link Building | | Daylan0
