27 of 127 Domains Agreed to Remove Bad Links, Is this an Unusually Low Ratio?

[Kingalan1]

Hi MOZ Community:

I hired an SEO firm to run a link audit, identify bad links, request that those links be removed and upload a disavow file to Google Webmaster tools for the domains that would not agree to remove their links.

My SEO company after emailing the owners of the bad domains linking to us obtained the following results:

NYCOfficeSpaceLeader

• Total for Removal: 125 (118)
• Found: 87 (84)
• Removed: 27 (27)

Only a total of 27 domains out of 87 found domains have been removed so far.  Seven additional domains have asked for a link removal ransom which we are refusing.

Only getting 27 removed seems really low. Is this normal? Is there any way to increase this number?

Will the disavow file have any effect and if so when? If Google does not actually remove the links, how can I determine when the disavow file has been processed.

I feel a little silly having paid a lot of money and the only tangible effect to date is that links from 27 domains have been removed.  Has it been a worthwhile investment for only having links from 27 domains removed? My company does not have an unlimited marketing budget so obviously there is some concern.  At the same time the SEO firm seems professional.

Thanks,
Alan

[MarieHaynes]

Hi Alan,

It was the Panda algorithm that updated this week, not Penguin.  Panda is about on page quality and not about links.  (We don't know for sure if links play any part in Panda, but my guess is that they don't.)

"So are you saying that despite the new Penguin update, Google will not review our disavow file and that the  only action to take is to ping the links from the low quality domains in order to expedite Google's review of our site?"

The disavow file starts working as soon as you file it.  It's complicated though.  If the Penguin algorithm has decided that your site is untrustworthy in regards to links, then Google will still continue to suppress your rankings until Penguin refreshes again.

Regarding pinging links to make them get disavowed, that's still up for debate.  The idea is that you get Google to visit the link so that it can recrawl it and apply your disavow. Jim Boykin of Internet Marketing Ninjas asked John Mueller about whether it was possible to use the Google submit url to ping urls to get them recrawled (see video here at about 1hr 4min: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0FC1K25Z3w&feature=c4-overview&list=UUthrUiuJUtFSXBUp48D8bAA).  John said it wouldn't work.  But who knows, perhaps building links to those pages might work.

EDIT: That type of thing - building links to bad urls to get them to be recrawled is not something I would recommend that you do.  It's something I might experiment with myself at some point but it's not something I'd recommend the average Penguin hit site does.

[MarieHaynes]

Thanks for the recommendation Gary.  I really appreciate it.

I was confused by this:

"If you have a manual penalty then you will have to wait for a refresh of penguin. HOWEVER, if you are affected simply by the algorithm then it will simple be a case of Google looking at your disavow file max 48hrs, then visiting each and every link one by one and applying the nofollow to it, when the hourly/daily/weekly algorithms update you will see changes happen, not have to wait for 6 months etc.."

Did you mean to say, "If you have Penguin?" as opposed to a manual penalty?  In some cases, sites with manual penalties ALSO have Penguin issues and even if their penalty is lifted they won't see ranking improvements until Penguin refreshes.  But, sometimes the links that are marked as unnatural on a manual review are actually different than the ones that Penguin can get.  An example, I think, would be a site that has done extensive trading of free product in exchange for a review with a link.  Penguin may not hit that site, but a manual review would.  In that case, if you cleaned up those issues and got your manual penalty lifted you might see an improvement right away.  But, it depends of course on the strength of the rest of your link profile and on what type of penalty you had.

[JaneCopland]

Hi there,

Just adding to what has already been said here: for the longterm health of the website, I'm in favour of removing all bad links where possible rather than relying solely on disavowal, even though disavowal can and does work in the short term. My reason for this is that relying on disavowal puts the power in Google's hands to at some point say: "Well we don't really care about the content of your disavow file anymore; those links still exist so here's your penalty back again."

Likely, no. But if the links are completely gone, they can never hurt the site again.

Regarding losing the links worsening your rankings, it's possible if those links (as bad as they may have been) were not actually contributing to your penalty (yet) and were passing PageRank / helping you rank. Hopefully the SEO company were correct in marking them as bad... and even if they weren't hurting yet but were otherwise spammy, you're best rid of them in the long term.

The success rate of link removal can vary a lot. At my old agency, we had a set process of "outreach" for link removal that carefully left a certain number of days between emails to webmasters if we received no response from out initial email. We also used carefully-worded templates that we had tested enough to be confident that they worked well. We made at least three attempts to contact a webmaster for link removal.

Not much anyone - you or the SEO company - can do about being held to random for link removal. Sadly that's a popular part of the link take-down process now, as people are aware they prey on site owners' desperation to clean up their profiles.

If there are good reasons why the rest of the 100 of the domains can't be reached, this is certainly where we're lucky disavowal now exists. You are not under a manual penalty so won't be submitted reconsideration requests, but if you ever do, it's there that you'd cite your attempts to contact the X sites you've not managed to remove links from.

[Kingalan1]

My site was only effected by Google's algorithm (Penguin),there is no manual penalty.

Well I though I was in luck as I understand Penguin 2.0 was rolled out today!

So are you saying that despite the new Penguin update, Google will not review our disavow file and that the  only action to take is to ping the links from the low quality domains in order to expedite Google's review of our site?

Thanks,
Alan

[Kingalan1]

My site does not have a manual penalty. The penalty is the Penguin. We were first hit in April 2012, with a drop in traffic from 6700/month to as low as 3,000 about a year ago. Since then after a site relaunch, some new content, social media traffic has climbed back up to about 4,500/month. Since November I am working with a MOZ recommended SEO firm. Link audit and disavow remove has been done and now content marketing is commencing.

Do you think my domain should be changed? Being that there has been an improvement I would think not, but am not sure.

Also, while my domain www.nyc-officespace-leader.com my brand is Metro Manhattan. I have owned the domain www.metro-manhattan.com since 2010. In fact that domain has redirected back to ww.nyc-officespace-leader.com for 4 years.

Would it make sense make www.metro-manhattan.com the primary domain? Would it help get around any penalties? From a branding point of view it would might be beneficial. But then I would lose all the links.

[gazzerman1]

Marie is bang on here.

The only thing discussed earlier that was not addressed by Marie and answer incorrectly by a few people in my view and various discussions with John Mueller is:

"Regarding the disavow, are you saying that if Google does not refresh Penguin for another 6 months I will not receive the benefit of the disavow until then?"

If you have a manual penalty then you will have to wait for a refresh of penguin. HOWEVER, if you are affected simply by the algorithm then it will simple be a case of Google looking at your disavow file max 48hrs, then visiting each and every link one by one and applying the nofollow to it, when the hourly/daily/weekly algorithms update you will see changes happen, not have to wait for 6 months etc..

Many people are pinging those old links to get googlbot to visit the pages quicker as it can take a long time. Also you do not need to wait for those pages to be cached just crawled, sometimes google may never update the cache on old crappy pages.

If you need help then you need someone with experience and contact with people that have most of the answers. Marie Haynes above is probably the best you will find with a proven track record. Dont waste your money on SEO companies that have only gone through this a few times and charge through the nose for it, every day wasted is a day of revenue lost. Think of that lost revenue as an addion to what you are paying the SEO

[MarieHaynes]

Do you have a manual penalty or is it Penguin that you are trying to escape?

If it's Penguin it's debatable whether you even need to remove links or whether disavowing is just as good.  My current advice is to remove what you can easily remove and then disavow the rest. Of course, if you have a manual penalty then you've got to make efforts to remove every bad link.

Regarding the percentage of links that got removed that really varies depending on the type of links you have.  For the link removals that I have done for manual penalties, I rarely succeed in getting more than 30% of the bad links removed.  I'd say we're usually in the 10-15% range and we've even had penalties revoked after only removing 5% of the bad links.  For manual penalties what Google wants to see is that you've put good effort into trying.

In this webmaster central hangout at 41:20 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWYooFjmx5c&list=UUthrUiuJUtFSXBUp48D8bAA&index=2) John Mueller was asked if disavowing was just as good as removing in regards to Penguin. He said, "From a theoretical point of view, using the disavow tool is enough...from a practical point of view it almost always makes sense to still delete those links as much as possible."

And in this hangout at 13:48 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaT0aie9Wqk when asked about disavowing vs removing, John says, "That's pretty much the same with regards to an algorithm...Essentially if you can't have a link removed then putting it in a disavow file is pretty much equivalent."

[OlegKorneitchouk]

_Are you saying that removing a lot of these bad links will actually result in poorer ranking? _

Potentially. However, it is necessary in order to get unflagged by penguin. I'm thinking that you have a lot of links with highly keyword targeted anchor text. In order to get out of penguin, you need to 1) remove bad keyword anchor links and 2) create new good brand anchor links. Once your ratio of brand:keyword anchor text falls below a certain threshold, you should start to rank much better (at least based on my experience with cleaning up backlinks).

Regarding the disavow, are you saying that if Google does not refresh Penguin for another 6 months I will not receive the benefit of the disavow until then?

Unfortunately that is most likely the case. I have experienced it happening faster but there is still a lot of mystery about the disavow tool and penguin. The most drastic changes in SERPs occurs during a refresh.

EDIT: Sean makes some great points and a new domain could be a potential solution.

[MibuKotaro]

Hi Alan,

All of your inferences from Oleg are correct. They are also especially hard to hear. We do not know when the next Penguin refresh will take place and that means you will not receive the benefits of this work till then.

This can be difficult to hear but unless it is a vanity domain I would suggest getting a new domain and just focusing a new marketing effort there. I have worked with clients that were affected by Penguin 1 and they have not recovered to this day. It is a long process of recovery and in many cases starting new with an untainted domain is the best possible answer.

The rankings you had previously were due to the links. Once they are removed you will need to get fresh links to replace them to get rankings back.

I apologise for having to say this but a new domain if it is penguin is your best option at this time.

Sean

[Kingalan1]

Hi Oleg:

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

The 87 links looked very spammy to me, consisting of low quality directories for the most part. So your response regarding the 31% removal is very encouraging.

My SEO is convinced my site was hit with a Penguin penalty in April of 2012. There has been a partial but incomplete recovery in search traffic. There never was a manual penalty.

Are you saying that removing a lot of these bad links will actually result in poorer ranking? My SEO firm has told me to get a significant recovery I need to start a program of content marketing to have new high quality links created.

Regarding the disavow, are you saying that if Google does not refresh Penguin for another 6 months I will not receive the benefit of the disavow until then?

Thanks,
Alan

[OlegKorneitchouk]

There is a lot to consider here. For some websites that I've cleaned up, 27 of 87 (31%) links removed by webmasters is fantastic. Most of the time, a link from a bad site is just ignored since the webmaster just doesn't care about the website. In your case, it seems like a lot of the links that were removed came from engaged website owners which makes me question whether the link was bad in the first place.

RE effect of disavow... did your website receive a manual penalty? Or did your SEO determine that you were hit by Penguin? Those are the only two scenarios where you should be removing/disavowing links.

If manual penalty, then you will see results after you submit a reconsideration request and have the penalty revoked

If penguin, you may see results after the next penguin refresh.

Keep in mind that if the majority of your links are bad and are removed, you will probably not rank as well as you used to prior to the removal process.