Disavow Links - how do you know if it's worked?
-
I asked another SEO company to analysis my link structure (as I was too busy!) As I was flat lining on some work I was doing. They said I potentially had an algo penalty and that i need to do a disavow , even though I had no messages from Google saying I had unnatural links. stupidly I agreed to the disavow. Looking at Webmasters tools it seems they've submitted a bunch of links. Since they've done this traffic dropped by 60%, ranking dropped massively. In google Webmasters all the links which are meant to be removed are still showing. How do I know if the actual disavow has been done? And should I do a reconsideration request? Even though Google hadn't flagged an issue ??
-
Thank you for this, it answers the question. I am going to get the sites which shouldn't of been cleaned out back into the mix.
-
I agree with Bill. Your disavowed links will still remain in GWT. You can download your current disavow file here:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main
Even if you don't have a manual penalty, it's still not a bad idea to do some disavowing if you may have been affected by the Penguin algorithm. You won't get a message if this is the case. And, as Bill pointed out, you can't file a reconsideration request unless you have a manual penalty.
I'd download your disavow file, and review it to make sure that it contains obviously spammy links. One area that is grey are directory links. If the company has disavowed directory links that are from non-spammy looking directories it might be a good idea to re-allow them.
Another iffy area is guest posts. Right now, guest post links are working really well. But, I am quite suspicious that the next Penguin update will hit sites hard that have used guest posting extensively as a way to rank higher. For one of my own sites, I have just disavowed a number of guest posting links and yes, I took a hit in rankings. But, if I'm right, when Penguin refreshes, my site will come out ok whereas my competitors will be in trouble.
And one final thought....if your rankings drop happened any time around May 20, you may be dealing with a Panda issue and not a disavow problem.
Back to your disavow file....if you remove the links that you want to start counting again and re-file, then the next time Google crawls those links they will be credited back to your site again.
-
Thanks Bill, I can see some sites on the list so I can resubmit without these key urls
-
Here is my thoughts based on experience.
First the links don't disappear from Webmaster tools. You will still see them there. A reconsideration request only helps if you got hit by a manual penalty not algorithmic ones. If your traffic dropped after the disavow list was supplied it could be that you told Google to kill some valuable links and now you are missing that link juice. Though with that the flip side from mantra of causality and correlation that Rand preaches. Google has been rolling out some changes so your traffic drop could be unrelated.
I would go back to the disvow list though and see if they put some links in it that shouldn't have been flagged as spam and resubmit the list.
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
-
Once you have cleaned up links / disavowed them how to get google to take notice quicker
Once we have contact webmasters and had some links removed / changed from money anchor text to brand anchor text. Or failing that once we have submitted spam URLs to our disavow file, should we just wait and keep and eye on the how quickly google re caches the URLs or should we try and force google to recrawl the urls quicker by submitting them to Google's submit url tool ?
Link Building | | jpeg800 -
SEO value of a 'Most Popular Stories' widget?
Hi there, I work for a theater and live performances publishing site. We write 15-20 quality articles per day on the New York City and national theater community. We show a "Most Read" stories widget on all of our pages, but click rates for these are really low - 1% of readers click to read a story from this. As such we're considering replacing this with higher-value content. My question, however, is this: Is there any SEO value in keeping this widget? I want to make sure we're taking this aspect into consideration. Thank you!
Link Building | | TheaterMania1 -
Manual Links Vs. Smart Links
Hey Everybody, Is there any downside to the smart link plugins that I see all over wordpress? Basically in short I enter a keyword and where I want that link to go (primarily internal) and set the parameters of repetition etc and it automatically adds the link to that. Now other than the obvious situation where it might put a link in an awkward place, is there anything wrong with this sort of software? Part of me things that this sort of software would not be liked by Google, and that it isn't really getting counted as a true link, but i wanted to see if there were other thoughts or experience with this.
Link Building | | HashtagHustler0 -
There is a New link to my Site but I can see it on link report ?why ?
Hi I found out using link campaign and Open site explorer that my competitors where getting links from this page http://www.visitgreece.gr/en/activities/land_sports/golf So I conatc the admins and added our golf courses too Is the dunes and the bay course in the middle of the page But this happened 3 weeks ago and still this linking domain is not appaering in my campaign why is that any ideas ? does it take so much time to appera to SEOmoz ? Or the problem is because they are linking 2 diffrent sites ? my site is www.costanavarinogolf.com Thanks a lot in advance for your help
Link Building | | grzontan0 -
Too many external links vs linking root domains - good or bad?
Hi guys, After the latest Linkscape update, we noticed that our website have 424,671 external links with 4,395 linking root domains, so roughly 100 links/domain. Does Google consider this to be a negative thing or we do not need to worry about it. Many thanks. David
Link Building | | sssrpm0 -
Inbound links vs. internal links
Which scenario does more to help SEO - A) An inbound link from a low traffic/low page rank site to my site B) An internal link where one page of my site links to another page on my site
Link Building | | DVanSchepen0 -
How to improve (ASAP) the linking root domain, the followed linking root domains and the linking C-Blocks? Linkbuilding (or whatever) techniques.
I have a small site (.com) like any website in my sector. 30-90 pages. I have no crawls errors. Everythings is fine, just I need to improve my linking root domain, the followed linking root domain and the linking C-Blocks. Example: my competitors have 300 (one of them have 1300) of total links. I have 30. Anyone know some good strategies? techniques? tips? I just dont want to be in a farm directory, I want free links. I'm already running two strategies but it works so slowly. I want something faster at this moment. Also, any recommendation will be thankful.
Link Building | | NicoDavila0 -
Link Churn - where have all my links gone?
I am sure most of you have asked yourself the question I'm asking right now.. Where have all my links gone? I am starting to get twitchy now. I would estimate we have lost around 60% of our links in the past 3 weeks. Does anyone have any comeback stories? Feel like I am back to the start again. I have made a number of changes on the site not least removing a reciprical link page.. that had over 200 links on it but from reading one of Rand's tweets is it true that linking out could be good again?
Link Building | | robertrRSwalters0