Can the disavow tool INCREASE rankings?
-
Hi Mozzers,
I have a new client who has some bad links in their profile that are spammy and should be disavowed.
They rank on the first page for some longer tail keywords. However, we're aiming at shorter, well-known keywords where they aren't ranking.
Will the disavow tool, alone, have the ability to increase rankings (assuming on-site / off-site signals are better than competition)?
Thanks,
Cole
-
I'm working on a site that had a very poor disavow file in place from a previous agency. I went through the link profile with a fine tooth comb and added a bunch more domains to the file. Organic traffic has gone up over 80%.
That is not our only problem and there are other factors to work on but the cleansing is reassuring even though we know the profile is pretty thin. But again that just goes to show quality always wins over quantity.
I would say there may be a whole host of issues hampering ranking but a dirty profile is a must fix, no matter the immediate outcome. I explain to clients that I anticipate a short term fall and why to set their expectations, then anything positive is a great bonus.
-
We were under penalty for certain keywords as a result of a poor link building strategy in the past. This led us to have to use the disavow tool in a fairly broad manner. The results were pretty inconclusive though, while we certainly saw some of the keywords recover as a result, this was not in the manner that they were at before penalty and we saw the most dramatic effect on the long tail keywords.
There were instances of shorter keywords improving, though this was fairly minimal. What I would say though is that it is still better to disavow those spammy backlinks now than suffer in the long term as a result and even if there is no improvement I would not necessarily expect to see a drop as a result.
Tim
-
Very good question and this has been covered in this great moz article: http://moz.com/blog/after-penalty-removed-will-traffic-increase
Will it help, maybe not in the short term - but if you do nothing you are running the risks of being penalised further down the line and losing all your rankings. Thats the worse case, the best case is by removing the old links your rankings increase. I would never really leave bad links, as you will always be looking over your shoulder waiting for Google to strike.
Remove them and then concentrate on getting some quality links to your site to help boost rankings.
With Google you can never really predict anything any more and you won't really know the outcome till you have removed the bad links.
Worse case: you remove the bad links and your rankings don't improve - but your no longer looking over your shoulder waiting to see if you have been hit by the next update.
Best case: You suddenly jump up in the rankings and you no longer care about the next update, you actually look forward to them, to see which off your competition has been hit.
You will probably get neither of these by removing them, you will probably see a little improvement but nothing massive and you won't have to look over your shoulder.
I know I haven't really answered your question - but even if Google was to answer this question, they would only be guessing as they can't 100% accurately say what will happen as its all machine learnt.
Andy
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
-
Does type of hosting affect SEO rankings?
Hello, I was wondering if hosting on shared, versus VPS, versus dedicated ... matter at all in terms of the rankings of Web sites ... given that all other factors would be exactly equal. I know this is a big question with many variables, but mainly I am wondering if, for example, it is more the risk of resource usage which may take a site down if too much traffic and therefore make it un-crawlable if it happens at the moment that a bot is trying to index the site (factoring out the UX of a downed site). Any and all comments are greatly appreciated! Best regards,
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | uworlds
Mark0 -
Competitor Bad Practice SEO Still Ranking Well But Why ?
Moz Friends, A very close competitor have always been challenging for similar competitive keywords. We seem to have the advantage for alot of long tail keywords but on one of the higher traffic relevant keywords they seem to do well. I really struggle to understand why, particularly with the back links they use Just my thoughts and notes on the two: Our Page Better written text content (Maybe slightly written to for experienced target audience but we are working on simplifying things) Good Clear site URL structure and navigation for usability Fresh content updates Mobile optimized Reasonable page speeds Good on-page optimization Good back links from industry influences Competitor Page Negatives Site structure and URL's are inconsistent and messy Lower quality content site wide They use tried and tested on page optimization methods like Keyword spamming, Bold Keywords,Underlining Keywords (Sarcasm) Terrible back links, all directories and free article submission sites (Seriously take a look) Less focused on page optimization Not mobile optimized Most of the rest of the sites carry on the same sort of differences, Engine: www.google.co.uk Keyword: Sound level meters **Our Page: **www.cirrusresearch.co.uk/products/sound-level-meters/ **Competitor Page: **www.pulsarinstruments.com/product-information/Sound-Level-Meter.html Any feedback would be greatly appreciated please, i am really struggling to get my head around this Thanks James
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Antony_Towle1 -
Can anyone explain some below SEO questions ?
Can we do link building like directory, article, press releases, classifieds, business listing, social bookmarking etc. We need to check DA, Alexa, Page Rank, cBlock IP before publishing any kind of Link but how much Max or Min. no. should be for consider any website like DA should be min 20-30-40 etc.. How can consider a natural links? Which type anchor text should be in any kind of links may be directory etc. In website interlinking we should put Exact Links or no need to put any links For.ex.my website is abc.com.au then we can put link for Website Design keywords or Should be long tail keyword. How can we do content marketing means we should post blog in internal website or need to create External Blog like BlogSpot, WordPress. In blog we should put any keyword link OR should be post without links. We can put link on no follow website. Why more website coming on Google first page but they are doing Spammy links like exact keywords links, unnatural links etc.. Thanks, Akhilesh
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | dotlineseo0 -
To Disavow or Not to Disavow - that is the Question!
I have had two SEO 'specialists' look at my site after the 2012 Penguin update as I was hit badly for one very important keyword. I took off any bad sites links but I never did anything with inbound links. One says my link profile is fine and do NOT use the disavow tool but I should improve my site (landing pages, content, photos, put blog on site, articles, social media etc etc). This I tried for several months but my site never improved. the second 'expert' said I HAVE to take certain ones off and he identified inbound links from spammy sites. He found links from 65 links from malware/untrusted sites and 267 from spam articles and 124 from link farms plus hundreds more from pages that no longer exist or never provide traffic What would you do? i should point out the anchor text for these inbound links is the one keyword that is the most important to the site and the one that got hit by the Penguin 2012
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Llanero0 -
My website disapeared from google rankings, please help?
Our website url is http://www.phoria.com Around January 16th we disappeared from google for the keyword 'kratom' We were on page 3 for the longest time. We have no critical messages in webmaster tools however I did notice most of our links seem to be website directory links.We still rank for a couple terms like buy kratom on page 6.I think a google update occurred around this time so I've read however if we had a variety of links that went against google guidelines wouldn't we have received a message stating so in Webmaster Tools?This month has been very confusing to say the least. Any help would be appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | gregdotcom0 -
Webmaster Tools Showing Bad Links Removed Over 60 Days Ago
Hello, One of my clients received the notorious message from Google about unnatural links late last March. We've removed several hundred (if not thousands) of links, and resubmitted several times for reconsideration, only to continue with responses that state that we still have unnatural links. Looking through the "links to your site" in google webmaster tools, there are several hundred sites / pages listed, from which we removed our link over 60 days ago. If you click each link to view the site / page, they contain nothing, viewable or hidden, regarding our website / address. I was wondering if this (outdated / inaccurate) list is the same as the one their employees use to analyze the current status of bad links, and if so how long it will take to reflect up-to-date information. In other words, even though we've removed the bad links, how long do we need to wait until we can expect a clean resubmission for reconsideration. Any help / advice would be greatly appreciated -
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Bromtec0