Can the disavow tool INCREASE rankings?

[ColeLusby]

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

[MickEdwards]

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.

[timsilver]

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

[Andy-Halliday]

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