Spammy nofollow links
-
Hello,
One of our clients - a cleaning business - has a heck of a lot of spammy nofollow links pointing to their site.
The majority of the links are from comments or 'pingbacks', most with the anchor text 'cheap nfl jerseys' or 'cyber monday ugg boots'.
After researching the subject of spammy nofollow links, it seems there is a lot of uncertainty regarding the negative affect these could have on your SEO efforts.
So I guess my question to the community is: if your site was suddenly hit by a plethora of spammy nofollow links, what would you do and why?
Cheers,
Lewis
-
Ah sorry, I misunderstood Louis - skim reading too quickly!
No, don't bother if it is a nofollow link as this is essentially what Google does to a dofollow one.
Apologies for the confusion.
-Andy
-
Hi Andy,
I would always just add to the disavow file. But what I'd like to know is how will disavowing nofollow links affect a site? Google is already ignoring them...
-
Hi Lewis,
The important thing to remember here is that if you just overwrite your disavow file, you lose what is already in there.
Download the file that is in place and add those links to the new file so everything is included for the new upload.
-Andy
-
Thanks for the quick reply, Andy.
As disavowing is the process of telling Google to ignore links from certain domains, would this have any effect on nofollow links that are apparently already being ignored by them?
-
Hi Lewis,
The actual fact is, noone other than Google knows exactly what a link will do do you, but based on the fact that there is no guarantee the next Penguin refresh will be incorporated into the main algorithm, and how long it can take between the current refreshed, I wouldn't want to get caught in Penguin. I would be looking to mitigate any possible damage and do what I can to clean my link profile and spend time building better quality ones.
Google only want to see worthwhile links, but you will find a very high percentage of spammy links will just be discounted. I would tend to look for those with over-optimised anchor texts that are do-follow and then disavow them.
Marie has a great post here that will help you understand what you need to be doing.
-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
-
Internal no follow links
I have just discovered that the WordPress theme I have been using for some time has no follow internal links on the blog. Simply put each post has an image and text link plus a 'read more'. The Read more is a no-follow which is also on my homepage. The developer is saying duplicate follow links are worse than an internal no follow. What is your opinion on this? Should I spend time removing the no follow?
Technical SEO | | Libra_Photographic0 -
Using Sub Domains For Back Linking
Hey Guys! I'm building links for my page and happened upon the "Hoth" link building page. I tried it out and it built some no follow links and some links on several sub domains. I know that, when back linking via guest posting, no follow links do not juice my site. My question is, does building links on a subdomain from another company juice my site? If it's not helpful, could you explain why? Does it juice my site in any way? If you could link sources, I would really appreciate it. Also, do any of you have input on Hoth or platforms like it? Are they worth it? Thank you!
Technical SEO | | rodv0 -
Is there a tool to find a strange link
hi, i have used screaming frog seo and it has brought up a link to another site we run but this is a strange link the link is http://www.in2town.co.uk/www.clairehegarty.co.uk/virtual-gastric-band-with-hypnotherapy i have gone through the site on the home page as this is where it is and i cannot find, so i was just wondering if there was a tool that i can use to pin point where it is. any help would be great
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Are my Canonical Links set up correctly?
I have Enable Canonical Links (recommended) on my web site. However, I also have THIS checked: Enable full URL for Home Page Canonical Link (include /default.asp) Is it hurting me??? Keep getting dinged on our report card. We are using the Volusion shopping cart software/platform.
Technical SEO | | GreenFarmParts0 -
Devalued links or negative affect?
Hi there, I'm looking into an issue with a site that was hit after Penguin was introduced. The site lost 70% of traffic over night. The site in question seemed to have a large number of backlinks with over optimized anchor text which seems to most likely be the reason for drop in rankings. But there is also some links from blog networks here too unfortunately, so my question here really is do Google just devalue these links and discount them from consideration in their ranking algorithm or do the links still count but instead of adding positive affects in SERPs add a negative affect? My reason for this question is I'm trying to determine whether it's worth saving this website or just starting fresh with a new domain. That does bring me to another question, if I have to start fresh on a new domain is it a possibility to reuse the content from the old site? (providing I remove the URLs from Google via Webmaster tools). Any help/advice/answers here would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | jayderby0 -
Linking from and to pages
My website, www.kamperen-bij-de-boer.com, tells people what campingssites can be found in The Netherlands for recreational purposes. In order for a campingsite to be mentioned on our website we ask them to place a link to our website (either using a text link or image link) and then we make a page for that campsite on our website with in the end a link to ther website, e.g. http://www.kamperen-bij-de-boer.com/Minicamping-In-t-Oldambt.html -> they in return link back to us. Since this comes natural will this or won't this be penalized by Google and so on for linkfarming. At this moment we have about 600 camping sites on our website alone linking to us (not all of them) and we are linking to them. Since this can be explained as link trading which is not as good for your ranking as one-way-linking what should be wise? Should i include a nofollow? I already have many links from other sites linking to mine without having to link back, is there anything else i can do with linking to ensure better ranking?
Technical SEO | | JarnoNijzing0 -
Why would you remove a canonical link?
Currently, my client's blog makes a duplicate page every time someone comments on a post. The previous SEO consultant told the developer to not put a canonical link directing it to the main blog post. Did taking out the canonical link result in these duplicate pages? My question is why would she recommend this action? Is it best to now add in the canonical link in or should we implement a 301 redirect or insert a index: no follow? Would adding a canonical link keep duplicate pages from happening in the future?
Technical SEO | | Scratch_MM0 -
What should i do with the links for "Login", "Register", "My Trolley" links on every page.
My website ommrudraksha has 3 links on every page. 1. Login 2. Register 3. My trolley My doubt is i do not want to give any weightage to these links. does these links will be calculated when page links are calculated ? Should i remove these as links and place these as buttons ? ( with look a like of link visually ? )
Technical SEO | | Ommrudraksha0