Is it really possible to clean up a website from spam links?
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I have an acquaintance/customer, who is a politician in Italy, he had a website under his name as domain firstnamelastname.it (where firstname and lastname are the firstname and lastname of the guy).
He used it during his campaign, then he forgot about the existance and didn't pay the bill to the isp.
I don't know what happen exactly, I assume someone registered it after it expired and started using it for some fraudulent purpose, because checking the backlink profile I can see the first backlinks from 2013 are legit and coming from relevant sources (local newspapers), but all the following 300+ links are spam, using keywords like "louis vuitton", "ralph lauren", and so on...
Right now the domain is in status "deleted", so I could just register it again, disavow the spammy links and had recycle it. But I am scared as hell.
I never had to disavow a single link in all my life, and I don't know if it is going to really clean up the domain from any possible google penalization. Is it?
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There's no guarantee, other than the site isn't likely to rank for Louis Vuitton. In general, Google will pick the best of the worst in any niche/vertical which has a proclivity for link spam. So that's something to consider, if such is the case.
Definitely disavow anything you deem inappropriate. Make sure to mention the circumstances in a properly formatted disavow file. A couple of good resources one should keep in mind are this Google Webmaster's answer and Dr. Pete's post.
You may want to buy the domain and get a simple, single, page up and running. Then connect it to Search Console/Webmaster Tools, to get a better idea of the domain's link profile. Robert Fisher's people, over at drumBeat, noticed that a lot of sites block bots associated with popular backlink reporting tools.
Once you have your link list, load it up in Screaming Frog and make sure to spoof the Google bot user agent.
Can you associate any sort of penalty that lines up with the time the domain went rogue? I'm sure it's probably difficult, given the nature of the case. No matter what, make sure to mention the circumstance of the links in the disavow.
Still, I would imagine it's probably not difficult to get the client to rank for his name. This is probably true if the targets are something like Name Surname Political Office Location. Without the ability to dig into it further, I would say the domain probably is salvageable if you take precautions.
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In this particular situation, with the domain changing hands I feel Google is a little more lenient. It sounds like you already have the right idea, register it an immediately disavow the spammy links that came in. 300 links isn't a lot to get removed either, but with the terms you mentioned I have a feeling removal will not be possible as you'll have difficulty contacting a person.
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