Potential spam websites with high DA linking back to us
-
Hey everybody,
I'm going through all my sites and disavowing crap links. However, I'm having trouble distinguishing which high DA sites to disavow. What would you do?
and
They both have tons of backlinks - both good and crap. The first has a DA of 72 and a Moz spam score of 4/17 and the second has a DA of 86 and a Moz spam score of 9/17
-
If anybody ends up searching for this topic please view this Whiteboard Friday with Rand. I think he actually ended up reading my question and answering it:
-
Unfortunately, it's very difficult to measure the impact of proactive disavow, for a number of reasons:
(1) The timeline of if and when Google processes disavows isn't very transparent
(2) The impact of bad links is usually only seen in large drops, and long after the fact of those linksFor most of us, I think proactively disavowing links carries the risk that those links might actually be passing value. So, if you start carving away at your link profile before you're in any danger, you stand to lose as much as you might gain down the road.
Risk profiling is tricky, and there are certainly sites on the verge of penalties or at high risk who should be proactive. I can't tell you where on the continuum you fall from just a couple of linking domains, but my gut reaction is that disavowing links isn't a good use of your time and energy right now.
-
Thank you for the feedback everybody.
You all make good points. I'm not facing an active penalty and I'm just trying to be proactive. All the links were organic in nature and there is no indication that black-hat backlink building has been performed on the websites that I'm optimizing. I think that too many SEOs have used the Disavow Tool as a proactive measure so I don't believe that Google will set us up in a trap for using it. My thought process was that I want to start with technical SEO, get the sites healthy on the back-end then implement a content marketing strategy that's been in the works for some time.
That being said, I think that I'll hold off on the disavow until I gather more information or read up on studies that have been performed regarding proactive disavow. If anybody has any insight on this please post it here as I am sure would be appreciated by all.
Cheers
-
I'm having a hard time seeing exactly which domains you're looking at, but with no other information, a DA=72, Spam=4 domain hardly seems like a red flag.
Let me ask this - what's your situation? Are you facing an active penalty, or are you being proactive? These are wildly different scenarios? How strong is your actual domain - do you have plenty of solid links. Often, it's not about the few bad links - it's about the link base. A strong site with a solid link base can handle some spam in the mix.
If you're being proactive, it's easy to cut too deep, and the risks are much, much higher. If you're actively stuck in a penalty situation that's obviously link-based and is eating a huge % of your rankings/traffic, then the math is wildly different (and you may have to cut deep).
-
Hey MEllsworth,
Whenever I go after links/decide to keep or disavow, I go off of the content of the site more-so than the DA exclusively. High DA is great and all, but I'd rather get a low/medium DA website on a page that has decent stats and the content is about my topic (a bonus if the whole site is on my topic). I could go make a wordpress.com blog in 10 minutes and get a DA 98 link, but that really isn't going to help me in itself.
Regarding your 2 examples, I would attempt to get my link removed and disavow those domains. They don't seem to be about a certain topic but rather anything and everything, plus they have some indications that they are spammy via OSE.
Best of luck - Ryan
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
-
Why would DA and Home Page PA divurge
I track home page Page Authority and Domain Authority. Normally they move in a similar fashion. However for at least one client I see them moving in markedly opposite directions. One client has seen their Home page PA increase from 29 to 33 ov er the past year or so while their DA is dropped from 22 to 16. Potentially related are odd trends in home page inbound link counts and linking domains. Moz reported 241 inbound link to the home page last December, and 324 now. For the months April through July, however, Moz reported link counts between 1150 and 1350. Linking domains improved from 120 last December to 324 now. I of course recognize that raw counts of links and linking domains need to be tempered with quality considerations. But still, I'm finding is puzzling and wondering if anyone has any thoughts about why the Page Authority and Domain Authority would be diverging.. B8W2wuB
Moz Pro | | btreloar0 -
DA is not increasing
Hi, Everyone. My question is about the Moz DA. I am completing all the requirements by google to increase the ranking of a website. I am uploading content on my website more frequently but my site DA which is related to best crossbow is not increasing. Please if any one know something guide me about this problem. I would be grateful.
Moz Pro | | John88550 -
If links have been disavowed, do they still show in crawl reports?
I have a new client who says they have disavowed all their bad links, but I still see a bunch of spammy backlinks in my external links report. I understand that disavow does not mean links are actually removed so will they continue to show in Google Webmaster Tools and in my Moz reports? If so, how do I know which ones have been disavowed and which have not? Regards, Dino
Moz Pro | | Dino640 -
Finding affiliate links with opensiteexplorer
Hey guys, I'm trying to develop lists of our competitors affiliates using opensiteexplorer using the following method When logged in to seomoz, go to http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/ Search for<rival company="" domain=""></rival> Select Show ALL links from ALL pages to PAGES ON THIS ROOT DOMAIN and SHOW LINKS UNGROUPED Click 'Filter' Click_ 'Download csv'_ Open the csv in excel and filter the Target URL column for any known part of the affiliate link (example ?a_aid) - this leaves you with a list of the affiliate links Filter out duplicates Is this the best process? I have a feeling I'm missing some as OSE truncates to 25 links per domain. It would be nice also if OSE could do the filtering for me. Any better ways to do this?
Moz Pro | | pilkster2 -
Two PR 5 websites, but little to no link data in OSE. How??
As the title states - We've recently developed two sites for clients - within the last 4 months or so. With the Google PR update, both sites are sitting as PR 5 sites. I've tried to have a look in the OSE for the backlink profile of both websites, but I see nothing. Even Majestic SEO's fresh index doesn't provide much info. The DA of each site is 11-16. I would really love to see what's generating the link juice to these sites. Any ideas? The two sites are: https://bfore.co.za
Moz Pro | | Mark.RedGiant
http://ictjournalafrica.net0 -
About Links API
I'ma Japanese, So, I'm sorry in poor English.
Moz Pro | | flaminGoGo
Question about the API.
Will be returned as unauthorized api 'links' to the following request. http://lsapi.seomoz.com/linkscape/links/domain/blog?Scope=page_to_page&Sort=domain_authority&AccessID=xxx&Expires=xxx&Signature=xxx Is it OK in the request parameters?0 -
Total number of links in OSE not clear to me.
I have compared 3 sites in open site explorer. The total # of links in the subdomain metrics report for one of the urls is 46,787. Where is that number coming from? There's 125 total external followed links and 132 total external links. I cannot see the number for internal links, but I'm sure it isn't 40000+. So 46,787 is the result of the addition of what? Thanks a lot for your help, and sorry for this newbie question 🙂
Moz Pro | | gerardoH0 -
Why would PA be 1 (0 links from 0 root domains) if it's linked to internally?
Question just about said it all: I've seen a number of pages on sites that have a PA of 1 (with the metrics being 0 links from 0 root domains) when I can see on the site that it is linked to internally - from the main nav (which is CSS, not Javascript) and also from the footer, if not other places. Why would this be? Update: upon looking further at the site, it appears that there's some kind of redirect going on, where the page linked to from the nav actually redirects to the real page. Would that eliminate PA, even if it's a 301? And additionally, is whatever is causing this lack of PA a reflection of how Google would relate to the page? Thanks, Aviva
Moz Pro | | debi_zyx0