How often should you do a link audit and disavow?
-
Howdy Moz Fans! (Said as I twirl my non-existent mustache... damn you Rand and your cool 'stache"..!!)
So I am wondering, how often should one go through and do a link audit? The last time that I really went through a link audit was 8-12 months ago (actually, looking at my disavow upload it was Jan 2015). Is it time that I do another full scale audit of my backlinks?
-
Hi Marie! Thank you so much for your reply and I think what you have outlined makes perfect sense! We have never engaged in shady link building but didn't want to just overlook the fact that unnatural links can be built even without directly engaging in blackhat stuff! Since it has been 12 months (more or less), I will go ahead with an audit and make sure we are still on the right track!
-
Great answer! As an example, we have had issues on a site with negative link building from competitors and update 1x to 2x a year.
-
The answer to this depends on what kind of a link profile you have.
I have some clients for whom I do monthly disavows. These are sites that had a long history of unnatural link building and even though they're not currently building links, there are a lot of old links that keep surfacing.
For others I do a quarterly link audit and disavow. These are great for two reasons. One is that we keep the link profile clean but the other reason is that we get to see what new links are pointing to the site. I am often able to catch problem areas. For example, perhaps a new team member has started to venture on a link building tactic that's a little on the grey side. But in other cases, I can point out the really good links that they are getting and advise on doing more outreach to that content or perhaps building similar content.
If you are a regular site that has not been overly involved in low quality link building in the past and are not in a competitive space where you're really worried about negative SEO, then reviewing your links every 6-12 months is probably good.
-
Hi,
I'd take caution, provided you haven't built any shady linking yourself. I would never recommend disavowing links which have been built naturally even if they are from somewhat unrelated websites, unless they are spam or seem maliciously built. Also, you should try to remove the problem links before you disavow them- read this post for some useful tips!
Hope this helps,
Zoe -
I think there is no right way of going about it. If you really think that you have been attacked by people who are building shady links back to your profile, you defiantly should update your disavow link more frequently to tell Google that these following links are not built by you and you don’t want these links to pass a link juice to your website.
If you have built some kind of links that you later realize are shady, then you should immediately update the link disavow file accordingly.
But you are building links as per the given guidelines, you see no abnormal behavior on traffic, rankings and links (OSE or Ahrefs.com can tell you that) in that case you don’t really need to update your disavow file from time to time.
Just a thought.
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 linking
Hi, I currently have built my website with internal links to boost my category pages (the ones that are the most important with the most traffic). Is the way to go or nowadays or doesn't it matter what pages you boost. I beleive what I did is some sort of "page rank sculpting" but is it still useful ? or I should I link natural across my website even though some pages will get a boost and some won't ? The link that I have are at the bottom of my content (not in the footer) but at the bottom of the page next to each other ? does they count or is it really bad to have them that way ? I have a blog and I was wondering if when I link from my blog page for example about "Barolo" to my page about "Piedmont" if I should also link from my page about "Piedmont" to my Barolo page or if the link only has to go one way from my blog / Barolo page to my piedmont page to boost Piedmont. Thank you,
Link Building | | seoanalytics0 -
Inbound link is follow link but we put no follow link back - is it beneficial for rankings?
Dear Moz Community, We are operating in a niche market, where there are not so many content marketing options. What we are left with are link exchanging with relevant sites that are on the same topic but to not directly compete with us. Now we know that if we link back to site A and site a links back to us - for google this is not a very good link. But, some of the sites we are exchanging links with, do not know the term follow vs no follow links. My question - if your link is to site A is a no follow link but they give us a follow link - does it mean thats a better option than a follow vs follow. Thanks for help!
Link Building | | advertisingcloud0 -
Linking Between Sites
Hi everyone, Hope you are all doing well. If a company owns several different websites that are supposed to be different brands but are part of the same niche/sector is it OK to link between them? Or would this be seen as violation? Thanks
Link Building | | National-Homebuyers0 -
Questions About Link Building .
Hello Moz Community, I am about to hire a SEO firm for my website ranking. I have few questions about their link building plan. http://priceperlink.com/SEO-Link-Building/ Their link building plan ! I have purchased package 4. I have noticed they will use same article and PR again and again . Is that acceptable ? This plan is not authenticated to me. I hope google will catch me for duplicate content. Anyone can clear it please ? Another question is , If i provide unique articles , will that plan be helpful ? Still i have confusion. As I read few days ago, google don't give any value to article submission and press release distribution without any news ! So, help me quickly and suggestion as well. Will i continue with them or not. Thanks
Link Building | | businessowner0 -
Links from Real Estate Websites Link Page, Do or Don't?
It seems that real estate sites have at times been under heavier scrutiny from the search engines. But real estate agents get networking, which makes acquiring those links a little bit easier. Plus with localization of search, I think real estate sites may give off a good GEO scent. Should SEO's go for links from real estate websites? Does a reciprocal link devalue said links?
Link Building | | Thos0030 -
Content and Relevant Links
Hello, My website started to offer guest blog posting and was wondering if it is a good idea to have an anchor text link to a not relevant website in the author bio. The content the guest blogger gave me is relevant to my website but in the author bio there are a couple of anchor text links that are linking to a completly different industry. Thanks in advance for your help.
Link Building | | Shawn1241 -
How long does it take for crawlers to update links? As in number of back links
How long does it take for crawlers to update links? As in number of back links
Link Building | | tom14cat140 -
Reciprocal Links Or One Way Links?
After reading a recent blog post on guest blogging and ways to build relationships for link building purposes, I began to wonder about something. It is my understanding that one way backlinks are superior to reciprocal linkage, but reciprocal is better than no link at all. So is it still worthwhile to do reciprocal guest blogging, and will the value of the links be worth it when completed? Or should we just be of the opinion that: One Way Link > Reciprocal > No link
Link Building | | dignan990