Should I disavow links to a dead sub domain?
-
I'm analyzing a client's website today and I found that they have over 300 spammy sites linking to a subdomain of their main site. So for example, say their site is clientsite.com, well they have hundreds of links pointing to deadsite.clientsite.com.
That subdomain was used at one time as a staging site, and is no longer active.
Are those hundreds of spammy sites hurting or potentially hurting my client's SEO? Or is it a non-issue because the links point to a dead subdomain?
We believe that that staging sub domain site was hacked at one time, and thats where all those spammy links came from.
Should I disavow them?
-
You said this:
"Would disavow even be of any use though? I though that a disavow file had to be for the specific domain, so adding a disavow to all those links wouldn't do anything"
When you disavow at the domain level, you also cover ALL the subdomains on that domain as well (even if they are deleted). So the best practice in this case, even if the domain isn't there anymore would be to just disavow those links.
John Mueller clarified this in a Google+ thread back in 2014.
-
Thanks. There are no links being shared between the main domain and the subdomain, and none of those links actually point to the main domain.
Would disavow even be of any use though? I though that a disavow file had to be for the specific domain, so adding a disavow to all those links wouldn't do anything.
-
I would recommend disavowing all the spammy links just to be on the safe side. However subdomains can be treated as a seperate site all together and if there is no instance of internal links being placed on the subdomain pointing to the main domain you may be fine. However I like to be safe so I would probably disavow the backlinks.
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
-
Question RE: Links in Headers, Footers, Content, and Navigation
This question is regarding this Whiteboard Friday from October 2017 (https://moz.com/blog/links-headers-footers-navigation-impact-seo). Sorry that I am a little late to the party, but I wanted to see if someone could help out. So, in theory, if header links matter less than in-content links, and links lower on the page have their anchor text value stripped from them, is there any point of linking to an asset in the content that is also in the header other than for user experience (which I understand should be paramount)? Just want to be clear.Also, if in-content links are better than header links, than hypothetically an industry would want to find ways to organically link to landing pages rather than including that landing page in the header, no? Again, this is just for a Google link equity perspective, not a user experience perspective, just trying to wrap my head around the lesson. links-headers-footers-navigation-impact-seo
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | 3VE0 -
Does this type of link pass juice?
I have a backlink that looks like this: https://theirsite.com/go/?t=https%3A//www.mysite.com Will that pass link juice?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vcj0 -
Can you disavow a spamy link that is not pointing to your website?
We have submitted several really spammy websites to the Google spam team. We noticed they take a very long time to react to submissions. Do you know if it is possible to disavow a link that is not pointing to your website but rather to a very spammy website? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Carla_Dawson0 -
Is it worth getting links from .blogspot.com and .wordpress.com?
Our niche ecommerce site has only one thing going for it: We have numerous opportunities on a weekly basis to get reviews from "mom bloggers". We need links - our domain authority is depressing. My concern is that these "mom bloggers" tend to have blogs that end with .blogspot.com or .wordpress.com. How do I screen for "reviewers" that are worth getting links from and how can I make the most of the community we have available to us?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Wilkerson1 -
Strange Pingback/Blog Comment Links
On one of my sites I've noticed some strange links from Google Webmaster Tools recent links feature. They are pingbacks/blog comments but they are using keyword anchor text and linking to my site. I know we are not doing this. Should I be concerned about this possibly being negative SEO? Here's a sample (be careful, shady site)
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | eyeflow0 -
Will Google perceive these as paid links? Thoughts?
Here's the challenge. I am doing some SEO triage work for a site which offers a legitimate business for sale listing service, which has a number of FOLLOWED link placements on news / newspaper sites - like this: http://www.spencercountyjournal.com/business-for-sale. (The "Business Broker" links & business search box are theirs.) The site has already been penalized heavily by Google, and just got pushed down again on May 8th, significantly (from what we see so far). Here's the question - is this the type of link that Google would perceive of as paid / passing page rank since it's followed vs. nofollowed? What would you advise if it were your site / client? From everything I've read, these backlinks, although perfectly legit, would likely be classified as paid / passing pagerank. But please tell me if I'm missing something. My advice has been to request that these links be nofollowed, but I am getting pretty strong resistance / lack of belief that these links in their current state (followed) could be harming them in any way. Would appreciate the input of the Moz community - if they won't believe me, and the majority here agrees about nofollowing, maybe they'll believe you. Thanks! BMT
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CliXelerate1 -
Reciprocal Links NoFollow
I am working on the SEO for a company that sells commercial construction materials and I am noticing that the vast majority of the older, authoritative construction related sites and directories require a reciprocal link to be linked to from their site. 1. If I create a reciprocating link, but nofollow/noindex that page, is that seen as blackhat? Will I see any benefit from this over a link passing page rank? 2. Will these reciprocating links hurt me, or are they worth the risk within a young portfolio? I am seeing well ranked sites listed such as justblinds.com, this would imply they reciprocated a link as well?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | GoogleMcDougald0 -
Redirects/What to do with multi domains for the same company?
What is the correct way to "redirect" a domain if you have multi domain names for the same site? For example if a company has www.mysite.com www.mysite.info www.mysite.tv www.mysite+location.com Say my website lived at this location www.mysite.com would I then just forward the other domains to the same place? Do search engines penilize for this? Do search engines view this as duplicated content? Is it even worth having these domains and making the active? Thanks in advance!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | christinarule0