What should I include in disavow file and/or reconsideration request?
-
My client got a manual penalty notice. Need to submit a disavow file and reconsideration request which is new territory for me. The task of contacting/disavowing 100's of sites to remove 1000's of links is a bit overwhelming.
Answers to any of these questions would be greatly appreciated.
Search console is showing 100's of hacked websites pointing to the site. Many of the incoming links showing in search console are already gone. Should I include in the disavow file or is the disavow file only for links that persist?
I have read that Google does not actually read the #remarks in the disavow file. Since its manual penalty should I include them anyway since it's possible that a human could look it over? If anyone who has submitted a reconsideration request for unnatural links can comment on their use or non use of #remarks and the result that would be very helpful.
You can tell that Google wants an effort to be made that the site owners are contacted. What is the best way to document that? In the reconsideration request?: The disavow file? or both.
-
Hey KentH – it's such a pain to deal with linking penalties, and I'm sorry you're facing that now.
Onto your problem: Google definitely prefers that you make the request of the linking website's webmaster to remove the link to your site, or at least add a "nofollow" attribute to their link (pointing to your site). That said, they understand that it's not always possible to accomplish that. Here's what I recommend:
- First, reach out to the webmaster/host of the website (you can find this by looking up their domain on WhoIs)
- Then, if they respond and have "resolved" the linking issue (either by removing the link, or adding a nofollow attribute) you can consider that link/linking root domain addressed
- If you don't get a response, or the webmaster refuses to alter their link to your site, you can go ahead and add their domain to your disavow file.
It requires a bit of patience–don't wait too long to hear back from the webmasters (I'd personally give it no longer than a week). I hope this helps!
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
-
Disavow straightaway? - Urgent
Is there any implication with disavowing straightaway from Google's perspective? I know good practice is to request removal from the web host, however I don't have the time to contact and process the requests. Any thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman100 -
Disavow links of my own in niche forums that i post to regularly?
Hi Yall, I'm disavowing a new set of links and have come across a wall: Let's say your niche is in web hosting and you post to forums such as a webhostingtalk.com (a forum very popular in the hosting business). If your sole purpose is mostly selling your business and you have links (not anchor text keywords) that you direct users to for specific products and such...do you do a disavow those links? I'm not leaving links like: Web hosting, or, Free Hosting... I'm posting deals and answering some questions on other posts that direct to my site with traditional links. Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Shawn1240 -
Keyword Targeting / Cannibalisation
Hi Guys We're about to launch a very large website for a flooring company and would like to find out more about _key word _cannibalisation - to put my mind at rest. I know Rand posted a Whiteboard Friday early last year about this topic and mentioned using part of the same keyword was ok to use. All our keywords are specifically geared for "user intent" meaning each keyword has relevance and the content to back up the keyword. We've ensured the keywords are located within each url, placed at the start of the page title, h1 etc.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GaryVictory1 -
Mobile Search Results Include Pages Meant Only for Desktops/Laptops
When I put in site:www.qjamba.com on a mobile device it comes back with some of my mobile-friendly pages for that site(same url for mobile and desktop-just different formatting), and that's great. HOWEVER, it also shows a whole bunch of the pages (not identified by Google as mobile-friendly) that are fine for desktop users but are not supposed to exist for the mobile users, because they are too slow. Until a few days ago those pages were being redirected for mobile users to the home page. I since have changed that to 404 not founds. Do we know that Google keeps a mobile index separate from the desktop index? If so, I would think that 404 should work.. How can I test whether the 404 not founds will remove a url so they DON'T appear on a mobile device when I put in site:www.qjamba.com (or a user searches) but DO appear on a desktop for the same command.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | friendoffood0 -
Is it worth removing date from Blog Posts / Articles
Wondering, is it worth to remove date from articles from seo perspective. Am sure, Google search algorithm would like demote a post written a year back, as against an article on the same post (unless a year old post has very strong Authoritative links) May be it can turn out a bad user experience of removing dates, but if can hide date using Javascripts so as to show it as image to user and hide it from search engines, is it a good idea !!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Modi0 -
Changing URLs to include a fixed identifier or ID
The Scenario: I got pages that I need to track, located in a domain, within several folders. Adding a common identifier or ID (eg. www.domain.com/folder/page-name-identifier.html) in those URL's will ease my work so I would be able to select, in Anlx, all traffic including URL's with that specific identifier. URL's for which track is needed lack this identifier today. My Plan: add identifier (7 letters fixed and common for all URLs) to those existing pages and 301 redirect from old to new URL's My Question: will this change of URL's and redirections SEO-hurt me in anyway?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tit0 -
Best practice to disavow spammy links
Hi Forum, I'm trying to quantify the logic for removing spammy links.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mark_Ch
I've read the article: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-check-which-links-can-harm-your-sites-rankings. Based on my pivot chart results, I see around 55% of my backlinks at zero pagerank. Q: Should I simply remove all zero page rank links or carry out an assessment based on the links (zero pagerank) DA / PA. If so what are sensible DA and/or PA metrics? Q: What other factors should be taken into consideration, such as anchor text etc.0 -
.htaccess question/opinion/advice needed
Hello, I am trying to achieve 3 different things on my .htaccess I just want to make sure I am doing it the right or best way because I don't have much experience working on this kind of files. I am trying to: a) Redirect www.mysite.com/index.html to www.mysite.com so I don't get a duplicate content/tag error. b) Redirect mysite.com to www.mysite.com c) Get rid of the file extensions; www.mysite.com/stuff.html to www.mysite.com/stuff This is the code that I'm currently using and it seems to work fine, however I would like someone with experience to take a look so I can avoid internal server errors and other kinds of issues. I grabbed each piece of code from different posts and tutorials. Options +FollowSymlinks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Eblan
RewriteEngine on Index Rewrite RewriteRule ^index.(htm|html|php) http://www.mysite.com/ [R=301,L] RewriteRule ^(.*)/index.(htm|html|php) http://www.mysite.com/$1/ [R=301,L] RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.html -f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.html Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
Rewritecond %{http_host} ^mysite.com [nc]
Rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.mysite.com/$1 [r=301,nc] Thanks a lot!0