Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Should I keep, or disavow PA 1 DA 0 backlink?
-
Hi,
I am doing link cleaning, and still a bit new to this, and would appreciate the community's help

So, I have a site which has quite a lot of low DA (or no DA) follow backlinks. BUT,
- the links are from my niche
- the sites are not spammy
- the anchors are okay
- and they are from good Geo location for me
The only negative thing is that these sites are a bit "dead" meaning that there is no new content, and thus there is no traffic or clicks coming from them.
Should I keep those links or disavow them?
To me these links are natural, but do they help me at all....
FYI I have plenty of good DA links. But what do you guys think, if I disavow all these low DA backlinks, does Google think that I am trying to manipulate my backlink structure to look better than it naturally is?
Cheers guys and girls!

-
Thanks Gaston! Good to keep this in mind.
-
I don't think that Moz doesn't care about when the content was published.
Keep in mind that Moz and Ahref mostly weight and analyze their backlink profile, thus it's possible that they haven't discovered any backlinks and their metrics can be low.Hope it helps.
Best luck.
GR -
Thanks Gaston for your response!
It sure helps in decision making.I guess I'll just filter and disavow really spammy backlinks with viagra and other medicine anchor texts.
Yeah, I have also noticed big differences with different tools. Quite often for example Ahrefs gives 0 DR and 0 UR, and Moz gives 25 DA and 12 PA on the same domain / url. This has been the case quite often with some old blogs with no updates in couple years. Maybe Moz doesn't care when was the latest content added to the site. Or maybe Ahrefs gives much less value to sites which don't get new content, and puts the score down much more.
-
Hi Risto,
Google said it many times that they are pretty good at detecting bad links thus they encourage us to disavow links only when a manual penalty has hit your site or when you dont trust Google's algorithms and/or do know that those links are really hurting you.
That said, my personal opinion, don't bother at all.
Also, please keep in mind that private metrics as PA, DA, TF, CF or whatever do not reflect what google sees. Those companies with their algorithms try to simulate what Google understands so don't fully rely on them.Hope this helps.
Best luck.
GR
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
-
Ranking #1 but Bounce Rate is 90%?!
Hi Mozers, We have a page that's ranking #1 for several very high volume queries but the bounce rate is 90%. It's puzzling that the page is ranking so well even though the bounce rate is exceedingly high. The algorithm takes user engagement metrics into account so you would think that it those metrics would push the page down. Having said that, the page does have lots of backlinks. So maybe it's ranking despite the fact that people are clicking out? Does anyone have an idea? Thanks, Yael
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | yaelslater0 -
What's the best way to noindex pages but still keep backlinks equity?
Hello everyone, Maybe it is a stupid question, but I ask to the experts... What's the best way to noindex pages but still keep backlinks equity from those noindexed pages? For example, let's say I have many pages that look similar to a "main" page which I solely want to appear on Google, so I want to noindex all pages with the exception of that "main" page... but, what if I also want to transfer any possible link equity present on the noindexed pages to the main page? The only solution I have thought is to add a canonical tag pointing to the main page on those noindexed pages... but will that work or cause wreak havoc in some way?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau3 -
Backlinks from old domain
Hi, We have gone through a change of company brand name including a new domain name.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Agguk
We followed google recommendations at: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/83106?hl=en and it seems to have worked really well, the new domain has replaced the old in the google search results. My question: Still most of our backlinks, both anchor text and links use the old brand name and domain and it´s a slow process trying to update all references. Although they get redirected fine to the new domain (also following google recommendations), I wonder if the current scenario is doing any harm, SEO wise (other than the missed visual exposure of the new brand name) ? ...since the old brand name is not present at the new site I´m thinking of including "New brand name - previously old brand name" somewhere just to provide some sort of connection to all old backlinks, would that be unnecessary? I should mention that the old brand name actually includes our most important keyword but the new brand name does not. Thanks!0 -
Multiple Landing Pages and Backlinks
I have a client that does website contract work for about 50 governmental county websites. The client has the ability to add a link back in the footer of each of these websites. I am wanting my client to get backlink juice for a different key phrase from each of the 50 agencies (basically just my keyphrase with the different county name in it). I also want a different landing page to rank for each term. The 50 different landing pages would be a bit like location pages for local search. Each one targets a different county. However, I do not have a lot of unique content for each page. Basically each page would follow the same format (but reference a different county name, and 10 different links from each county website). Is this a good SEO back link strategy? Do I need more unique content for each landing page in order to prevent duplicate content flags?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | shauna70840 -
Redirect domain or keep separate domains in each country?
Hi all Hoping this might be something that can be answered given the number of variables 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IsaCleanse
My main site is www.isacleanse.com.au (Obviously targeted to Australian Market) and also www.isacleanse.co.nz targeted to NZ. The main Keywords im targeting are 'Isagenix' for both and also Isagenix Australia, Isagenix Perth, Sydney (Australian cities) and Isagenix NZ, Isagenix New Zealand, Isagenix Auckland etc.. for NZ The Australian site gets a lot more traffic and Australian market gets a lot more searches - I also have a section www.isacleanse.com.au/isagenix-new-zealand/ on the Australian site. The question is am I best off redirrecting the .co.nz domain completley to the Australian Domain to give it extra SEO Juice?0 -
H2 Tag Backlink - is this safe?
I have found that my site is getting a link from a good site, but my concern is that the link is in a H2 tag in the footer of the front page of the site Would getting a link from a site wrapped in H2 tags be safe? The anchor is my sites brand name
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnPeters0 -
Can Google read my backlink in Javascript??
Hi SeoMoz community! I have a software product, which our clients implement onto their websites. It is like a pop up box. I know that backlinks are very important for SEO ranking, and I really want to give our clients 2 options of product: 1. you can get the free/cheaper option if you use the code which has a keyworded backlink to our site on it 2. you can pay small fee if you don't want to use the version with a link to our site on it Now, the problem is that the product is written entirely in Javascript, and I don't think that Google crawls this, do they? Is there a way around this? Thanks for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | qdigi0 -
Blocking HTTP 1.0?
One of my clients believes someone is trying to hack their site. We are seeing the requests with a server protocol or HTTP 1.0 so they want to block 1.0 entirely. Will this cause any problems with search engines or regular, non-spamming visitors?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BryanPhelps-BigLeapWeb0