Advice - Remova/ Disavowl of Inbound Spam Links
-
We have a fair few of inbound spam links in the 1000s with a spam score going all the way up to 90.
What would be the best thing to deal with this, i'm thinking to disavow anything about 40. But we are fearful of any issues which could come of this.
Any advice would be really helpful.
-
Hi there,
It's not the nicest task in the world, but unfortunately, it's best to manually review websites before you add them to a disavow file. You can use metrics such as Moz spam score to filter them and start with the worst score which may speed up the process a bit. You could also try and prioritise multiple URLs that are from the same domain. For example, if you have 50 URLs linking to you from one domain which looks suspect, you probably only need to review a few of those URLs in order to understand the quality/type of link they are and take action.
I'd avoid putting a hard rule in place such as disavowing anything below a certain metric score. You may accidentally disavow links which are perfectly fine.
There is also some debate as to the impact that the disavow tool has unless you have a manual or algorithmic penalty in place. If you don't see any evidence of a penalty, my advice would be to only disavow links which are clearly low quality/spammy.
Hope that helps!
Paddy
-
Only Google really knows the answer to that question.
Some people will say yes, and some will say no, but for me personally I'd go ahead and disavow them as I think nofollow links help at least to some extent and in some capacity.
-
Okay makes sense, but what about inbound links that have an attribute of nofollow, do these also pose a threat / issue.
-
It's hard to say from a SPAM score perspective, the best thing to do is base it on your thoughts as and when you see them, but certainly the low quality ones will more than likely want to be disavowed. Look at anchors, if they're generic or brand then I wouldn't worry about them, but any SPAMMY ones using money terms I'd disavow immediately.
I hope that makes sense. If you let me know your URL I wouldn't mind taking a look for you.
-
Thanks for the response and really insightful, but at what degree do we consider links to be spam worthy? Is there a recommended thresh hold to remove? Say 5 spam score and above or what?
-
Yes, it will be a bit of a pain but you need to take the time to disavow them all. I had a similar problem with one of my websites last year and it took me a good few hours to deal with successfully.
I created a handy disavow file generator over at Lead Peep if that's any help to you. Just paste all of your links into the text field and it'll give you a file to download ready to upload straight to Google. You can find it here.
Good luck - let me know if you need any help!
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
-
Find all external 404 errors/links?
Hi All, We have recently discovered a site was linking to our site but it was linking to an incorrect url, resulting in a 404 error. We had only found this by pure chance and wondered if there was a tool out there that will tell us when a site is linking to an incorrect url on our site? Thanks 🙂
Technical SEO | | O2C0 -
Linking Pages - 404s
Hello, I have noticed that we have recently managed to accrue a large number of 404s that are listed as Page Title/URL of Linking Page in Moz (e.g. http://www.onexamination.com/international/) but I do not know which site they are coming from, is there an easy why to find out or shall we just create redirects for them all? Thanks in advance for your help. Rose
Technical SEO | | bmjcai1 -
301 and 302 for same link
Just trying to find out if this may be the root of a slight traffic dip and also if we should be redirecting differently. We relaunched and did 301 redirects to the new site, initially. Then, we decided to change from http to https. Our HTTP status now looks like this when using the MozBar: HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently – http://site.com/oldurl
Technical SEO | | MichaelEka
HTTP/1.1 302 Found – https://site.com/oldurl
HTTP/1.1 200 OK - https://site.com/new Should we be changing that 302 to a 301? Are we losing link equity due to this? Thanks.0 -
Redirect of https:// to http:// without SSL. Possible or not?!
Good afternoon, smart dudes : ) I am here to ask for your help. I posted this question on google help forum and stackoverflow, but looks like people do not know the correct answer... QUESTION: We used to have a secured site, but recently purchased a separate reservation software that provides SSL (takes clients to a separate secured website) where they can fill out the reservation form. We cancelled our SSL (just think its a waste to pay $100 for securing plain text). Now i have so many links pointing to our secured site and i have no idea how to fix it! How do i redirect https://www.mysite.comto http://www.mysite.com.Also would like to mention that i already have redirect from non www to www domain (not sure if that matters): RewriteEngine onRewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mysite.com$ [NC]RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mysite.com/$1 [R=301,L]As i already mentioned....we do not have SSL!!!! None of those 301 redirect codes i found online work (you have to have SSL for the site to be redirected from https to http | currently i get an error - can't establish a secured connection to the server ). Is there anything i can do???? Or do i have to purchase SSL again?
Technical SEO | | JennaD140 -
What are the best tools for back links?
I am a new to SEO, please help me in choosing the right tools for back links. I am thinking to buy Ultimate demon, Should I buy it or not? I have a range of you tube videos to rank.
Technical SEO | | Sajiali0 -
Site-Wide Header image w/ Link hurting me?
I have a banner in the header that is constant across all pages except the one it links to. It goes in before the content div and this search term is #1 across google in almost every variation, but it appears to link in a lot of the non relevant pages for #2 spots in some cases. While this is a relatively new domain (started 03/12), but this has been a constant rank for about 2 months. I'm wondering if this may be hurting the keyword targeting of my internal pages and if i should no follow that header image on all pages except the homepage?
Technical SEO | | choiceenergy0 -
Too Many On Page LInk
The analysis of my site is showing that I have a problem with too many on-page links. Most of this is due to our menu, and wanting users to be able to quickly get to the shopping category they are looking for. We end up with over 200 links in order to get the menu we want. How are other people dealing with a robust menu, but avoiding getting dinged for too many links? One of our pages in question is: http://www.milosport.com/category/2176-snowboards.aspx
Technical SEO | | dantheriver0 -
SEO LINKS
New to S.E.O. so excuse my naivety. I have made lots of new links some of them paid for e.g. Best of the Web but I don’t see any change in the latest competitive link analysis. Some of the links we have been accepted for just do not show. Also the keywords we are trying to promote the most have disappeared off the radar for over 2 weeks now. I think we have followed the optimization suggestions correctly. Please could you enlighten me. Regards Paul www.curtainpolesemporium.co.uk
Technical SEO | | CPE0