Disavowing Links
-
I need some advice... I've noticed our link profile has increased with many comments links --- something I certainly have not pursued manually.
I'm new to disavowing links. However, before I go ahead and disavow them, I'd like to ask how harmful these links are and would you recommend this is something I can do myself (relatively novice SEO) or if you'd recommend someone who could do this for a reasonable cost.
In one instance, the link from this comment thread is with the anchor text, "porn"... Certainly not something we want to rank for, haha!
I look forward to your advice
-
I recently had the experience of manually looking at over 3,000 domains. I am a programmer and so I made utility that will scan each domain in a MOZ Linking Domains csv file and search for specified text. It can pick out every Globe.com domain and other spam sites from a list in a number of minutes. I would love the feedback, and so I would share this utility.
I found that in my case using the keywords below got 95% or better of my bad links. It can also use the Spam and DA values etc..
keyword research,See related links to what you are looking for,popstripeRs,Search_Engine_Optimization_Services,Keyword Suggestions,This domain may be for sale,data-adblockkey,List website,complete online resource for web host providers,URLs categories for query and submission,Estadísticas web y datos de valoración simplificados,Ashibka.ru,Check Website IP on Server,Recently Analyzed Sites,research and analysis,Tools check keyword with Search Engines,1000 domain,the_worlds_most_visited
If you would like to give it a try please see https://dynamic.domains/disavow-utility.zip
This is not a commercial application, and although I am working on it to release the same, it just does the one thing right now. It does do it quite well though. It is an .exe in a zip file. I know there are trust issues, but at the same time you cant get a MOZ pro account without CC, and dynamic.domains is mine. I am the author of MintDNS. This app is 100% clean and in no way malicious etc..
Right now it only works with MOZ Linking Domains CSV files. If you have a sample Aherfs file I would love to add support.
If you try it out and find it handy please give me your feedback and suggestions etc..
-
I use the MOZ link explorer to get a report a backlink profile, then I create a shortlist us isolating High SPAM domains, low DA domains.
Then check I check all of these domains & create a Disavow file based on all the domains that are obviously poor quality, rinse & repeat every 3-4 months.
As always the MOZ team have an excellent article on this topic - https://moz.com/blog/links-to-target-with-disavow.
-
effectdigital Nailed it. I couldn't explain it better. One thing I can point out is, once you create the disavow file, update that file and upload. If you have lost your disavow file, download from Google webmaster account and update it, re-upload it.
-
That sounds like a negative SEO attack, let me explain that for you. In the past, the volume of backlinks mattered more than their quality (before PageRank was refined more, before Google's Penguin algorithm updates)
As you can imagine, this was heavily abused so Google took measures to counteract the worst of the SEO industry. They created clever algorithms which attempted to determine, whether links had been built 'just for SEO' or whether the links in question were truly relevant. For sites attempting to manipulate Google's rankings, they de-valued the linking sites or in the worst cases, applied manual penalties - nullifying all their rankings
Again the industry adapted to Google's changes. People learned that if they created links which 'looked like' they had been manufactured to raise Google rankings, they could penalise the site they were pointing to (enter: Negative SEO)
Google's algorithms have come on since then but IMO still take a harsh line and have a very difficult time distinguishing between manipulative links and negative SEO links
As such, it's wise to take action on this kind of stuff. Whilst a disavow project may slightly lower rankings a small amount (as an SEOs view of what's a bad link, is never 'perfectly' aligned to Google's view) - it's still worth doing. If you ignore such things for too long and they mount up, instead of seeing a small dip - you can lose ALL your rankings (when Google's algorithms fail to evaluate the links correctly)
Personally I'd take action, especially as some links are porn related ('bad neighbourhood' links)
The best thing to do is download all links from all the main backlink sources (Ahrefs, Moz, SEMRush, Majestic SEO). Once this is done you can use something like URL profiler to set metrics against each link (adding of course, your referral traffic data from GA). You can weight or balance these metrics in a new column in Excel, and then evaluate which links are good or spammy
At the end of the process, you have a list of domains to disavow. At Effect, we've got really good at this actually. Even though we always tell clients they could see a small dip in results, in many cases they don't even see that. Then they can have peace of mind ,that their backlink profile (at least for a few months, or couple of years) is 'insulated'
Email address is on our Moz community profile if interested
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
-
Spam links - what would you do?
Hello, A few months back our website was hacked which we noticed quickly and got fixed. However, there still is a lot of dodgy backlinks, linking to the spam pages. They come up in Webmaster Tools, Moz and SEM rush. According to the Moz Spam tool, a few of them have been given 7 flags which Moz suggests gives a 30% chance of being penalised by Google. The website has great rankings (position 1-3 in most targeted keywords) so I am scared of doing something that will harm the rankings, however I also aware that Google may do an update which could take these spam links into account. I have no experience of using the disavow tool but from reading up about it, it should only be used as a last resort. So my question is - what would you do?
Link Building | | N2Digital0 -
Disavow
When we disavow a file with certain domains, and then after a couple of weeks find new domains which have newly arrived in our back-links profile, and again disavow those new domains. So, basically we are over writing the complete file, will Google take this as a complete new file?
Link Building | | usef4u
Or will they have domains stored from previous file, and take these new domains as an addition from the new file submission?0 -
Are links with space considered to be the same as links with %20?
I wonder if Google would consider those three links to be the same? http://www.example.com/test page.html http://www.example.com/test page.html http://www.example.com/test+page.html
Link Building | | lucek0 -
What are inbound links worth after Panda and Penguin, since a site ranks for the NATIONAL keyword "outdoor furniture" with ONLY 7 INBOUND LINKS!?!?
ARE INBOUND LINKS TODAY ALMOST WORTHLESS??!!? After having been the KING of SEO, down to the toilet? Today I got a great sample from a fellow SEO professional showing a site, rockymountainfurniture.com rank for "outdoor furniture" with ONLY 7 INBOUND LINKS FROM 3 DOMAINS and a domain trust of 14!!!! ON A NATIONAL, VALUABLE, HIGH QUERY VOLUME KEYWORD!! I was stunned, but is this the "NEW SEO WORLD" we live in, so we should skip spending hundreds of hours on link building? There are over 32 different types of inbound links but this is much MORE than a radical change, this is turning SEO as it was up-side-down. Any input, thoughts, ideas?
Link Building | | yvonneq0 -
Buy links
I know that many of you are against the whole thing with buying links. Your feelings put aside. Will it be better for my site to buy links or even do link exchange? Haven´t the crawlers been thought by now how to find these untrue links? I have read somewhere that the stop after 100 links, aren´t they smarter than that?
Link Building | | mato0 -
Do links within imbeddable widgets carry link juice?
I'm dipping my toes into infographic design. On of my desired outcomes is to gain links by having other sites embed my graphic. I'm considering using Tableau's interactive data visualization software to do so; thus creating a widget, embedding it on my blog, and including the embed code for others to post. Is it possible to include a juice passing link in such an infographic? I know its possible to include links inside the tableau graphic but not sure if they have straight SEO value. If these links are not juice passing would it be better to go with a simple image link that passes value?
Link Building | | JesseCWalker1 -
Linking articles to each other
I've been using white-hat article marketing to post original content about my niche to credible article directories (yes, I realize many of them were recently devalued). My question is: Is it a good or bad idea to have future articles link to older articles, as a way to increase the chances of having the older articles indexed, or increasing the amount of link juice they pass to my site (since they point to my site)? I get 2 links per article and was thinking of using 1 to point to a prior (related) article, and the other to point to my site.
Link Building | | scanlin0