Disavow 60% of the external links?
-
Hi guys,
We just discovered that our website got a 16% Spam Score based on MOZ reports, while less than 1 year ago we had a good 1% if I'm not mistaken. Therefore we ran an audit of the external links to our website and discovered that about 60% of them are irrelevant such as:
- referral page not available anymore (or not found, or domain not accessible)
- irrelevant web directories for our business
Impossible to contact the owner of these pages or remove the links towards our website.
Is the Disavow tool an acceptable option in this case? Could this lower our Spam Score and make a better impression in "Google's eyes"? 60% seems quite a lot of backlinks, but they are also not relevant, and we want to focus on creating better quality referrals in the next months.I would really appreciate an opinion on this, and how would you proceed in this case.
-
Don't disavow any links before talking to an seo consultant about whether the links should be disavowed or not
Many businesses have tried to disavow links themselves, and sometimesthe links might not have needed disavowing. So do contact an expert seo consultant or an SEO Agency first for advice before you disavow any links.
-
Hi A
Well done, you are 100% on the right track. Go get em.
Regards
-
Thank you very much for all your insights! I'll look into each of them and it's good to know there's no need to disavow most of the referral links. The website is doing pretty well actually (ranking keeps improving in the last months), so I guess the next step would be to focus on building better quality links. Thanks again for all your opinions!
-
Check this post out. In reference to a similar question.
Basically the TLDR is that unless it looks like blatant PBN/SPAM/Manipulation google doesn't seem to concerned. I have plenty of backlink that are 75% spam score and higher. Obviously I don't recommend looking for links that are super high spam score but I would put your effort into link acquisition as opposed to link cleanup.
-
Hi there!
Thanks so much for the question! I do want to make sure to point out that Spam Score is not dependent on your backlinks. Spam Score is the percentage of sites with similar characteristics to yours which have been banned or penalized by Google. We calculate this based on 27 common factors we identified.
Disavowing links isn't the best way to improve your Spam Score in Link Explorer. If you're looking to improve that score, I would recommend understanding the 27 factors that make up this score and working on improving those: https://moz.com/help/link-explorer/link-building/spam-score
In addition, disavowing links will not remove the links from you backlink profile in Moz. Since disavowing a link doesn't take it away, it would still appear in our link index.
We also have a great blog post which may help: https://moz.com/blog/do-we-still-need-to-disavow-penguin
I hope all this info helps! If you have further questions or if you need anything else, please feel free to reach out to help@moz.com
-
Hi
Disavow should be a last resort.
The Spam score is a guide ONLY. It is a wake-up call to investigate. As you have done examine each link where possible individually. It appears no action is required based on your findings.
That said the first queries are - is your site ranking well? have there been any large dips or a noticeable decline? Can you clarify?
I add if so then need to undertake a full technical audit, so not a disavow yet..
Regards
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
-
Links in link lists not being discovered by Moz
I uploaded a couple of link lists to Moz about a week ago and have been tracking them. Most of the links on the list are from significant 90+ DA domains such as Wikipedia, Medium, etc. So far, Moz only seems to have discovered about 4 the 200 or so links I loaded. Do we know how long it takes for these to be discovered by Moz? Quite new to this, so any help understanding timelines for this would be appreciated.
Link Explorer | | RobertPhillips180 -
How is Moz DA affected by spam links? Disavow file?
So it does not appear that moz let's you upload your disavow file. So when moz calculates your DA how do spammy links factor in? After digging through our GA it appears our site was hit with the 2016 penguin update and never recovered. Our weekly visitors were 2k, then dropped to 500 and have stayed close to that level for a while. We've used the disavow tool, without success over the past 3 years. During that time we have done link out reach and built around 10 legit good quality DA links since. But we have not recovered. At this point i'm thinking I should just remove the disavow file. Moz says our spam score for our domain is 5%.
Link Explorer | | jessicapremier0 -
OSE 'request CSV' for links blank
After doing the link check on a domain, got 40 or so links. Clicked Request CSV The file that is downloaded contains no links. The column headings are there but no content Did this twice and got same blank file. OSE is showing the 40 links
Link Explorer | | cbpayne0 -
Moz Pro: Linking RDs to Page much lower than Google Search Console
I'm trying to use the Analyze Keyword tool in Moz Pro, and in the SERP Analysis table, my page has a PA of one, and zero root domains linking to it. If I look at the page in Google Search console, it says I have 229 root domains linking to the page from well known domains like github.com, meetup.com, stackoverflow.com, etc. This particular keyword has been tracked in Moz for the last 6 months, but I just noticed that it was extremely low. I am relatively new to Moz, so forgive me if I sound confused, but can someone explain to me how the numbers can be so low?
Link Explorer | | jakebellacera0 -
Linking C Blocks
Hello everyone! Just looking to get more information in regards to Linking C Blocks in layman's terms? We have dropped from 10 to 2 since the latest Moz Open Explorer update and are concerned about this score. Our highest competitor has doubled what they had on the last update. Anyone who can provide more information about this, we would greatly appreciate it. Thanks ahead of time!
Link Explorer | | Essential-Pest0 -
Psst Did you see Open Site Explorer's New Link Building Opportunities Section??
Check out Rand's blog post about it for all the details: http://moz.com/blog/open-site-explorers-new-link-building-opportunities-section. We'd love for you to check it out and leave us your feedback! Thanks,
Link Explorer | | jennita
Jen3 -
Linking Domains - Missing
Hello everyone, I was wondering if someone could help me. I keep reviewing my linking domains as I'm expecting a link back from an awards website that I recently sponsored / partnered. However its just not showing. I can see the link on their site and I can see that the other partners links are being tracked when I look at them in Open Site Explorer. I've got a couple of occurrences of this I'm and confused as to why? Thanks for your help!
Link Explorer | | Naomi_AE0 -
Do 'Just Discovered' Links get added to the main link index?
Hi, I was wondering if the 'Just Discovered' links get added to the main link crawl index? It would seem to make sense for them to do so, as this would enable the enable the link index to be more up to date than it would otherwise be. Observing the link index it would seem that at the moment it does not do this and they are totally separate indexes (based on personal observation). Thanks
Link Explorer | | James770