How do I know what links are bad enough for the Google disavow tool?
-
I am currently working for a client who's back link profile is questionable. The issue I am having is, does Google feel the same way about them as I do?
We have no current warnings but have had one in the past for "unnatural inbound links". We removed the links that we felt were being referred to and have not received any further warnings, nor have we noticed any significant drop in traffic or rankings at any point.
My concern is that if I work towards getting the more ominous looking links removed (directories, reciprocal links from irrelevant sites etc.), either manually or with the disavow tool, how can I be sure that I am not removing links that are in fact helping our campaign?
Are we likely to suffer from the next Penguin update if we chose to proceed without moving the aforementioned links? or is Google only likely to target the serious black hat links (link farms etc.)?
Any thoughts or experiences would be greatly appreciated.
-
This is another tricky situation. I think the message you have received is not about Penalty, it is just a precautionary message send to you just to inform that the link profile does not look natural and needs some pruning. What I believe is that if the links not coming from low quality link pages, directories, forums, web 2.0 sites etc [I am assuming that they are at one point built by an SEO company], you need to get rid of them.
_Take it as precautionary measure because your link profile has already raised the flag of spam and therefore, it is your duty to clean it. It is better safe than sorry. And Losing one or two keyword rank is far better than losing all the visibility altogether. _
-
This post can help http://www.seomoz.org/blog/googles-disavow-tool-take-a-deep-breath
There are many free and paid tools that can help determine if you need to delete a link
http://cyrusshepard.com/boom-1-email-60-bad-links-gone-4-tools-for-easy-link-cleanup/If you understand Spanish this post can help
http://luissobrevilla.com/como-eliminar-backlinks-de-mala-calidad/
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
-
Pinging Links
Interested to know if anybody still uses the strategy of pinging links to make sure they get indexed, there are a number of sites out there which offer it. Is it considered dangerous/spamy?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | seoman100 -
Low quality links
Hi I have found a lot of links from a majestic report (not found on moz open site explorer). inwhich I have found lots of links from 2010 and possibly earlier which either I can't get hold of the webmaster. Is a disavow the right way to go if I can't get them removed myself? Also I have noticed that there are a lot of free directories listing new pages from our site and I am concerned Google are going to find these. I surpose there is nothing I can do about this, does anyone have any recommendations.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Cocoonfxmedia0 -
Potential spam issue - back links
Hi - we have a client whom we work with for SEO. During a review we noticed in Webmaster Tools, there was an IP address with over 30,000 links to our clients site. The IP address is 92.60.0.123. From looking up the IP address details, it looks like it is based in Europe - but we are unable to establish what it is, where the links are and who created it. We are concerned it could be a potential spammer trying to cause an issue with the SEO campaign. Is there any way of finding out any more details apart from the basic information about the location of the IP address? Also - if we submit a disavow via webmaster tools, we are unsure what issue it will have on the clients site if we do not know what it is and the type of links it is creating. Any ideas? Thanks for your help! Phil.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Globalgraphics0 -
How to know if a link in a directory will be good for my site?
Hi! Some time ago, a friend of my added our site to a directory. I did not notice it until today, when in the search results for my domain name, the directory came in the first page, in the four position. My friend wrote a nice article, describing our bussiness, and the page has a doFollow link. Looking at the metrics of that directory, I found the following: Domain Authority: 70; main page authority: 76; linking domain roots: 1383; total links: 94663 (several anchor texts); facebook shares: 26; facebook likes: 14; tweets: 20; Google +1: 15. The directory accept a free article about a company, does not review it before it is published, but look for duplicated articles representing spam; so one company can only have one listing (in theory). Is there any formula to know if a directory is safe to publish a doFollow link? If they don't review the link I would say is not a good signal, but is there any other factors to take into account?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | te_c0 -
Are there tools out there to determine when a link linked to your site? I want to know when a link farm was done a site.
In Webmaster Tools I discovered that a client of mine with signed up for or hired another company to get links. The links are poor quality and from other countries, so it looks like a link farm was done. I want to know when they links were linked to the site, and not sure how to find that information out. Does anyone know how to find this out?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | StrategicEdgePartners0 -
What are the biggest optimization factors for Google Places?
I know some of the basic factors to rank better on Google Places, but I'm looking to see where the priority is and if there are negative factors?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | anchorwave0 -
My Google PR is Decreasing HELP!
We have just started in on an SEO campaign after a year or so break from engaging in active SEO efforts. Our rankings and organic traffic seems to be increasing but we just dropped from a PR 5 to a PR 4 after being a PR 5 for probably a couple years. We are not doing anything black hat or sketchy and try hard to make sure all of our links are relevant and quality links. Does anyone know why this might have happened or if it is an indication of anything?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MyNet0 -
When to give up on a website with a Google penalty?
I recently had a Google 60 penalty hit my website. The main two issues were that I had a person helping me with SEO and they bought some links. The second issue is that I own about 90 URL's in the my vertical. I created about 60 one page sites for these keyword targeted domains. I then linked these sites to main site. Big mistake! I kept these URL's all on the same server as my main site. In October 2010 I noticed my site hits dropped dramatically. I started looking for the issue. I didn't know which issue caused the penalty. I fixed both issues in November 2010 and asked Google for reconsideration in early December 2010. I kept link building for my site by finding quality links.I was extremely honest with Google. I gave them all of the domains I own and I told them the name of the person that bought links for me and the websites where those links were placed. As of late February 2011 a Google search for my domain still showed up in approximately the 64th position. I recently asked Google again to lift the penalty. I basically told them that I fixed all of my issues that led to the penalty and let them know I have been waiting for almost 3 months. I told them I have put the past 2 years of my life into this website and begged them to forgive me. I also asked them to let me know if my site was never going to be forgiven? I got the typical canned response from the Google team. As of today the penalty is still in effect. I just want to know when you should give up on a site. I have spent about $20,000 on this site and about 2 years of hard work. I don't want to give up, but I don't want to keep putting my hard work and time into the site if it will never escape the dreaded Google penalty. Do you think I should continue to wait and if so how long? Anything else I can do to persuade Google to release me from this penalty hell? If I do abandon the site and start from scratch what steps should I take? Do I need a new server? What if any content can I take from my current site and transfer to the new site? If I can how do I do this without getting another penalty or lose the credit for the original content. I created about 2,000 pages of original content for this site. I'd love to be able to transfer this content if I have to start from scratch. Any ideas or detailed help plans would be greatly appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | tadden0