Should I Disavow Links if there is No Manual Action
-
Hello,
I just recently took on a client that had hired a very black hat seo and used their service for roughly two years. He outsourced link building and the link profile is full of spun articles and blog commenting on chinese websites etc…
The anchor texts/pages used for all this spamming no longer rank, but there is no penalty in Webmaster tools manual actions.
I was thinking about disavowing some of the obviously spammy backlinks that exist but would that be raising a red flag that could lead to a manual action and even more negative movement?
Have you ever heard of anything like the situation i'm dealing with where its obvious the pages have been hit but there is no manual action? What do you all think/suggest? And Should I disavow some terrible links and potentially open a can of worms?
-
There are many link-based algorithmic actions that can hit a site, including Penguin, so just because you don't have a warning of a manual action doesn't mean that you're not in trouble. I can't see the data, but this doesn't seem to be speculative - you're basically saying that certain pages and keywords have clearly been devalued.
If you've ruled out technical issues with the pages (including duplicate/thin content issues), and you know the spammy links are targeting these pages, then I think disavowing is probably a good way to go. Ideally, try to have some of the links removed first, as that will make Google take the request more seriously (and disavow is basically a request, although it's semi-automated).
It's entirely possible, too, that you're already headed for a manual action, so even if you do nothing, the situation could get worse. If you were unaffected, I might suggest pruning some of the bad links and focusing your future link-building on better tactics, but you're already taking damage.
-
As Jeff say, there's no problem with proactively disavowing low quality links to your domain.
-
In the past, the disavow tool was the "tool of last resort." You weren't supposed to use it unless you'd had a manual action.
But Google's Matt Cutts has broken from the previously stated mantra on the disavow tool, and now is encouraging Webmasters to use it if they are worried if a link is from a bad domain, due to poor SEO (or someone else trying to hurt your site by creating bad links):
Hope this helps!
- Jeff
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
-
Link building freelancers or referrals to link building freelancers
Hi, Are there many freelancers in this community that advocates the MOZ linkbuilding philosophies? Or does anyone have references for link building freelancers at a reasonable rate? Thanks, Jack
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jackgao840 -
Suspicious external links to site have 302 redirects
Hi, I have been asked to look at a site where I suspect some questionable SEO work, particularly link building. The site does seem to be performing very poorly in Google since January 2014, although there are no messages in WMT. Using WMT, OPenSiteExplorer, Majestic & NetPeak, I have analysed inbound links and found a group of links which although are listed in WMT, etc appear to 302 redirect to a directory in China (therefore the actual linking domain is not visible). It looks like a crude type of link farm, but I cant understand why they would use 302s not 301s. The domains are not visible due to redirects. Should I request a disavow or ignore? The linking domains are listed below: http://www.basalts.cn/
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | crescentdigital
http://www.chinamarbles.com.cn/
http://www.china-slate.com.cn/
http://www.granitecountertop.com.cn/
http://www.granite-exporter.com/
http://www.sandstones.biz/
http://www.stone-2.com/
http://www.stonebuild.cn/
http://www.stonecompany.com.cn/
http://www.stonecontact.cn/
http://www.stonecrate.com/
http://www.stonedesk.com/
http://www.stonedvd.com/
http://www.stonepark.cn/
http://www.stonetool.com.cn/
http://www.stonewebsite.com/ Thanks Steve0 -
Why do these links violate Google's Quality Guideline?
My reconsideration request was declined by Google. Google said that some of the links to my site (www.pianomother.com) are still outside its quality guidelines. We provide piano lessons and sheet music on the site. Three samples are given. 1. http://www.willbeavis.com/links.htm 2. http://vivienzone.blogspot.com/2009/06/learning-how-to-play-piano.html 3. http://interiorpianoservice.com/links/ The first one is obvious because it is a link exchange page. I don't understand why the 2nd and 3rd ones are considered "inorganic links" by Google. The 2nd link is a blog that covers various topics including music, health, computer, etc. The 3rd one is a page of the site that provides piano related services. Other resources related to piano including my website are listed on the page. Please help. Thanks. John
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | pianomother0 -
Can links from an old site raise DA for other site? Or just unethical?
So this may be an odd question. So a competing company went out of business. Their domain name is now available. So just for research purposes, would you ever or would it be unethical for a person to buy an expired competing domain name, and point it to another site to collect their link juice? The site was only a DA of 10, but not sure if one - its bad to buy a competing companies expired domain - and two - even though in the same industry, this would be bad to point it to another site or create a site from it. Just curious your thoughts.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | asbchris0 -
[linkbuilding] link partner page on webshop, is it working?
Hello Mozzers, I am wondering about the effect of link building by swapping links between websites and adding a link partner page to the web shop containing hundreds of links. I have this new competitor coming in to the SERP of Google competing on the keywords I am targeting. The competitor has way more links than our web shop. The competitor has a page with hundreds of links to other web shops witch on there turn has a link to there web shop. (not all off them link back btw) I always thought it is no use sharing links with other websites this way in creating a huge page with hundreds of links. it is of no benefit for neighter website to do this. Still it does seems to work (?) and tis strategy is used by a lot of web shops in the Netherlands. How are you guys looking at this?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | auke1810
Witch of you guy's are using strategy like this?
Should I pick up this strategy myself?0 -
Negative SEO to inner page: remove page or disavow links?
Someone decided to run a negative-SEO campaign, hitting one of the inner pages on my blog 😞 I noticed the links started to pile up yesterday but I assume there will be more to come over the next few days. The targeted page is of little value to my blog, so the question is: should I remove the affected page (hoping that the links won't affect the entire site) or to submit a disavow request? I'm not concerned about what happens to the affected page, but I want to make sure the entire site doesn't get affected as a result of the negative-SEO. Thanks in advance. Howard
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | howardd0 -
Guest Post Blogging And Exchanging Links
Hi, I hope you are all well. Would there be any problem with exchanging a guest blog, so two websites doing a guest post for each other and both sites linking back to each other. I don't think this would be an issue on a small scale though I just wanted to see what everyone else thought. Are there any other things I should bear in mind when doing this as well? Kind Regards
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | JonathanRolande0 -
The Link in Profile Page is it good BackLink or not?
Well, i see that we need 200mozpoints to be able to put our Website Link (DOFOLLOW) into our profile in SEOMOZ.. the way i know it, it would be a good BackLink for my site. Here is the questions, please do answer from top to bottom, because if you have answered "NOT GOOD" for the first question, then the rest of the question will definitely be "NOT GOOD" too Every single back link source i used below (for question #2 and #3), comes from a good domain (it is an extremely wellknown website in Indonesia) 1. Is the DOFOLLOW link from my SEOMOZ Profile Page , a good back link? 2. is the DOFOLLOW from http://www.indonesiaindonesia.com/m4g1c14n a good back link 3. is the DOFOLLOW from http://www.kaskus.us/member.php?u=10407 (click the Contact Info), a good back link? okay, only if you answered the first 3 questions with "It is a good backlink, and it will definitely help your SEO Standing for your site", then i ask you my real question.. i was planning to use the service from http://www.monsterbacklinks.com , and i asked them to show me what kind of "High Quality Backlink" they will be giving me, here is their reply, 10 examples of profile they use to backlink to one of their client Domain PR 4--http://www.sanramon.org/user/12548
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | IKT
Domain PR 5--http://extratasty.com/profile/42069/paulc4312
Domain PR 5--http://www.bug.co.uk/forums/members/paulc4312.html
Domain PR 5--http://www.offspring.com/forums/member.php?u=84973
Domain PR 5--http://www.massify.com/profiles/paulcpaul
Domain PR 6--http://www.gamezone.com/member/159751/
Domain PR
5--http://www.indyarocks.com/profile/profile_vview_main.php?uid=6155724
Domain PR 6--http://classic.mapmywalk.com/user_profile?u=866130762956343886
Domain PR 5--http://www.netbookreviews.com/forum/members/paulc4312.html
Domain PR 5--http://www.thepoint.com/users/paul-c-2/profile
Domain PR 5--http://forums.cagepotato.com/members/paulc4312.html In my eyes, all of those links are as good as the one link coming from SEOMOZ Profile, hell in fact i have already purchased from them the 750 High Quality BackLink package (cost 197$), but my PayPal is being lock down just now, because i login to my account from both my cellphone and pc (they think my account is hacked)... so will i increase my SEO Standing if i used their service? if they are, i will finalized my purchase tomorrow (after i settled the problem with paypal) Their FAQ Page is also very convincing .. such these 2 questions Will I get penalized for paying you to do my backlinks? There is no way you will get penalized for paying us to do your backlinks. It is possible to get penalized for paying people to put links on their sites but that's not what you're buying from us. When purchasing from us you are paying us to place thousands of free backlinks. There is absolutely no way Google can penalize you for this. Will Google ban/sandbox me for getting so many backlinks? We have never had any problems with getting sanboxed or banned by google. None of our customers have had any problems either. If our methods of placing backlinks were to get a site penalized or banned then we would be sending thousands of links towards our competitors sites. But since our methods work great for increasing search engine rankings, we would never use our backlinking on our competitors because that will damage our rankings and boost theirs. Please enlighten me 🙂0