Disavow Links & Paid Link Removal (discussion)
-
Hey everyone,
We've been talking about this issue a bit over the last week in our office, I wanted to extend the idea out to the Moz community and see if anyone has some additional perspective on the issue. Let me break-down the scenario:
- We're in the process of cleaning-up the link profile for a new client, which contains many low quality SEO-directory links placed by a previous vendor.
- Recently, we made a connection to a webmaster who controls a huge directory network. This person found 100+ links to our client's site on their network and wants $5/link to have them removed.
- Client was not hit with a manual penalty, this clean-up could be considered proactive, but an algorithmic 'penalty' is suspected based on historical keyword rankings.
**The Issue: **We can pay this ninja $800+ to have him/her remove the links from his directory network, and hope it does the trick. When talking about scaling this tactic, we run into some ridiculously high numbers when you talk about providing this service to multiple clients.
**The Silver Lining: **Disavow Links file. I'm curious what the effectiveness of creating this around the 100+ directory links could be, especially since the client hasn't been slapped with a manual penalty.
The Debate: Is putting a disavow file together a better alternative to paying for crappy links to be removed? Are we actually solving the bad link problem by disavowing or just patching it? Would choosing not to pay ridiculous fees and submitting a disavow file for these links be considered a "good faith effort" in Google's eyes (especially considering there has been no manual penalty assessed)?
-
Definitely just disavow. John Mueller from Google said in a hangout that you should not be paying for link removal unless for some reason you feel that you have inconvenienced the site owner and feel that you ought to pay for the link to be removed. In the same hangout a Google employee, Mariya said, "No! Don't pay for link removal! That's what the disavow tool is for." I've transcribed the video and given my thoughts on it here: http://www.hiswebmarketing.com/should-you-pay-for-link-removal/
-
Totally agree with everyone here. I wouldn't, under any circumstance, pay for a link to be removed. I was reading a blog post written by Google the other day about it. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/new-notifications-about-inbound-links.html
Matt Cutts says in the post "In a few situations, we have heard about directories or blog networks that won't take links down. If a website tries to charge you to put links up and to take links down, feel free to let us know about that, either in your reconsideration request or by mentioning it on our webmaster forum or in a separate spam report. We have taken action on several such sites, because they often turn out to be doing link spamming themselves."
Google are good at spotting these types of links and not counting them especially if there is a strong backlink profile. I'd just disavow at domain level.
-
Thanks Rand,
I appreciate the feedback. I think our approach to this issue is more clear now - we'll include some documentation to hopefully prevent others from being extorted.
-
Definitely agree with Rand. When you submit your requests, send Google a note saying that the person is trying to get you to pay to have the links removed, possibly even including the email/text that stated he wanted you to pay. I doubt it will take them long to respond. I would NOT pay the person a dime. Submitting the request via the clients webmaster account should take care of the damage.
"That still leaves the issue of returning keyword rankings back to 'normal'. I'm still wondering what effect physically removing the links (and coughing up the cash) would have versus submitting a disavow file for all low quality directories in the client's profile."
Google's disavow tool is made for this. Otherwise, a competitor could submit your site to as many bad places as they wanted, and there wouldn't be anything you could do about it. As long as you submit a complete report of all the links in question, you should be fine.
"We can pay this ninja $800+ to have him/her remove the links from his directory network, and hope it does the trick."
Ninja? More like a clown, lol.
-
Yeah, disavowing should have the same effect as if the links were removed, so you're better off submitting the disavow.
-
Hey William,
Thanks for the reply. The disavow option seems to be pretty popular from what I've gathered so far - I agree with you about the financial part of the process feeling a little extort-y.
That still leaves the issue of returning keyword rankings back to 'normal'. I'm still wondering what effect physically removing the links (and coughing up the cash) would have versus submitting a disavow file for all low quality directories in the client's profile. Presuming most of the directories have been adjusted algorithmically to provide almost no SEO value - it seems to add more points in going the disavow route.
-
I'm in agreement with William. If you proactively submit the disavow file, you should be protected. I'd also think about sending a note via Webmaster Tools to let Google know about the network and that this person is extorting you/your site by forcing payment to remove links. That may help others whom Google might penalize for this in the future if they refuse to pay (and paying it forward like that is a great way to serve the web community and discourage future spam extortionists).
-
Just disavow. Don't let people like this extort you. If you want to get him to try and remove the links for free, tell him you're not going to pay him, and instead you're going to submit a disavow, flagging his entire network to Google as unwanted links. You made a good faith effort by contacting the webmaster, but being extorted goes beyond good faith.
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 for Ecommerce
I need help - I'm trying to boost the rankings of a competitive category page - Leather Office Chairs First I'm thinking I need earned links - but for something like leather office chairs thinking of interesting, unique content people would love to read & share is proving difficult. I am struggling - can anyone help?!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey1 -
How would you link build to this page?
Hi Guys, I'm looking to build links to a commercial page similar to this: https://apolloblinds.com.au/venetian-blinds/ How would you even create quality links (not against Google TOS) to a commercial page like that? Any ideas would be very much appreciated. Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | spyaccounts140 -
What Links to Disavow?
I am looking through my website's link profile that I pulled directly from Google Webmaster Tools. What is the best way to determine the links to disavow? Maybe the Webmaster Tools list is not the best list for this process but I really need to clean up the links that are hurting the site's SEO. Does anyone have any insight?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PartyStore0 -
How to remove seemingly untouchable link spam
Hey Mozzers, I have been struggling with this issue, and I am hoping someone can help. I have a number of bad/spammy links to my site. We have never engaged in "bad SEO", but an old subdomain received a number of spammy blog comments, and everything seemed to escalate from there. We have removed a subdomain that received all of the bad links from our DNS settings (about a year ago), but these links are still there when using Ahrefs or MajesticSEO. I don't think we have been penalized for these links, but I would just like to clean them up because, well, it's the right thing to do. How does one do this when these sites seem so untouchable. Either they are from China, Russia, Denmark, abandoned in 2009, etc. If I look for someone to contact, I can't seem to find anyone to even email. Suggestions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | evan890 -
SEO Effect of Outbound Links
Greetings MOZ community: What is best practices when it comes to creating outbound links to other websites? Will adding such links improve the MOZ domain authority of my site? How many outbound links should be added to each page? For example I run a commercial real estate web site in New York. About 20 pages are written about neighborhoods. If several outbound links are added to each neighborhood page, and these links point to pages that provide further information about that neighborhood, will my neighborhood pages where the links originates from see improved ranking (or ranking potential)? Are these outbound links a critical SEO factor? Thanks everyone!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
Alan0 -
What To Do With Too Many Links?
We have four pages that have over 100 links (danger, danger from what I gather), but they're not spammy footer links. They are FAQ videos for our four main areas of practice. Does that make a difference? If not, should I just take half the questions on each page and make four additional pages? That strikes me as a worse UX, but I don't want to get penalized either. Thanks, Ruben
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Link Research Tools - Detox Links
Hi, I was doing a little research on my link profile and came across a tool called "LinkRessearchTools.com". I bought a subscription and tried them out. Doing the report they advised a low risk but identified 78 Very High Risk to Deadly (are they venomous?) links, around 5% of total and advised removing them. They also advised of many suspicious and low risk links but these seem to be because they have no knowledge of them so default to a negative it seems. So before I do anything rash and start removing my Deadly links, I was wondering if anyone had a). used them and recommend them b). recommend detoxing removing the deadly links c). would there be any cases in which so called Deadly links being removed cause more problems than solve. Such as maintaining a normal looking profile as everyone would be likely to have bad links etc... (although my thinking may be out on that one...). What do you think? Adam
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NaescentAdam0 -
What is the optimal link profile?
I am doing a variety of SEO link building techniques. I am doing: guest blog posts article submissions directories bookmarks web2.0 properties link acquisition I don't expect much from the article submissions, web 2.0, and directories, so I am using these methods for the long tail and less competitive keywords. Is this a good idea? When we talk about a link profile, is it per page or for the whole site? Does it matter if you have a more diverse link profile for a single page or does it have to be diverse for the whole site? Appreciate any informed comments!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | inhouseseo0