Should I use the Google disavow tool?
-
Hi
I'm a bit new to SEO and am looking for some guidance.
Although there is no indication in Webmaster tools that my site is being penalised for bad links, I have noticed that I have over 200 spam links for "Pay Day Loans" pointing to my site. (This was due to a hack on my site several years ago).
So my question is two fold. Firstly, is it normal to have spammy links pointing to your site and secondly, should I bother to do anything about it? I did some research into the Disavow tool in Webmaster tools wonder I should use it to block all these links.
Thanks
-
If all the links are from 200 different domains i would skip the step of contacting the webmasters and go straight to the disavow, its often very time consuming and i would suggest that time could be better spent elsewhere.
I swear by this guide for a disavow http://moz.com/blog/guide-to-googles-disavow-tool
Good luck
-
If your website is not related to Pay Day Loans, you should do something:
First, visit the origin of those links. Are they automated comments on blogs, with strange messages not related to the post or your website? By the anchor of your links, I would bet you have that profile of incoming links. If it is the case, you should definitely do something with those links. Otherwise, if you discover they are interesting content, in context links and something really worthy, you can let it be.
If you detect this way they are spam, you should first contact the webmaster of that site. Maybe he is not conscious about having those links, and they are probably caused by some kind of bug, or a form open to visitors. If he is a webmaster concerned about SEO, will remove the links soon.
If you don't obtain a reply from the webmaster, and only in that case, should you use the disavow tool: when you are not able to have those links removed by normal ways, and your last option is to inform Google you don't want them to have those links taken into consideration by their algorithm when ranking your site.
Good luck with doing that manual stuff on the 200 links
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
-
How to tell when a directory backlink or other backlink is worthy of disavow tool? Especially when a keyword is not ranking passed where it should.
Hello, I jumped aboard as SEO for a client, who seems to of had been hit by panda and penguin back in 2012 of April, the panda part I feel I've fixed by creating better content, combining pages that were same topic into one, basically creating a better content experience that relates better to search terms users are searching for. Once the site was redesigned and relaunched all keywords improved minus one, the main keyword they want to rank for. Created a landing page for it, that is very nicely optimized for that keyword and it's brothers and sisters, however that page isn't used by google since it's brand new with a PA of 1. Doing a backlink audit I found 102 links out of 400 using the same anchor text as the keyword they want ranked for, they also have synonyms anchor text for other links too but not quite as much. Most of those 102 domains using the main keyword anchor text are directories, in my opinion I'd declare all of them spam, however there are a few with DAs higher than 50, making me little more nervous to disavow, since I want to make sure we get out of the penalty if we were hit by penguin but also don't want to ruin the ranking for other keywords we're doing better with, since they are longtails and short, but very relevant to users. How is the best way to determine if a site / directory is spammy enough that it's penalizing you and how could I approach the anchor text issue with backlinks? 99% of these links I cannot have changed, since they're directories I doubt many have had a human mess with them in a while. Sidenote* If you're going to post a link as a response, try to summarize what that link will be about, as many times links are giving as an answer but end up not really providing the meat we were seeking. Thank you!
Technical SEO | | Deacyde0 -
Could using our homepage Google +1's site wide harm our website?
Hello Moz! We currently have the number of Google +1's for our homepage displaying on all pages of our website. Could this be viewed as black hat/manipulative by Google, and result in harming our website? Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | TheDude0 -
Google is changing the title
Hi! Lately i have seen that Google changed the page titles for some clients, not all... its about 30% of them. For example, the title looks likes this after the Google change: Company name: SEO and Pay per click management But in on that page it looks like this: SEO and Pay per click management - Company name Does anyone know why?
Technical SEO | | DanielNordahl1 -
Google using descriptions from other websites instead of site's own meta description
In the last month or so, Google has started displaying a description under links to my home page in its search results that doesn't actually come from my site. I have a meta description tag in place and for a very limited set of keywords, that description is displayed, but for the majority of results, it's displaying a description that appears on Alexa.com and a handful of other sites that seem to have copied Alexa's listing, e.g. similarsites.com. The problem is, the description from these other sites isn't particularly descriptive and mentions a service that we no longer provide. So my questions are: Why is Google doing this? Surely that's broken behaviour. How do I fix it?
Technical SEO | | antdesign0 -
Does Google know what footer content is?
We plan to do away with fixed footer content and make, for the most part, the content in the traditional footer area unique just like the 'main' part of the content. This begs the question, do Google know what is footer content as opposed to main on page content?
Technical SEO | | NeilD0 -
Google not showing my website ?
The website is medicare.md. if you search for term "medicare doctors PG county maryland" it is #1 in bing and yahoo but not even showing on google.com first TEN pages, although not banned. Interestingly if you do that search on google.co.pk it is #4. Quite Puzzuling !! Would appreciate any help or advice . Sherif Hassan
Technical SEO | | sherohass0 -
Disappeared from Google with in 2 hours of webmaster tools error
Hey Guys I'm trying not to panic but....we had a problem with google indexing some of our secure pages then hit those pages and browsers firing up security warning, so I asked our web dev to have at look at it he made the below changes and within 2 hours the site has drop off the face of google “in web master tools I asked it to remove any https://freestylextreme.com URLs” “I cancelled that before it was processed” “I then setup the robots.txt to respond with a disallow all if the request was for an https URL” “I've now removed robots.txt completely” “and resubmitted the main site from web master tools” I've read a couple of blog posts and all say to remain clam , test the fetch bot on webmasters tools which is all good and just wait for google to reindex do you guys have any further advice ? Ben
Technical SEO | | elbeno1 -
Help - just disappeared from Google
My google listings have disappeared in the last few days. I used to have positions 1, 2, 3, and sometimes 4 on page 1, but since the last update (19th?) it appears I have been dropped? My domainn is www.eseyo.com and the search terms I used to acheive results for were "seo in brentwood" and "seo brentwood" I even created a screencast of my success some time ago for a blog post: http://www.eseyo.com/seo-in-brentwood/ Is there anything that I can do to get these listings back? I have not done anything too naughty in terms of tactics. Purchased a few fiver gigs to get some fake social likes but that is it the rest was all true links and listings. your help and advice most appreciated. Scott.
Technical SEO | | eseyo0