Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Potential spam websites with high DA linking back to us
-
Hey everybody,
I'm going through all my sites and disavowing crap links. However, I'm having trouble distinguishing which high DA sites to disavow. What would you do?
and
They both have tons of backlinks - both good and crap. The first has a DA of 72 and a Moz spam score of 4/17 and the second has a DA of 86 and a Moz spam score of 9/17
-
If anybody ends up searching for this topic please view this Whiteboard Friday with Rand. I think he actually ended up reading my question and answering it:
-
Unfortunately, it's very difficult to measure the impact of proactive disavow, for a number of reasons:
(1) The timeline of if and when Google processes disavows isn't very transparent
(2) The impact of bad links is usually only seen in large drops, and long after the fact of those linksFor most of us, I think proactively disavowing links carries the risk that those links might actually be passing value. So, if you start carving away at your link profile before you're in any danger, you stand to lose as much as you might gain down the road.
Risk profiling is tricky, and there are certainly sites on the verge of penalties or at high risk who should be proactive. I can't tell you where on the continuum you fall from just a couple of linking domains, but my gut reaction is that disavowing links isn't a good use of your time and energy right now.
-
Thank you for the feedback everybody.
You all make good points. I'm not facing an active penalty and I'm just trying to be proactive. All the links were organic in nature and there is no indication that black-hat backlink building has been performed on the websites that I'm optimizing. I think that too many SEOs have used the Disavow Tool as a proactive measure so I don't believe that Google will set us up in a trap for using it. My thought process was that I want to start with technical SEO, get the sites healthy on the back-end then implement a content marketing strategy that's been in the works for some time.
That being said, I think that I'll hold off on the disavow until I gather more information or read up on studies that have been performed regarding proactive disavow. If anybody has any insight on this please post it here as I am sure would be appreciated by all.
Cheers
-
I'm having a hard time seeing exactly which domains you're looking at, but with no other information, a DA=72, Spam=4 domain hardly seems like a red flag.
Let me ask this - what's your situation? Are you facing an active penalty, or are you being proactive? These are wildly different scenarios? How strong is your actual domain - do you have plenty of solid links. Often, it's not about the few bad links - it's about the link base. A strong site with a solid link base can handle some spam in the mix.
If you're being proactive, it's easy to cut too deep, and the risks are much, much higher. If you're actively stuck in a penalty situation that's obviously link-based and is eating a huge % of your rankings/traffic, then the math is wildly different (and you may have to cut deep).
-
Hey MEllsworth,
Whenever I go after links/decide to keep or disavow, I go off of the content of the site more-so than the DA exclusively. High DA is great and all, but I'd rather get a low/medium DA website on a page that has decent stats and the content is about my topic (a bonus if the whole site is on my topic). I could go make a wordpress.com blog in 10 minutes and get a DA 98 link, but that really isn't going to help me in itself.
Regarding your 2 examples, I would attempt to get my link removed and disavow those domains. They don't seem to be about a certain topic but rather anything and everything, plus they have some indications that they are spammy via OSE.
Best of luck - Ryan
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 Long Do The Link Tracking Lists Take To Update?
Hi, How long do the link tracking lists take to update? It's been over a week and each is still showing a red cross. The reason I created it was because I migrated to a new domain name and Moz is still showing the backlinks on the old property and not the new (the domain swap happened in December 2020). I can see that Ahrefs has picked up all of the links - Both new and redirected - but Moz has not. When will this be reflected in Moz as it has already been over three months? Is there a reason for the above questions? I appreciate any response here. 🙂
Moz Pro | | Smarter_Finances3 -
What are main factors to increase DA?
Hi, I'm running a blog and working continuously on it and creating both DoFollow and NoFollow links but DA of website best heated vest isn't increasing even I"m creating guest posts and other links. Can you please guide me what are the factors to increase DA so I can work on my website and increase my site's DA as well? Thank you!
Moz Pro | | loukris2350 -
Tumblr and Link Equity
Hi Moz Community, I've recently decided to start a project where I gather 1,000 great examples of something that's searched for often, and am thinking that posting it to a Tumblr site like the following website did could be a great way to pass link equity back to my main site (with a little "site by [my site]" somewhere in the header or footer). While I was super pumped about this idea today, and have now gathered almost 500 of my examples (mentioned above), I am not seeing link equity passed from this site, even on the non-redirected links here: http://gothamlogos.tumblr.com/ Anyone have any experience with projects like this? I've checked read the Moz Tumblr and SEO article from a few years ago, which makes it seem like this should be an SEO "win"... But using the Moz Pro account tools, I'm not seeing any of these non-redirect links (ordinary links) giving any value to anyone on this example site. Thanks so much in advance, Zack
Moz Pro | | Zack2 -
How to remove broken links from our wordpress site?
Hello! How are you? We just signed up to Moz.com. Moz link tool. It gave us many broken links with 404's and 302's. Could you please help me with deleting the links? Thanks!
Moz Pro | | hsma0 -
Why are inbound links not showing?
I run the site http://www.eurocheapo.com and am finding that many inbound links are not showing up in OSE and on the toolbar. For example, check out this hotel review: http://www.eurocheapo.com/paris/hotel/hotel-esmeralda.html In OSE it shows only 2 links (from 1 domain), which is crazy. It has dozens of inbound links from many different domains (links:http://www.eurocheapo.com/paris/hotel/hotel-esmeralda.html). I notice this all over my site. Pages that we link between are also showing no internal links -- which is easy to disprove. Was there a problem with this crawl? Or is the problem in our code? Many thanks for your help, Tom
Moz Pro | | TomNYC0 -
Adding new categories to my website and getting them ranked
Hi, I currently run a website and have added a couple of new categories lately. The website is Planes Trains Automobiles Co UK. For example I want to add "Planes for sale" as a new category. What is the best way to go about this? Will each aircraft added add content therefore ranking? I don't want to approach an SEO company yet as the service would be free for the time being? Thanks
Moz Pro | | PlanesTrainsAutos0 -
Spam Directories creating misleading Authority ratings
How does the website www.starsdirectory.com.ar get a Domain Authority of 54 and a Page Authority of 61 when Google quite correctly gives it a PR 0? It is clearly a spam directory, which Google has recognised. It is very misleading using OSE or Campaign Management when sites such as these (and there are hundreds more we have found) are skewing the results of competitiors through the use of spam links. Is there no way that SEOMoz tools can identify such spam sites when they create their ratings?
Moz Pro | | paulsmithlondon0