Unnatural Links Removal - are GWMT links enough?
-
Hi,
When working on unnatural links penalty, is removing and disavowing links shown on the GWMT enough or should the list be broaden to include OSE and Majestic etc.?
Thanks
-
Hi BeytzNet,
The answer to that question really depends on another question:
Are you looking for a short-term solution that may or may not get your current penalty lifted, or are you genuinely interested in dealing with links that really shouldn't be there?
If you're after the band-aid solution then you can try going with the arrogant suggestion from some Googlers that only links which offend Google at this point in time need to be dealt with. (Given Google's current propensity for adding to its list of what is "unnatural", their attitude borders on sadistic.)
If you really want to get some control over your backlink profile and future proof your site in the face of changing spam targets, impending Penguin updates and whatever else may be coming down the line, you might find it useful to try this little exercise:
Download backlink data from as many of the following as possible (free download limits for the tools you don't subscribe to will give you enough of a sample)
- Google Webmaster Tools
- Bing Webmaster Tools
- Open Site Explorer
- Majestic SEO
- ahrefs
- Raven Tools (pulls in data from Open Site Explorer & Majestic SEO)
Open each csv, select all and change text color so that the data for each list is a different color.
Copy and paste the content of each into one Excel spreadsheet so that all of the URLs are in one list.
Deduplicate the list.
Check out the different colored URLs left in your list...the takeaway is that every tool will bring you different link data. If you want a true picture of your backlink profile, you are now much closer to having it.
Incidentally, Google is not the only search engine to apply manual penalties. Others just don't talk about it as much as Google does. You might also find it helpful to read this post from Ryan Kent about identifying the source of your link penalty.
Hope that helps,
Sha
-
I don't usually worry about removing/disavowing those links. Google is concerned about the links that you have personally made (or an SEO on your behalf) in order to increase pagerank.
It's pretty common to have a lot of them.
-
Thanks Marie,
Question -
Going through my link profile I have encountered dozens of links from different SEO sites that analyzed my domain - whether on its own or showing it as a competitor to another site on the same niche.Weirdly, these are dofollow links (dozens!).
Should I disavow them?
Obviously these are not requested links of any kind. These sites are kind of aggregation sites that show practically any site worth mentioning.
-
Thanks Ben. This is the article I remember seeing.
-
That's great information and process.
-
Thanks Ben for that article. A few days ago I was searching for that and couldn't find it!
The vast majority of SEOs will tell you that you need to include links from as many sources as possible. However, John Mueller (a Google employee) recently said that in the majority of cases, focusing on the links in your WMT is enough. I could not find the thread where he said this, so I asked in WMF if someone could find it. Here is the thread.
In the past I have used a combo of links from WMT and also from ahrefs. However, for the current sites that I am working on I am just using WMT. If for some reason we do not get reconsidered then I will go back and add links from other sources.
I think the reason why people say to get links from all sources is that historically WMT has only given you a sample of your links. But in the last few months or so, in the "Download latest links" section they give a much larger number. Don't be fooled by the fact that it says, "Latest links". I have seen sites where this list included thousands of links going back as far as 2008.
-
According to Google Search Quality engineer, Uli Lutz, you only need to include the links in GWMT. Here is an article with more information on that.
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
-
Hammered by Spam links
When we moved from one host to another in Wordpress engine, we had this insertion weird redirect thing happen. We 410'd the page cgi-sys/movingpage.cgi, but it hit us hard in the anchors. If you go to ahrefs, we are literally all Asian in anchors text. Anybody have any suggestions, thank goodness it looks like it finally stopped. I am looking for creative ways to repopulate our back end with the right stuff. Any thoughts would be great! Heres a example: allartalocaltours.com/tumi-tote-401.html ↳customerbloom.com/cgi-sys/movingpage.cgi ↳www.customerbloom.com/cgi-sys/movingpage.cgi ↳lockwww.customerbloom.com/cgi-sys/movingpage.cgi
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mattguitar990 -
Should I try to change these links or no?
Hey guys, I need some advice on a link profile I'm currently working on. Our client sells a product in the hunting industry and has been around for over ten years. I just finished up classifying and looking at all of their links today and found that around half of them are sponsor links, links on "link pages," and a few directory links with almost all of them being followed. Because we are the first company to do SEO for them, I know that these aren't maliciously solicited links, but I'm worried that they may be having a negative impact on the site. Most of the links are coming from other non-competing websites in the outdoor industry which typically tends to have very antiquated sites with very antiquated practices. Essentially, I don't want to go out and try to nofollow or disavow all of these links that the website has had for a long time on other related websites if they're helping us, but I also don't want to be leaving anything up that could algorithmically be identified as spam. Below are some examples to show you what I'm referring to by the sponsor links and link resource pages. Any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks! Sponsored - http://www.becomeabetterhunter.com/ or http://outdoorobsession.tv/ or http://thehollywoodhunter.com/ Link Resource Pages - http://bowhuntamerica.com/links or http://cornerarchery.com/CompanyLinks.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CaddisInteractive0 -
Ecommerce Internal Linking Questions
I am a bit confused at internal linking for ecommerce site. Is it wise to link say all "boots" term in the review section to the boots page? Zappos is doing this. Wouldn't this incur penguin penalty? Since all internal anchor to that page is "boots" ? Scroll down to the bottom and checkout their reviews: http://www.zappos.com/tony-lama-6071l Is this the wise way to go about doing internal linking? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WayneRooney0 -
Disavow tool removed all our links from webmaster tools
We recently used the Google Disavow tool to remove 200 bad links but Google has nearly removed all our links from webmaster tools from over 2000+ we only have 150 now! Has anyone had the same problem? Any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks Paul
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | webdesigncwd0 -
Remove content that is indexed?
Hi guys, I want to delete a entire folder with content indexed, how i can explain to google that content no longer exists?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Valarlf0 -
Outbound Links to Authority sites
Will outbound links to a related topic on an authority site help, hurt or be irrelevanent for SEO purposes. And if beneficially, should it be Nofollow?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VictorVC0 -
Too many links?
I've recently taken over a site from another agency, which has hundreds of linking root domains. These domains are of very low quality and, in my opinion, are being ignored by Google. Is it best to 'clean up' some of these links, or leave them and start building quality links? I just don't want to waste time cleaning link profiles if there's no need.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | A_Q0 -
Nofollow links in Google Webmaster
I've noticed nofollow links showing up in my Google Webmaster tools "links to your site" list. If they are nofollow why are they showing up here? Do nofollow links still count as a backlink and transfer PR and authority?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NoCoGuru1