Still Battling On With Link Profile Audit
-
I'm getting there, I can see the light!
I have covered one complete audit of the link profile and I am now going back over it looking at the links I had 'question marked' - I should have this completed by the end of this week and I will then focus on using DISAVOW for the links that I am really struggling with, the foreign sites that are in Chinese or Russian, the sites that have absolutely no 'contact us' information and have been privately registered (in WhoIs)
I have come across this domain which links to our site about 8 times and although I cannot find any contact info I can't quite make my mind up, to be honest I would rather get rid of it BUT I'm trying to avoid taking the easy option of disavowing where I can;
Fo anyone who has gone through what I am currently going through, please help me just this once and tell me 'should it stay or should it go'?!
Many thanks!
Andy
-
Askives is one of those sites that appears on the backlink profile of almost every site I audit. I put it in a category I call "not seo made" and just ignore it. A good number of those Chinese and Russian sites are the same too. You'll find a bunch that look like this. They often have "alexa" in the url:
I don't disavow those or try to remove them. Google is most interested in the links that are self made in an attempt to boost rankings.
Now, there are some Russian sites that I come across in link profiles that just have random spun text and anchor texted links. For those, attempt to contact and if you can't find contact information, share that in your Google Docs spreadsheet so that the webspam team can see that you tried and then disavow it.
Good luck!
-
How does anyone know what will be spammy in 1 to 3 years? With that logic you might as well disavow all links.
-
Remember to think towards the future when reviewing your links. A link might pass for Google right now, but is it something they'll consider spammy 6 months, 1 year, or 3 years down the line? If yes, get rid of it now and save yourself the extra work.
-
Not that they're likely to hurt you--or help you, for that matter--but if enough people disavow worthless sites like these, maybe we won't have to spend time wondering about them as we go through our link audits because they'll have been wiped off the map.
-
Just had a look at http://www.askives.com/ and it looks like a non-spammy, genuine site (albeit auto populated or similar). I'd leave the links there. They look genuine enough.
-
Add it to your disavow list and rock the Casbah : )
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
-
Are links on a press page considered "reciprocal linking"?
Hi, We have a press page with a list of links to the articles that have mentioned us (most of which also have a link to our website). Is there any SEO impact with this approach? Does Google consider these reciprocal links? And if so, would making the links on the press page 'nofollow' solve the issue?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mikekeeper0 -
Why would links that were deleted by me 3 months ago still show up in reports?
I inadvertently created a mini link farm some time back by linking all of my parked domains (2000 plus) to some of my live websites (I was green and didn't think linking between the same owner sites / domains was an issue). These websites were doing well until Penguin and although I did not get any 'bad link' advices from Google I figure I was hit by Penguin. So about 3 or 4 months ago I painstakingly deleted ALL links from all of those domains that I still own (only 500 or so - the others were allowed to lapse). None of those domains have any links linking out at all but old links from those domains are still showing up in WMT and in SEOmoz and every other link tracking report I have run. So why would these links still be reported? How long do old links stay in the internet archives? This may sound like a strange question but do links 'remain with a domain for a given period of time regardless'? Are links archived before being 'thrown out' of the web. I know Google keeps archives of data that has expired, been deleted, website closed etc, etc for about 3 years or so (?). In an effort to correct a situation I have spent countless hours manually deleting thousands of links but they won't go away. Looking for some insight here please. cheers, Mike
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | shags380 -
Link Building on Blog Posts w/ Ads & Mostly Pictures
I found a group of similar websites that offer anchor text links with good to great domain and page authority (30 to 75), but I'm not sure how "safe" they are. Most of their posts are compilations of images/logos and there are a lot of ads on the page. Would links from sites like TutorialChip.com help or would Google discount them because of the nature of the site? Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | pbhatt0 -
Sitewide logo footer link - what's the risk?
Hi, an incredibly popular website, with several thousand pages, has offered me a site-wide footer logo link. The site this popular website would backlink to has 50 high quality backlinks (and low volumes of traffic - it's a new site). I am tempted to say no, because of the risk of penalty, but then I started wondering whether a logo link posed the same penalty risk as a text link.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Does PR 7, PR 8, PR 9 links help really?
HI GUYS, I have been offered a few link opportunities on websites that have a PR 7, 8 & 9 but will it help my rankings because the website it not related whatsoever to what my website is about.. My website is about insurance and these high PR websites are not related to insurance.. Does it really matter??? Any guidance much apprciate please guys... Thanks Gareth
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | GAZ090 -
Do bad links "hurt" your ranking or just not add any value
Do bad links "hurt" your ranking or just not add any value. By this I mean, if you do have links from link farms and bad neighbourhoods, would it effectively pull you down in search engine rankings. Or is it more that it's just a waste of time to get these links, as it adds no value to your ranking. Are google saying avoid them because it will not have a positive effect, or avoid them becuase it will have a negative effect. I am under the opinion that it will not harm, but it will not help either. I think this because at the end of the day you are not 100% in control of your inbound links, any bad site could add you and if a competitor, god forbid, wanted to play some black hat games, couldn't they just add you to thousands of bad sites to pull your ranking down? Interested to hear your opinions on the matter, or any "facts" if they are out there.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | esendex0 -
Ditching of spammy links - will it be of benefit?
Hi there. We have recently taken over the SEO for a five-star hotel who rank very well already for a lot of their main terms, largely down to the fact they have decent off-site strength (as yet very little on-page optimisation has been done, so they aren't appearing for some quite key terms). This off-page strength includes around 2000 links, giving the home page an authority of 63 in the OSE tool. However, upon looking at the links to check they were pointing to the most relevant page etc, I notice they have A LOT of spammy links, pointing to their site with anchor text like 'cheap cialis' or 'buy valium'. Clearly these aren't the kinds of links that should be pointing to a five-star hotel, but should I expect to see much of a drop by attempting to remove these links? We obviously want to clean their link portfolio up, but I'm not sure they would be too happy if all their top rankings disappeared - even if only temporarily, and even if done with the best intentions. I ask as none of the other sites we handle SEO for have had such a proliferation of these links, so I've not seen the ramifications in full. Any help would be much appreciated, along with advice on the best way to remove these links.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | themegroup0 -
Why Does Massive Reciprocal Linking Still Work?
It seems pretty well-settled that massive reciprocal linking is not a very effective strategy, and in fact, may even lead to a penatly. However, I still see massive reciprocal linking (blog roll linking even massive resource page linking) still working all the time. I'm not looking to cast aspersion on any individual or company, but I work with legal websites and I see these strategies working almost universally. My question is why is this still working? Is it because most of the reciprocally linking sites are all legally relevant? Has Google just not "gotten around" to the legal sector (doubtful considering the money and volume of online legal segment)? I have posed this question at SEOmoz in the past and it was opined that massively linking blogs through blog rolls probably wouldn't send any flags to Google. So why is that it seems that everywhere I look, this strategy is basically dismissed as a complete waste of time if not harmful? How can there be such a discrepency between what leading SEOs agree to be "bad" and the simple fact that these strategies are working en masse over the period of at least 3 years?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Gyi0