Disavow data for non-manual penalty
-
I'm working on cleaning link profile for a client. He has lots of crappy links pointing to his site. I tried to contact site owners so that they remove those links. No go for the most part. Since it's not a manual penalty, there's no need to specify when exactly I tried to contact those site owners, add emails to my disavow file, etc. It's my understanding that it's OK to just add domains to Google's disavow tool to submit because there was no manual action and it won't be checked by a human being. Would that be the right way to go?
-
If you're going through with link removal and building a disavow list, you might as well log all the outreach efforts and results - it really doesn't take that long. Just note when you sent emails, when they replied, what they said, and if the link was removed.
I'd upload that to Google Docs and include the link in the disavow file so on the off chance a real person looks into your site, they'll know you did the work.
-
You are making the right move for the future. You can always remove something from the disavow later and it will simply be treated as a dofollow link again once the disavow file has been re-crawled and the page re-indexed. So no big deal, that process is fast if its not a crappy deep link.
There will be a Penguin update in the next few weeks according to John Mueller at Google. So any disavow effort now will be fruitless for the next update but still worth doing for the futire as the latest data sample for it has already been taken as reported by Gary Illyes here http://www.thesempost.com/penguin-possibly-next-week-late-disavow-links-next-update/
-
that's the hardest penalty to recover from lol. You never know if you have done enough.
The last time I did it (i just got one to recover recently) I just flat out disavowed all those links. I made sure I got everything, even included yandex results.
I also made "for panda only" improvements.
It worked without talking or emailing anyone.
-
Well if you believe you have an algorithmic penalty then I'd say yes. Otherwise a proactive disavow is controversial but generally seems to be thought to be fine. Of course it can effect rankings so you need to vet the links carefully. It is also possible that although you don't have a manual penalty now, you might in the future. So it is a good practice to keep the records of the removal request emails in case you will have to respond to a manual penalty. There are some great tools out there to help like RMOOV which I have used successfully.
But I'd get on that disavow quickly if I were suffering from a Penguin thing since an update could come soon.
Also it's important to know if the links were paid for or the results of a previous "SEO" company. In that case I would definitely want to keep a record of the removal emails, just in case.
Best
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
-
I just got hammered by a Google penalty - My guess is it was was keyword stuffing anchor text...help!
Hi, I just woke up to find my website had disappeared from search results in Google relevant to my business keywords. Looking back over the past few weeks I realise I went 'keyword heavy' in a few too many back links. I am careful to avoid websites with a high spam score and have varies anchor text well in the past. However, now the website has 86% less search visibility and I am being penalised for all searches apart from my brand name. I have tried to change as many back links with the keyword in question as I can but some links I can't change. My questions: Will this penalty be for good? What else can I do to rectify the situation?
Link Building | | sebgates0 -
Results After a Disavow File Submission
Hi, I have a client who had a range of spammy links going to their website. The links were from exact match anchor text, from duplicate content and poor quality, irrelevant domains. They also had built a number of sites and linked to my client's site from each of the footers. All the domains they owned have been redirected to the site we're working on. We also disavowed all the spammy links going to the site. This was over a month ago and rankings haven't changed and in fact, have gone down slightly. Is there any other course of action anybody could suggest or should i wait longer in the hope the disavow is still yet to be accounted for? Any help I'd really, really appreciate! Thanks
Link Building | | SolveWebMedia0 -
Should you do a disavow even if you don't have a manual penalty?
If you are working on a website which has a history spammy links, but no manual penalty by Google... is it still worthwhile to still go through the link removal and disavow process? Thoughts appreciated.
Link Building | | Gavo0 -
To Disavow, or not?
Hi - I'm working on a site that has somewhere between 1200 and 1500 backlinks. Somewhere around 800 or 1000 of the links have one of four or five exact keyword phrases that this company paid a former seo to create links for. They ranked well for those phrases until last fall and then almost overnight they fell completely out of the first 50 SERP results. They did NOT receive a manual penalty. This leads me to two questions: 1. This sounds like they were hit by Penguin, rather than Panda. Do I have that right? 2. Is there any value in disavowing the 800 or so spammy links? Is there any danger in doing so? Thanks!
Link Building | | tcolling0 -
Disavow Links tool just launched by Google
http://searchengineland.com/google-launches-disavow-links-tool-136826 Just thought I would share this.
Link Building | | activitysuper0 -
Old Non Relevant Links
I'm currently working on a project where most of the links are from irrelevant sources referring to the site of the past domain owner. My question is should I remove as many of these as possible or let them be for now. My gut tells me for every new link I build that I should attempt to remove some of the old ones but I'm not exactly sure on how to proceed with this situation. Thanks in advance for any input.
Link Building | | brandonschultz0 -
There are penalties by Google for the purchase of links? If yes which are the penalties ?
There are penalties by Google for the purchase of links? If yes which are the penalties ? When we buy links how to see if the site is considered as salesman of link by Google? Thanks you
Link Building | | elitepronostic0 -
How Long for Google Directory and Search.com to update with Current Dmoz.org Data?
So I recently had a site added to dmoz.org and I'm wondering if anyone knows when Google Directory & Search.com update their site with new Dmoz.org data? They both use dmoz.org for their directory listings. Regards,
Link Building | | qlkasdjfw0