Do I need to actively disavow links to my site?
-
I check the "Links to my site" section in Google WMT on a regular basis. In the past couple of months I've been seeing more and more weird links, from pretty spammy domains and even a few from weird Iranian domains.
It's Needless to say but I have never bought a link or been involved in any link schemes or the like. Like probably everyone in the Internet, I'm in a competitive vertical, and my competitors probably aren't so scrupulous.
The question is, do I actively need to disavow suspicious links? Should I contact the domains and ask to remove them? I have usually just ignored these links, and not wasted time in doing anything with them (since weird automated links are always around) but the proliferation in the last couple months has started to worry me.
-
In short - It's probably worth proactively disavowing those links since it's a quick and easy task, but the possibility of them actually causing you any harm is ultimately very small.
I wouldn't worry about asking the webmasters to remove the links unless you're under manual penality, as this won't be a particularly good use of time.
-
Yes I agree that it is a contended issue. I would think most industries this would be of little concern but as Matt points out in his video there are some industries that maybe more prone to this.
As you may know getting random links from sub-par sites is fairly common. I would of course be pro-active about checking my backlinks but not start worrying until I saw a large spike. If you do see this, you will likely have time to get your disavow done before anything happens.
-
It seems to me that it won't be really clear if I am the target of a Negative SEO campaign, and I remember the Matt Cutts video- He basically says not to worry about negative SEO, and to use Disavow only if you get a manual action penalty.
This is why I generally ignored these links, and I believe that my link profile is pretty solid. However as you can see in the answers to this question, its still a contended issue.
-
HI Don,
This is a regular concern I have seen here on Moz. Really we want to understand the purpose of Disavow, which is to remove penalties that were brought on by Link Spamming that many companies did to boost their rankings. Sometimes their selves, sometimes by hiring bad SEO companies. Either way the idea is a last resort for those who had fallen in a pit.
Early on people worried that Google's algorithm change could in fact bring a new type of SEO (Negative SEO) that is where a company is paid to use the same old spam tactics but instead of targeting the hiring company they target their competitors in hopes to inflict a penalty on them. Google was well aware of this possibility and tried their best to prevent that from happening. You should see Matt Cutts video about this topic on youtube here.
There are some crappy sites out there that regularly create links to good sites for whatever reason. This is actually normal, and should not be much of a concern unless it becomes apparent that you are being targeted by a Negative SEO campaign. If so, then yes use the disavow tool. If you already have a very strong back link profile the impact of a few random bad links should have no impact.
I hope this helps,
Don
-
Yes you do. If there are spammy links built to your site, you are likely to get a Penguin penalty at some point and that is a pain to recover from, so you want to be pro-active and minimise the risk of it happening by disavowing these links and also by removing them altogether if possible.
This is a video where Matt Cutts answers your question - http://youtu.be/eFJZXpnsRsc
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
-
Competitor sites vs mine - No links, lower DA, and still beating me.
Thank you for taking the time to read my question. I have a website - berneseoftherockies.com - it is a bernese mountain dog website My competitors are Rockymountainpuppies(dot)com and Coloradobernesemountaindog(dot)com When using the Moz tools, I see they have no incoming links, except for one site has 5 links from its own pages. But when I type in Bernese Mountain Dogs Colorado - I am no where to be found, except for a you tube video. So what am I doing so wrong? They are basically doing nothing, and killing me in the serps. I have gotten social media stuff like Google +, facebook, twitter, pinterest, and youtube. They are still behind the times. So any thoughtful advice is appreciated. I mainly cater to the state of Colorado where I live. So just curious if there is something at the top of your head that you may think of that's causing my issues? Like could it be my hosting? Like can you have a black listed host? I am with Hostdime I did have a few, like 10 foreign backlinks, which I did remove or disavow I think its called. I have used the title tag tools here to get proper size title tags, and decent keyword density. I built the site for people first, then Google etc. So not sure if you are allowed to tell me, but maybe you can advise me on a decent seo company, or maybe give me a couple tips that may help me out. Please no - read the moz book, I am reading it and trying to do what I am reading. But maybe something simple is keeping me from showing up, while these other sites are. Thank you so much for any advice.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Berner0 -
Link Juice + multiple links pointing to the same page
Scenario
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mark_Ch
The website has a menu consisting of 4 links Home | Shoes | About Us | Contact Us Additionally within the body content we write about various shoe types. We create a link with the anchor text "Shoes" pointing to www.mydomain.co.uk/shoes In this simple example, we have 2 instances of the same link pointing to the same url location.
We have 4 unique links.
In total we have 5 on page links. Question
How many links would Google count as part of the link juice model?
How would the link juice be weighted in terms of percentages?
If changing the anchor text in the body content to say "fashion shoes" have a different impact? Any other advise or best practice would be appreciated. Thanks Mark0 -
Backlinking 3 sites from same domain and backlinking main site too
Hello, we have 4 sites, in which 1 is a main site and rest 3 are niche sites All these 3 sites have dofollow links to main site from home page We got a high quality backlink - through which all 3 niche sites have got it from that domain Is it worth to add backlink from that domain to main site too, despite the fact the 3 sites already have recvd it and they all link to main site many thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Modi0 -
On site links triggering anchor text algorithmic penatly?
I'm trying to figure out why a drop in ranking occurred and think it may be related to an increase in on site links. I've attached images of the SEO moz report showing a jump in links from a few hundred to around 15,000 within the space of a week. I think this may be due to some on site work I did when I created categories (I use wordpress) for a large number of cities and towns in the UK. I soon realised I'd run into duplicate content issues and removed all these categories within a few days. As I added categories I also ran into 'too many on page links' warnings as each category I added created a new link and I ended up with hundreds on each page. If you look at the analytics reports I suffered a huge drop in rankings on the 10th March and think this could be due to an on site anchor text problem that was caused by adding the categories and in turn creating many on site links. SEO moz found these links on the 11th and 25th Feb but my guess is that Google found them around at the same time but if these links are the problem then why didn't my rankings drop until the 10th March? Surely they would have dropped sooner? Would this cause a drop in rankings? I've recieved an email from google saying that no manual penalty was applied to the site after I submitted a reconsideration request. Therefore it must be some kind of algorithmic penalty. Could this be the problem and if not what else should I look at. My baclink profile appears to be okay and I've been careful to vary my anchor text with inbound link building. I'm at a loss as to what to do next. Any help will be much appreciated! UXsMLYS.png Ov9AOs8.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamCUK0 -
New links not showing in site explorer ?
I have built links to my site this past month that I know are live and in place and some do follow and some no follow ... Are the no follow links just not going to show up in my site explorer data ? And the others - why would they not be showing up yet ? SeoMoz updated thier link data aug 1st , my site has been crawled since then , but this new work I have done for link building have not shown up - None of them ? Its like I did not do any work ? how long could it take for them to show up and affect my site trust ect ? Also is there anything I vould be doing to speed the process up of having the new links found ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jlane90 -
Internal Site Structure Question (URL Formation and Internal Link Design)
Hi, I have an e-commerce website that has an articles section: There is an articles.aspx file that can be reached from the top menu and it holds links to all of the articles as follows: xxx.com/articles/article1.aspx
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet
xxx.com/articles/article2.aspx I want to add several new articles under a new sections, for example a complete set of articles under the title of "buying guide" and the question is what would be the best way? I was thinking of adding a "computers-buying-guides.aspx" accessible from the top menu / footer and from it linking to: xxx.com/computer-buying-ghudes/what-to-check-prior-to-buying-a-laptop.aspx
xxx.com/computer-buying-ghudes/weight-vs-performance.aspx
etc. Any thoughts / recommendations? Thanks0 -
Purchased new site with good SERP ranks, do I operate and build links or redirect the TLD?
I recently purchased a blog within my product category - it has many first page rankings for difficult keywords within my niche. I am wondering if it makes more sense for for me to continue to operate this blog and build links to my site and blog (blog is in wordpress) or to export the XML feed and upload the content to my blog (new site also in wordpress), at which point I would do a 301 at the Top-Level domain. Any thoughts, ideas, or personal experiences would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NickEubanks0 -
On-Site Optimization Tips for Job site?
I am working on a job site that only ranks well for the homepage with very low ranking internal pages. My job pages do not rank what so ever and are database driven and often times turn to 404 pages after the job has been filled. The job pages have to no content either. Anybody have any technical on-site recommendations for a job site I am working on especially regarding my internal pages? (Cross Country Allied.com)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Melia0