Disavow links from legit sites but have spammy link profiles?
-
I'm currently doing a backlink audit for our site with a LOT of backlinks.
Some of the linking sites are legitimate business websites in our industry who have linked to us for a totally legitimate reason (we have good content!). However, these businesses themselves have a spammy backlink profile—that is, the only sites linking to that site are obvious link farm sites.
Here is an illustration:
spammyseolinks.com; payforseo.xyz; blackhat.ru ==all link to==> legitbusiness.com ==links to==> mysite.com
Should I disavow this backlink? I guess it's not really giving me much SEO worth since it surely been branded a spammy junk domain, but then again, it's a real website that we've earned a link from because we're doing stuff the right way. Is it hurting or helping me?
-
In my opinion those links have less "strenght" than from websites with better link profile. The question is what are the anchors, content around, other footprints?
If they're good, not spammy, good anchors, content around, no footprints, etc etc then keep.
However links on websites with high pa or da won't make them good everytime. They can be spammy and you can be penalized.
-
So just to clarify - the linking websites are legitimate however these 'legitimate' sites have questionable link profiles?
If this is the case i would keep these links, why disavow a legitimate link from a legitimate website?
i would also argue that Domain authority and page authority are only indicators, if the link is relevant then these metrics shouldn't really matter
Just my opinion
-
I have to back Bernadette.
If you find, by your own ways, that those links are spammy, why would you want to keep them?. Disavow them! -
Godard, that's a good question. What I recommend is that you look at each link individually and determine if that link has been created naturally or in a spammy way. If it's a legitimate link, on a real business's website, then the link should be okay. But, if the link was created in order to try to manipulate Google's rankings then you should disavow it.
Many sites get links just because they're ranking well--and that's typical. It doesn't mean that you necessarily have to disavow them or try go get them removed.
If you are using Moz's Open Site Explorer to see the Domain Authority and Page Authority of the site linking to you, then that would be a way to judge the quality of the site linking to you. If the site linking to you is, in fact, very low quality because it doesn't have a lot of good links pointing to it, then the site's Domain Authority and Page Authority will be low.
When disavowing and working on getting links removed, take a look at Google's Webmaster Guidelines and keep them in mind--if the link wouldn't pass their guidelines, then you should disavow it.
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
-
Automatic links from other domains when we create a new landing page - Is this a spammy technique?
Hi everyone, Recently we've discovered 2-3 sites (which we own the domains names) and these sites seem to automatically create links to our new landing pages on our main site. Those sites also can't be accessed in your browser as it redirects straight to our main website. So, for example, we create a new landing page on our main site, and then Moz has been picking up links to this page from these other domains with text such as "Book now". I think historically someone in the company set up loads of sites with redirects and there must be something automatically happening. Is this likely to be a spammy technique? Ie we seem to be getting "follow" links from other domains every time we create a new page." Also as this could be quite a negative thing we've discovered I can't really give our out business links, but really appreciate your tips and advice. I'm trying to work out what to do if this is a spammy technique and also affecting our trust scores etc and what we should do about it. Thanks for your help and input. 🙂Mike
Link Building | | Ski-Online-Marketing-Team0 -
Linking to Your Site: Search Console Update
After links have been removed from site a to site b. How long will it take until site b will see it in the webmaster tools that the links to his site are no longer there?
Link Building | | FusionMediaLimited0 -
I found a link to my customer's site with an over-optimized
I found a link to my customer's site with an over-optimized anchor text using the OpenSite Explorer tool, but when I opened the link, my customer's link is nowhere to be found. Here is the link Opensiteexplorer gave me: http://www.derbymadness.com/my-profile/demolition-derby-groups/viewgroup/12-web And here is my customer's link: 1896omalleyhouse.com The link is not on the cached version of the page either. Can anyone tell me how this might happen? Thanks!
Link Building | | Acorn-IS0 -
Is it worth it to link to sites that link to you in guest posts?
Suppose you published a guest post on a quality site and you link to a previous guest post you have written for another site (which links to you). In theory you could send link juice to the page that links to you for a second order effect. Has anyone seen results from this tactic?
Link Building | | ProjectLabs0 -
Local service site link building
I have a local service site http://winecountrycarpet.com/ and I have been link building as much as possible for my landing pages (which aren't local to my city, but are within 20 miles). I would like to keep my link building as above board and white hat as possible (so i do a lot of forum sigs and links in do follow forum in my industry) I do not seem to be seeing any results though. My pages are on the first page for their targeted keywords, but I think this has more to do with onsite SEO and non competitive keywords. I am wondering if anyone can recommend any strategies that I might find more effective. I have thought about leaving blog comments on do follow blog's but it just seems so spammy its hard to imagine it working. I am open to any ideas.
Link Building | | ayetti0 -
Would notifying visitors that they can put text link ads on your site destroy you in terms of Google?
I am debating buying this product for Joomla on that note: http://www.jv-extensions.com/content/_/joomla-extensions/jv-contentlinks-r52 Would you advise for or against this purchase?
Link Building | | Uramark1 -
Numerous (20K+) inbound links from ONE site in short time period
I'm somewhat new to SEO, but from what I understand, slow link growth can provide better results than highly aggressive link building campaigns. A site of mine was recently featured on a 90+ DA (55 PA) blog directory, and was featured for the entire state, therefore I received almost 20,000 inbound links from the site (from every company/listing in the state). The links have been mostly recorded (17,000) in Google webmaster tools (Yahoo Site Explorer claims around 23,000). However the site dropped 2 pages in rankings for numerous SEO related keywords since webmaster tools listed the links. Many of them are PA 50+, though a majority of the linking pages are PA 1. A few other inbound links were created from other root domains, roughly 8-10 or so in the past month. The question is, would a large amount of links like this all of a sudden trigger some kind of "penalty" from search engines (Google, especially)? And, do the PA 1 pages take away from the quality of the 55 PA links?
Link Building | | Smith-Digital0 -
Why aren't links to my site showing up in open site explorer?
My site is http://www.thesquarefoot.com Google analytics shows many more (though more than a handful of links that we have gotten recently still don't show up there). Definite newbie here so please be kind... Thanks!
Link Building | | TheSquareFoot0