How vital is it to get rid of spam links?
-
We have about 40, between 1-4 flags. Do you see this as a problem? We looked at the disavow feature, but it seems you need to be cautious about using it. Please advise. Thanks!
-
Ok, that's good to know. I think for now, I"ll leave them alone, unless there's one that seems really irrelevant. Thanks to both of you for your help.
-
Hi,
As Gastón said, you can disavow one by one.
It is not considered an spam link if under 5, a reasonable amount of them and highly related to the industry/niche.
I forgot to mention a basic, that almost all active websites have as normal an spam score 1/17 - 2/17 - 3/17 up to 4/17. Even Moz has 1/17. It might be due to the site has too many inbound links and little outbound links - algorithms might see that as unnatural - it is highly probable, we do not know for sure, that the amount of inbound/outbound links should be according to other websites in the same industry and location. Although, Moz has a lot of inbound links due to is the best SEO source of knowledge and SEO tools.
If as you said, your inbound links are from clients, do not disavow them unless the spam score goes over 6 or 7.
Ma Verónica B.
-
Yes you can disavow one by one
-
Thank you both for your responses. Our spam links are mainly ones back from our client's sites (which are churches/non-profits, so they seem relevant) or from blog posts I have commented on (also relevant to churches.) So, I"m not sure why they are considered spammy.
Question: Can you disavow individual links (and not the whole group of them?)
Thanks again.
-
Hi,
in addition to what María said, remember to use your own and unique knowledge about your niche. Use backlink explorers such as Moz OpenSite Explorer, Ahrefs, MagesticSEO or anyone you like best. Analyze every link and if you think that it should not be part of your link profile.. Disavow them.That's my 2cent.
Best luck!
GR. -
You are most welcome! Ruled out the spam score, although it is important to keep an eye on them due to spam score changes over time.
A second consideration: are those inbound links damaging your website?, are they relevant to your site business/interests? For example, your website is a Corporate Bank having a lot of inbound links from gambling sites which have spam score 1, that is not a good signal, not due to the spam score, but as a bad signal for trust.
Or your website serves a community, with pizza delivery service in Canada, if having a bunch of inbound links from shoe stores in Australia, those are not relevant nor a good signal either. At the time somebody looks for a pizza, Google algorithms might decide to show other pizza delivery, instead the one with that bizarre signals related to interests and locations.
If neither of those issues are in place, as a general rule no action is necessary.
Mª Verónica B.
-
Thanks for your response. I checked our website spam score which is 0. So, do I really need to worry about the spam links? As I mentioned, they are between 1-4 flags, most under 4. Thanks again:-)
-
Hi,
Good question. It is highly important!
Although, there are various considerations to determine what to keep and what to disavow.
Inbound links are like letters of recommendations in the real world.Therefore, it is perfectly natural and very important, to have recommendations from other operators in your industry/niche, universities, linkedIn accounts, as some examples.
Other natural good websites might be, serious aggregators/directories, serious websites for announce your events, high quality press, as some examples.
A second and equally important factor, is the spam score of the website. You can check with the Moz Site Explorer or the MozBar. Also highly important factors are the page authority "PA" and the domain authority "DA".
If you consider that is not relevant for your website and having high spam score, I recommend to disavow, both in Google and Bing.
Of course, it is a task that should be done carefully, studying each link, one by one and following the Webmasters recommendations from each search engine due to they are not equal.
Here is a complete guide by Marie Haynes.
Ma Verónica B.
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
-
Linking between properties
I own 3 domains. One is my blog, one is my photography business site, and one is my graphic/web design site. They are all hosted on the same VPS account. I link between each site. Also, since the links are either in the nav, footer or sidebar, all pages from one page link to the homepage of each other. Is this an issue for SEO? Should I not be doing this? Would it be beneficial to use a no follow link instead if I'm to keep them?
Link Building | | studio35design0 -
Internal linking anchor text with automated ASP.NET link building
Hi Everyone I really need some help here, the problem I have must be one that many have. I have a simple e-commerce style website so 1 product page can in fact get 40-50 internal links to it. These links come from a mixture of: 1. The parent category pages that the product sits on (Rugged PDA) and in turn the 10 filter pages of this category page (Rugged PDA, ordered by battery size). 2. Alternative product list on other product pages, So many products link to each other as alternatives. From Google analytics we can see that visitors like to browse product to product seeing 5 alternatives on each page with titles like "Smaller", "more rugged" etc. 3. Manufactuer pages, so we have a link to each product from each manufacturer home page where we talk lots about each manufacture we resell. We also have links from images used in the website. So its a nice usable website but we're finding that Google is still telling us in Webmaster tools that it thinks some links are dubious and we're trying to find out why. We only now have 190 external links to the website, most are internal and from the website or our blog on a subdomain. The problem we think is that we generate the category and products pages all dynamically so the anchor text is looking the same. Will this potentially create issues for us? Dave
Link Building | | Raptor-crew0 -
Will removing a 301 re-direct from an old spammed URL drop the links from our profile?
Essentially there is an old page that has been the target of an old school link building agency. There is a 301 re-direct from the old page to the newer version. if I drop the 301 re-direct and update our sitemaps. Will those links be removed from our profile? The old URL passes nothing in actual value & a link building campaign has been running on the new page for over a year.
Link Building | | BenjyH0 -
How to get BackLinks?
What is the best site to get backlinks ? Not for free, i mean a paid premium services . I think i need backlinks for the authority of my sites. My sites are indexed, but when i search for different keywords on google, i find them on page 5-7 . I need to see them on page 1-2 . But my site's authority is : 1 .
Link Building | | vende123450 -
For a new site, does it matter which sites I get back links from first? I.e., are the first back links more important than later ones?
I've heard that when a site is new, the sources from which it gets its first back links are very important -- that the early links are more important for ranking than later links. Is this true. If so, what would be some good places to get these very first links? Thanks.
Link Building | | sigma3x0 -
Links below the snippet
Hello, Does anybody know how can i obtain links under the snippet (see the example in the image attached) ? Thank you in advance! Cosmin zXhsG
Link Building | | cosmin_bicoiu0 -
Making sure links get indexed by google?
Hi I currently submitted to 30 seo directories & I just want to make sure my links get indexed by google so the link value passes onto my site. Any suggestions about getting my links indexed? I was thinking of either pinging or social book marketing the links! What's your view, thanks.
Link Building | | Socialdude0 -
Press release site for posting article and get links, what do you think?
If find sites like: http://eon.businesswire.com/portal/site/eon/ and http://www.free-press-release.com/ where you have to pay to post article, they have very good domain autority, what is your advice on those site? eon.businesswire.com/ is asking 225$ for a lifetime registration but they have a DA of 91, is this a good investement for building incoming links and increasing DA? Thank you, Jean
Link Building | | BigBlaze2050