Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Should I keep, or disavow PA 1 DA 0 backlink?
-
Hi,
I am doing link cleaning, and still a bit new to this, and would appreciate the community's help

So, I have a site which has quite a lot of low DA (or no DA) follow backlinks. BUT,
- the links are from my niche
- the sites are not spammy
- the anchors are okay
- and they are from good Geo location for me
The only negative thing is that these sites are a bit "dead" meaning that there is no new content, and thus there is no traffic or clicks coming from them.
Should I keep those links or disavow them?
To me these links are natural, but do they help me at all....
FYI I have plenty of good DA links. But what do you guys think, if I disavow all these low DA backlinks, does Google think that I am trying to manipulate my backlink structure to look better than it naturally is?
Cheers guys and girls!

-
Thanks Gaston! Good to keep this in mind.
-
I don't think that Moz doesn't care about when the content was published.
Keep in mind that Moz and Ahref mostly weight and analyze their backlink profile, thus it's possible that they haven't discovered any backlinks and their metrics can be low.Hope it helps.
Best luck.
GR -
Thanks Gaston for your response!
It sure helps in decision making.I guess I'll just filter and disavow really spammy backlinks with viagra and other medicine anchor texts.
Yeah, I have also noticed big differences with different tools. Quite often for example Ahrefs gives 0 DR and 0 UR, and Moz gives 25 DA and 12 PA on the same domain / url. This has been the case quite often with some old blogs with no updates in couple years. Maybe Moz doesn't care when was the latest content added to the site. Or maybe Ahrefs gives much less value to sites which don't get new content, and puts the score down much more.
-
Hi Risto,
Google said it many times that they are pretty good at detecting bad links thus they encourage us to disavow links only when a manual penalty has hit your site or when you dont trust Google's algorithms and/or do know that those links are really hurting you.
That said, my personal opinion, don't bother at all.
Also, please keep in mind that private metrics as PA, DA, TF, CF or whatever do not reflect what google sees. Those companies with their algorithms try to simulate what Google understands so don't fully rely on them.Hope this helps.
Best luck.
GR
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
-
Redirect old image that has backlinks
Hi Moz Community! I'm doing an audit of a website and did a backlink analysis. In the backlink analysis, there is an image that has 66 backlinks but the image doesn't exist on the website anymore (it was on a website that was created in 2011 - 2 web launches ago). I don't believe a 301 redirect will work for an image that doesn't exist anymore. How would I redirect the image URL (it's WordPress so we have a specific URL that other websites are linking to but get 404 errors) without going to each individual website and requesting they change the URL link? Any advice or recommendations would be great. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BradChandler1 -
Move domain to new domain, for how much time should I keep forwarding?
I'm not sure but my website looks like is not getting it's juice as supposed to be. As we already know, google preferred https sites and this is what happened to mine, it was been crawling as https but when the time came to move my domain to new domain, I used 301 or domain forwarding service, unfortunately they didn't have a way to forward from https to new https, they only had regular http to https, when users clicked to my old domain from google search my site was returned to "site does not exist", I used hreflang at least that google would detect my new domain been forwarding and yes it worked but now I'm wondering, for how much time should I keep the forwarding the old domain to the new one, my site looks like is not going up, I have changed all the external links, any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Fulanito1 -
Why is my domain authority still 1?
I changed the domain of my website from www.vanillacrush.co.uk to www.carissamay.co.uk at the end of December and yet my DA for carissamay is still 1. As advised, I set up a 301 redirect from VC to CM which seems to be working fine. However when I check on redirect detective it tells me I also have a 302 set up. Could this be confusing things? http://www.vanillacrush.co.uk
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Carissamay
http://www.vanillacrush.co.uk/
http://www.carissamay.co.uk
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Many thanks
0 -
Backlinks from old domain
Hi, We have gone through a change of company brand name including a new domain name.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Agguk
We followed google recommendations at: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/83106?hl=en and it seems to have worked really well, the new domain has replaced the old in the google search results. My question: Still most of our backlinks, both anchor text and links use the old brand name and domain and it´s a slow process trying to update all references. Although they get redirected fine to the new domain (also following google recommendations), I wonder if the current scenario is doing any harm, SEO wise (other than the missed visual exposure of the new brand name) ? ...since the old brand name is not present at the new site I´m thinking of including "New brand name - previously old brand name" somewhere just to provide some sort of connection to all old backlinks, would that be unnecessary? I should mention that the old brand name actually includes our most important keyword but the new brand name does not. Thanks!0 -
Multiple Landing Pages and Backlinks
I have a client that does website contract work for about 50 governmental county websites. The client has the ability to add a link back in the footer of each of these websites. I am wanting my client to get backlink juice for a different key phrase from each of the 50 agencies (basically just my keyphrase with the different county name in it). I also want a different landing page to rank for each term. The 50 different landing pages would be a bit like location pages for local search. Each one targets a different county. However, I do not have a lot of unique content for each page. Basically each page would follow the same format (but reference a different county name, and 10 different links from each county website). Is this a good SEO back link strategy? Do I need more unique content for each landing page in order to prevent duplicate content flags?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | shauna70840 -
Disavow Subdomain?
Hi all, I've been checking and it seems like there are only 2 options when disavowing links with Google's tool. Disavow the link: http://spam.example.com/stuff/content.htm Disavow the domain: domain: example.com What can I do if I want do disavow a subdomain? i.e. spam.site.com I'm also assuming that if I were to disavow the domain it would include all subdomains? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Carlos-R0 -
Looking to increase the quality of our backlinks with a press release: Business wire or Prweb?
Hello all! We are looking to increase the quality of backlinks to our new website www.unitedfitnessmarketing.com and wondering which service would be more beneficial. Care to share any preferences or advice? We have been live for about 3 1/2 months now. We are in a tough niche to find related backlinking websites. We are in the health club marketing consulting field. I just paid for a business.com listing but was thinking a quality press release would give me more juice. My competitors have used free press release services so I'm thinking I could easily one-up them and gain some ground in the rankings. Leaning more towards business wire b/c it's a berkshire hathaway company but would like more input. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | unitedfitness0