Will Removing or Disavowing Toxic Links Improve MOZ Domain Authority?
-
The vast majority of the 140 domains that link to our website are very low quality directories or and other toxic links. Only about 20-30 domains are not toxic (according to Link Research Tools confirmed by out manual inspection of these links).
Would removing some of these links improve of MOZ Domain Rank? What if we cannot remove them, can NOZ detect a disavow file?
In general would improving the ratio between good quality and poor quality links improve domain authority?
Thanks,
Alan -
Hi Lauren:
Do on page factors influence Domain Authority as much as building back links? This is a really key question!
I need to decide whether to invest resources in building back links or improving on site SEO. How about internal links? How much do they contribute to domain authority? At the moment my site lacks internal links, would adding them in a relevant manner improve domain authority?
While I greatly appreciate your last response it is somewhat ambiguous.
Thanks, Alan
-
Hi Again Lauren:
According to Rand Fishkin's post:
https://moz.com/community/q/da-pa-fluctuations-how-to-interpret-apply-understand-these-ml-based-scoresDomain Authority is predominantly determined by backlinks from other websites rather than on site SEO factors (content quality, internal linking). This contradicts your response somewhat which make things really confusing. Now I don't know whether to allocate resources towards building backlinks from other domains or whether to work on improving internal links and contents.
If you could please clear this up it would be much appreciated.
Thanks,
Alan
-
Hi Lauren:
Thanks for your response. I was under the impression that domain authority was solely determined by external backlinks. So, are you saying that domain authority can be increased by improving the internal linking structure between pages and improving the quality of pages?
Our site has many, many "orphan" pages. From what you are saying, improving the internal linking structure would improve our Domain Authority, is that correct?
Also MOZ shows certain title tags, URLs and descriptions as too long, some are duplicate and some missing. Would correcting these help improve domain authority?
Is it safe to say that improved Domain Authority would increase the likely hood of improved ranking?
Thanks,
Alan -
It's worth considering whether you should disavow links if you haven't seen a manual penalty.
We generally only recommend disavowing links in the following situations:- For sites that have made links for SEO purposes on a large scale
- For sites that previously had a manual action for unnatural links
- For sites under obvious negative SEO attacks
If you see some weird links you probably do not need to be disavowing links.
When Google takes action either manually or algorithmically against a site for unnatural linking, it's because the site has been actively trying to manipulate Google rankings on a large scale. If you made a couple of directory links in the past, it's currently unlikely you'll get a penalty.Disavowing a link doesn't take it away so they will still appear as backlinks to your site within the Moz tools. The fact that Google disregards them in relation to your site does not take them off the sites they are on, so best practice is to approach the webmaster first and request the link be removed. If you get no response then disavow.
We always recommend manual investigation of a site to ensure it is a link that is causing harm to your site. When a link is disavowed it can be very difficult to regain that link equity.
To understand how to improve DA (Domain Authority) it can help to get some insight into how we gather our data, which I'll include below. Sorry in advance for the long message!
To calculate DA, we index the web by following links using a crawler. Our crawler is built on a machine-learning based model that is optimized to select pages like those that appear in our collection of Google SERPs. We feed the machine learning model with features of the URL like the backlink counts for the URL and the PLD (pay-level domains), features about the URL like its length and how many subdirectories it has, and features on the quality of the domains linking to the URL and PLD. So, it's not based on any one particular metric, but we're training the crawler to start with high-value links.
In terms of improving your Domain Authority, with the information above in mind, it's best to look at both you on-page SEO to make sure you've covered the basics.
Then you also want to look at your off-site SEO and building more links more links to your site.
There are lots of different areas of Link Building to explore, from patching up broken links, improving your internal link profile, and good ol' fashioned content creation.
Here is a great video by our founder Rand which goes over some easy link building tactics to get you started.You can read more about disavowing links this here: https://moz.com/blog/do-we-still-need-to-disavow-penguin
Sorry for the long response, I hope this helps!
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 added a privacy policy link to my footer and now Moz is showing thousands of 4xx errors
My website didn't have a privacy policy so I added one and put the link in the footer menu. When I did this, Moz came back telling me that there are a lot of new errors on the site. Is this a bad thing? Do I need to address it? HY59Iks sYyAHCB
Moz Bar | | elisa175910 -
Is Moz Bot Broken?
Moz Bot says I have millions of issues with duplicate content. One item says that it has over 50 duplicates! I downloaded the CSV it gave me to look into it. All of my products have many different ways to get them, so I've set up rel=canonicals for the master one. So, I'd assume Mozbot would ignore those. But the interesting thing I've found is that of these 50 duplicates, some of them (on the same CSV I downloaded) are completely different products, with completely different URL's. and completely different titles and completely different meta descriptions and completely different product descriptions. So, 3 questions: Is Moz bot broken? Does it not recognize canonicals? Why is it seeing 3 very different products as exactly the same product? I'm so confused and since I work for a national company, the only way I can give actual examples is through a private message session. I guess I'm wondering if anyone else has come across this issue? Because I'm completely baffled.
Moz Bar | | DIAMA0 -
The Moz Spam Score tells me my site has too few backlinks for such a large site. How many links per page would I need to not trigger this filter and stop appearing spammy?
Hello! One of my sites is triggering the 'too few backlinks for large site' filter. I am wondering how many backlinks I need so as not to trigger this. Many thanks for your help. Toby
Moz Bar | | T0BY0 -
Suggestion: Moz Domain Authority should take disavow into account
Since Moz is trying to predict how Google ranks your site, and Google claims to take the disavow file into account, I'd like to suggest that Moz allow webmasters to upload their disavow file. I imagine this data would be useful to Moz in determining Domain Authority (they may even think of other ways to use it and might even help come to a conclusion on the great debate) and it gives a chance for sites to improve their Moz DA when they are bombarded by spammy links. I'd love to hear the community's thoughts on this idea, as well as the what Wizards of Moz have to say.
Moz Bar | | YairSpolter1 -
How do you feel when Moz marks one of your questions as "answered?"
Hi everyone, This is not meant to be snarky at all, so I just want to preface my question with that. So, since the new re-branded Moz rolled out last year, I'm sure many of you have noticed that if you ask a question and it is answered by a Moz associate, your question is marked as "answered." I'm sorry, but I don't like this. Here's why, I'm the one who asked the question. I should be the one who determines if the answer was adequate for me, or if it didn't sufficiently answer my question. This is particularly true when my question doesn't have to do with a customer service issue or a Moz tool question. If I ask a question about SEO, Content, CRO, marketing or any other subject, I feel like it should be me and only me who determines whether or not I feel like my question is answered. In addition to this, Moz is actually depriving themselves of useful UGC by shutting down questions in this way. How? Because when the rest of us who frequent the Q & A see a question that's already been marked as "answered" we tend not to open it, read it and respond, because we think that person has already gotten what they needed....when in fact, it could be that a Moz associate has jumped in and marked their question as answered when it really wasn't. Consequently, we all miss out. I propose/move that Moz associates can only mark questions as "answered" when they pertain directly to Q & A about Moz tools, service and support. All other questions must be marked as "answered" only by the asker or closed as "answered" after they have been dormant for 6 months or more. Can I get a second (motion) ?
Moz Bar | | danatanseo4 -
SEO MOZ ERROR
Hello moz comunity, I tried to use the moz keyword difficulty service in the last 2 days and I get this error over and over again... see photo: http://www.evernote.com/shard/s238/sh/5775a179-1be7-4e76-8563-cf087c37cf2b/576bda1a72f446a8806a0f1914193829 Oops Gosh! It looks like something has gone a bit wrong. Don't worry though, we know and are fixing it. How Can I solve this? I need to check a lot of keywords for my websites. Any alternatives? Thank you !!!
Moz Bar | | Sebastyan220 -
Moz On-page is not working
My on-page is not working....I do have 3 keywords in the 1º position of Google.pt and the Moz is not reporting nothing....bug?
Moz Bar | | Popbox0 -
New moz analytics...will it have reporting?
Loving the new Moz Analytics...very shiny. Just wondering if it will have reporting tied to it at some point? Thanks..Jeannie x.
Moz Bar | | Jeannie.0