A large number of high spam links are negatively affecting my DA, how do I remove them?
-
I have identified a large number of very high spam score links to "free wallpaper" coming into my site.
I am running a wordpress blog and would like some advice on the best course of action. There are thousands of spam domains linking to various images on my site with the anchor text "get free high quality hd wallpaper"The webmasters for these domains are not contactable so I am planning to submit a disavow file to google. I am aware these links have negatively affected my DA so would like to do more to remove them.
My questions are:
will deleting the images they link to help?
As this is on a wordpress site deleting the images will result in a soft 404, should I force a hard 404 to properly break the link?
Will this positively improve my DA? -
+1 for Serge's answer, their answer is textbook and really spot on! If you follow this advice it's impossible to go too far wrong
-
Hi there,
In terms of your questions:
- Deleting images or pages spammy links point to won't help since the links will still point to your domain regardless of if the place they are pointing to results in a 200 status. Also, I wouldn't recommend deleting any images or pages if they are important to the site!
- If you did remove assets or pages, it would have no impact on your domain authority.
If I were in your shoes, I would disavow the extremely spammy links and then carry on with other projects (building the brand/audience). If you're still concerned with spammy links coming in, I'd recommend setting up a framework to update your disavow file every ~6 months or so. Google has gotten good about ignoring a lot of clearly spammy links, but I still like to disavow the really bad ones just in case.
Also, don't forget that domain authority is just a metric that tries to represent the overall strength of a domain based on links. Google doesn't actually use DA (although it's likely they use something similar) so I wouldn't stress too hard about increasing DA (although that might be the lever you need to pull).
In short, I would:
- Disavow the really bad links.
- Do that once every 6-12 months if you're concerned.
- Move forward with other forward-thinking tasks like building out content hubs, building the brand up, working on social presence, etc.
Hope that 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
-
After you remove a 301 redirect that Google has processed, will the new URL retain any of the link equity from the old URL?
Lets say you 301 redirect URL A to URL B, and URL A has some backlinks from other sites. Say you left the 301 redirect in place for a year, and Google had already replaced the old URL with the new URL in the SERPs, would the new URL (B) retain some of the link equity from URL A after the 301 redirect was removed, or does the redirect have to remain in place forever?
Technical SEO | | johnwalkersmith0 -
Content spamming risk
If some websites, which provide information about apps in a particular niche, are publishing the same content which we have given in our app's description when they refer our app for that particular niche then would it lead to spamming? Our website is getting a backlink from one such website so are we at any sort of risk? What should we do about it without having to lose that backlink?
Technical SEO | | Reema240 -
How to handle Moz reported Spam external links
I have noticed Spam external links linking to my website. I do not know who has handled these spam external links to my website. It looks like a Spam SEO my competitors did on my website. I believe my site was penalized by google with those spam link and lost it's visibility in search . How do I get rid off SPAM external links now?
Technical SEO | | LIVEASISSTINFO0 -
I am cleaning up a clients link profile and am coming across a lot of directories (no surprise) My question is if an obvious fre for all generic directory doesn't look to have been hit by any updates is it a wise move recommending tit for removal?
I am cleaning up a clients link profile and am coming across a lot of directories (no surprise) My question is, if an obvious free for all generic directory doesn't look to have been hit by any updates is it a wise move recommending it for removal on the basis that it is a free for all directory and could be hit in teh future?
Technical SEO | | fazza470 -
Should I delete a page or remove links on a penalized page?
Hello All, If I have a internal page that has low quality links point to it or a penality. Can I just remove the page, and start over versus trying to remove the links? Over time wouldn't this page disapear along with the penalty on that page? Kinda like pruning a tree? Cutting off the junk limbs so other could grow stronger, or to start new fresh ones. Example: www.domain.com Penalized Internal Page: (Say this page is penalized due to keyword stuffing, and has low quality links pointing to it like blog comments, or profiles) www.domain.com/penalized-internal-page.com Would it be effective to just delete this page (www.domain.com/penalized-internal-page.com) and start over with a new page. New Internal Page: www.domain.com/new-internal-page.com I would of course lose any good links point to that page, but it might be easier then trying to remove old back links. Thoughts? Thanks! Pete
Technical SEO | | Juratovic0 -
How to defend against link cloaking
Hi, I own a website where recently a lot of backlinks have been going to my old domain that 301's to my new domain. During the past 2 months I have noticed a massive amount of links pointing to my old domain. When I go to look at the links and go to the page all I see is a search bar which to me this seems like link cloaking. I am not sure what I should do. Obviously I am not doing the link building and someone is targeting anchor specific keywords from multiple domains that all look the same. My question is should I report it myself in google webmaster tools before I get hit with a filter or penalty, or would this force them to penalize me. And if I do get caught up in a penalty I would not know how to fix this since I doubt the webmaster is linking to me out of the kindness of his heart. Any advice? Thanks
Technical SEO | | dreamfire0 -
Affiliate links
I have a wordpress blog and was wondering the best seo practice for doing affiliate link redirects? Peter
Technical SEO | | PeterM220