To disavow or not to disavow
-
Back story: During panda and penguin we noticed declining ranks on google. So we hit the Q&A and followed the given suggestions; removing links, optimizing a few tags, etc. We took the time and money to remove quite a few links (200+) using Remove'em. We then submitted our results to the Google web spam team (Google reconsideration request) to find out we have no manual penalty. This bring me to the thought our back links profile might still be hurting us. We had a pretty good results while removing our back links from other webmasters being very helpful and removing our links, most of which were created by old seo company's when "links were king".
This brings me to my real question, would it be worth the time disavowing links we think are bad using the disavow tool? Obviously only the ones where webmasters didnt not respond or refused to remove out link?
-
When Google released the disavow tool they made it pretty clear that it was really only meant to be used for sites that had received a manual penalty. You were to get as many links manually removed as possible and then use the disavow tool for the rest of your unnatural links.
In the statement about the disavow tool Google said that if you felt you had been affected and you thought the disavow tool might help then go ahead and use it. That's pretty vague though.
Before you do anything else you need to figure out why you have declining ranks. Otherwise removing links is likely doing more harm than good. Even though links from shady sources are not as good as good links, if you haven't been affected by Penguin or an unnatural links penalty then these links can actually help a website. I'm not saying to go out and get more, but I'm saying that you shouldn't go removing links unless you are certain that it will help. Disavowing more links could put you even further in the hole.
If you've got a Panda issue then it has nothing to do with your links. Panda is about on page quality and often has to do with duplicate and thin content issues.
Your first task is to be certain about whether or not you have a linking issue. While Penguin first hit on April 24, there were Panda refreshes on either side of that date.
There are several people in the SEO industry that are now saying that removing and disavowing links is not likely necessary for Penguin. I have a close contact who has done a lot of research on Penguin hit sites and he feels that Penguin doesn't penalize a site but simply disavows/nofollows all of your bad links. So if you used to rank for "green widgets" because you had hundreds of anchor texted links, once those links were nofollowed by Penguin then you would no longer rank. If he is right, then you can regain rankings by getting good natural links, but that's no easy task.
I am still on the fence about whether Penguin is a penalty or simply a disavowal of bad links. I have seen sites that really should be ranking for certain phrases but are not to be seen on the first 10 pages. To me this really seems like there is a penalty or some kind of flag put on the site, but I have no proof.
The point? The point is that even those of us who are COMPLETELY obsessed with understanding Penguin don't fully know how the algorithm works. If you do find that your issue is a Penguin one then waiting until more info gets published may be an option. But there are other options such as creating new pages to rank for the terms that the old ones failed to rank for. Or, for some sites, starting over may be an option.
But again...you really need to know what hit you before removing more links. Who knows, it may not even be an algorithm change. It could be that you have site issues, or that your competitors are doing better than you are.
-
Manually requesting removal of bad links is like using a chainsaw.
Using the disavow tool is like using a flamethrower.
Both can help you get rid of unwanted trees but only one can wipe out a forest (and everything in it) fairly easily.
I would be extremely careful on nuking your links. It could be that you're doing yourself more harm than good because the line between spam and legitimate is sometimes very thin. Unless you have links where it's pretty clear cut that it's spam, I wouldn't touch 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
-
Why Google not disavow some bad links
I have submitted bad links that I want to disavow on google with the Moz Pro hight spam score. Its almost 4 months completed yet I have a bad link that exists with high spam score any solution? https://fortniteskinsgenerator.net/
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | marktravis0 -
Is a recent hack or the disavow tool causing my alarming dropping in rankings!
My business site has been very successful organically for many years. Just recently we got hit with a spam hack and it was resolved within 3 days. However now my rankings are plummeting and I am so stressed out! So here is some timeline information any info would help: Sept. 4th hack first detected on Google Sept. 7th site completely clean, reconsideration accepted, spam content and links removed. Manual actions cleared. Rankings at this time have not been affected. Sept. 11th disavowed a few incoming links that were completely spam. (In hindsight I know this could have been the beginning of the end using this tool) Sept. 21st start to notice first significant drop in rankings and I went into GWT and downloaded latest 1000 links, I realized ALL of these were either hacked sites as well with spam content linking to our now delete spam content or inappropriate adult content. Sept. 22 Disavowed the 1000 domains (there are still probably 1000-2000 more) As of today rankings have SIGNIFICANTLY dropped, I have resubmitted sitemaps, image sitemaps, fetch and rendered as google. I'm stressing out incredibly and feel like I have made an error and that my site will never recover. I've worked using ALL white hat seo and the site used to rank very well top of page one for almost all my keywords. I feel lost and don't know what else I can do - and I know many say wait but it feels like forever. Is it possible that I didn't make a mistake using the disavow and that Google just took a while to penalize for the hack? Please any advice or experiences I would love to hear and appreciate so much anyone who takes the time to respond.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | seounicorn0 -
Disavow or not? Negative SEO
Since last November we have been receiving a lot of low quality backlinks from over 700 websites. It looks like one of our pages from our website has been copied with the links being kept as they are. I have left a link to an example of this here: https://goo.gl/eWQODJ Please note, all examples seem to be copied in the same way. We have also started seeing a decrease in the amount of organic traffic (Analytics Picture), As you can see the decrease is not yet so drastically high, but it is still a decrease and this is the third consecutive month we have seen this decrease. Do you think it is worth it to use Disavow tool for all of these bad link or not? uuuLt
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Tiedemann_Anselm1 -
Why should I reach out to webmasters before disavowing links?
Almost all the blogs, and Google themselves, tell us to reach out to webmasters and request the offending links be removed before using Google's Disavow tool. None of the blogs, nor Google, suggest why you "must" do this, it's time consuming and many webmasters don't care and don't act. Why is this a "required" thing to do?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RealSelf0 -
Should I disavow this Link?
I am trying to clean up my link profile to get rid of a partial penalty and am not sure to do with one of the links to my site http://www.seoco.co.uk The link is 100% organic and has come from a foreign language site that published an infographic that I did: http://www.clasesdeperiodismo.com/2012/12/23/la-evolucion-de-las-redes-sociales-este-ano-en-una-infografia/ The thing is that in the link to my homepage they have used the anchor text SEO as opposed to my company name. I have already sent them an email and asked them to change the anchor text but they haven't responded so I am guessing they probably wouldn't respond to a removal request either. Should I disavow it?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Eavesy0 -
Disavow tool for blocking 4 to 5 sites for Article Republishing
Am finding some very low authority sites (recently picked our articles from ezine and other article sites - written over a year back) and pasted on to there site. The number of articles copies are not 1 or 2, but more than 10-12 in all these domains This has also led to our anchor based url - backlink to us from them (a part of article). Have Wrote down to remove my author profile and articles - but there has been no response from webmaster of these sites. Is Disavow a right approach. The number of such sites are 4 or 5 in nature !!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Modi0 -
Google Disavow and Penalty lifted please help?
We disavowed 80% of our backlink profile due to our last SEO building cheap nasty links and filed a reconsideration requested (we had the Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links to http://www.xxx.co.uk penalty for a year from the 24<sup>th</sup> march 2012 but thought it best to clean up before round 2 – even though we had no real penalty and we dd some decent link building that moved us up). We then received a successful penalty lifted note (on the 22<sup>nd</sup> of May 2013) but our rankings dropped (due to the crap links propping us up) since then we have built a fair few high quality links but our rankings do not seem to be moving much if at all (7 weeks clear now). has anyone had any experience with the above (are we in a sandbox type situation). Thank you for your time Thanks Bob
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
Changes to SEO with disavow?
Has the game changed a lot with the disavow tool I can see people still saying check out what our competitors are doing but with just going through a disavow myself how do you actually know what the correct link diversity is as 0 - 100% of the links could be disavowed. Also could a competitor not just buy a load of spammy links and disavow them to mask there real links. (I know in my backlinks on 150 are good and the rest is disavowed crap)
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobAnderson0