Disavow first (and link removal outreach second) as tactic?

[Coraltoes77]

I need to remove/disavow hundreds of domains due to an algorithmic penalty.  Has anyone disavowed first and done the outreach thing second as a tactic?

The reason why I was considering this was as follows:

• Most of the websites are from spammy websites and unlikely to have monitored accounts/available contact details.
• My business is incredibly seasonal, only being easily profitable for half of the year. The season starts from next month so the window of opportunity to get it done is small. If there's a Penguin update before I get it done, then it could be very bad news.

Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

(Incidentally, if you are interested in, I also posted here about it: http://moz.com/community/q/honest-thoughts-needed-about-link-building-removal)

[Coraltoes77]

Thanks Marie.

Sorry, yes, by "take effect", I meant see better results in the SERPS.

I understand that I have been affected by Penguin (I had an audit carried out by Paul Macnamara, who you referred me onto.  He was great, BTW).

So I guess it's just a waiting game.  I'm crossing my fingers very tightly!

From Paul's audit, I do have a good base of links, and I am continuing to build them.  Also, for many keywords, the site actually ranked higher before any link building was ever done by the bad SEO company.  With these things in mind, I'm really, really, really hoping that my fortunes will change on the next Penguin refresh - whenever that might be!!  Will be very disappointed if not.  SUCH a frustrating thing as it feels very much out of my control.

Thanks for taking the time to reply!

[MarieHaynes]

It really depends on what you mean by "take effect".  As soon as you submit the disavow, Google starts applying an invisible nofollow tag to each link that you have in that file as they crawl the web.  However, in some cases, it can take 6 months or more for all of the links to get crawled.

Will you see a change in rankings after you file a disavow?  I have seen some sites where within 24-48 hours there is an improvement which is always nice.  However, if you were affected by the Penguin algorithm then you won't see any improvement until Google refreshes Penguin which could be any day now or even months from now.  AND, in order to see improvement you have to have good links present.  If your previous rankings were there because of links that are now deemed unnatural, then there may be no improvement at all either now or when Penguin refreshes.

[Coraltoes77]

Marie, in your experience, does it take weeks or months or most disavows to take effect?  I submitted my disavow file 3 weeks ago and nothing so far...

[MarieHaynes]

Absolutely do the disavow first.  There's no reason not to, especially if you are dealing with an algorithmic issue.  (For some sites with manual penalties, I'll submit a disavow as soon as I can and then do the outreach.)

On a side note, if you have an algorithmic issue (i.e. Penguin), no one knows for sure whether you even need to remove links.  Of course, there are benefits to removing links.  Google will tell you to do so because you don't want people to look at your site's links and see bad ones online.  But, I recently asked John Mueller in a hangout whether link removal (as opposed to disavow) was necessary for Penguin and here's what he said:

From a theoretical point of view, using the disavow tool is enough...from a practical point of view it almost always makes sense to still delete those links as much as possible.

You can see the response here at about 41:20: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWYooFjmx5c&list=UUthrUiuJUtFSXBUp48D8bAA&index=2

The main reason why removing may be better than disavowing is because it can take weeks or months for a site on your disavow list to get recrawled and as such be disavowed.  However, I have found that in most cases, if you have spammy links, if you don't control the login info you used for link submission (or if there is no way for you to remove the link yourself) the response rate is always very poor (like 10-15% if you're lucky).

If you've been hit by Penguin, there are two things that need to be in place in order to recover:

1. An EXTREMELY thorough link audit and disavow.  IMO it's not enough to get 80-90% of the bad links.  The only sites I have seen recover had close to 100% disavowed.  This means doing a manual review of every single domain linking to you from every source you can find.

2. A site that has a base of good natural links with the ability to attract new links.  If you don't have that and you are planning on manufacturing your own links again then you probably will not recover.

[WorldText]

In light of the all round astonishment I went and checked the actual numbers, rather than off the top of my head - it was 44% removed.

So still way better than I'd expected.

[Coraltoes77]

Hi Emma

First of all, great news that your penalty was lifted. Are things back to what they were prior to the penalty being imposed?

In terms of my website... As it's an algorithmic penalty, not a manual one, there's no reinclusion request to submit in my case.  So, the only way I can show penance is to show that some links have been manually removed - most likely I would only get a very small percentage of these removed, if any, due to the spammy nature of these sites.

I can still go through this outreach process.  But, I mainly wondered if there was any disadvantage in doing the disavow first. I am very concerned that there could be a Penguin update before I get chance to outreach then disavow.  Due to the seasonality of my market, a few weeks can make a dramatic difference to the chance of survival of the business.  The window of opportunity for sales happens in the spring and summer.

I can always do a second round of disavowing afterwards.

Thanks

Coral

[Kingof5]

50% is a shockingly high success rate, way above the norm. I had a 16% success rate on one of our sites and around 35% on one of our much larger sites. I had one of the top names ever in SEO tell us that 5% would be a good success rate, though I think that's lowballing a bit.

[Coraltoes77]

Interesting video... loving Matt Cutts' T-shirt

There's no reinclusion request to be made as it's just an algorithmic penalty.  Not a manual penalty.

[Coraltoes77]

Your stats are interesting, and show much better success than anyone else's I've heard. 50% is amazing, but doesn't seem that representative of the general experience (from what I've read). Well done to you though.

Just to clarify, I'm not thinking that there will be a Penguin update in the next three weeks.  Rather, if there is an update and I haven't actioned it, that's things looking pretty bleak for me for the entire season. Because, by the time the next one arrives, it could be too late (as things are quiet again).

[printed]

The disavow tool is technically a recommendation to Google to ignore the toxic links, it does not have to disavow any, let alone all of the sites that you suggest. The point of sorting out a penalty is is performing penance and proving you won't do it again. Taking the easiest step first without recording efforts that show that you have tried to resolve it manually won't make you pass the manual review.

I know this for a fact as the agency that got us in a penalty in the first place performed two disavows before I took over and lifted our penalty. I manually checked over 10,000 and recorded my efforts for all, only then was it lifted. I understand that you want to fix it quickly as it is your business, but there is no quick fix other than playing by goggles rules on this one and showing that you understand that spammy links are not good. I recommend email out reach and recording everything on a goggle doc to send through with your re inclusion request. Best of luck

[Chris.Menke]

Coraltoes,

There isn't any question about whether or not you can go straight to the disavow tool as a first step in cleaning up bad links, as Matt Cutts confirms here.  Exactly what the difference is between doing that and first communicating to all spammy link webmasters so that you have that file to include with your reinclusion request isn't so clear cut.

[Asjad]

Hi,

I think Its a Good idea to disavow first and then Go after the Link removal thing.

I have a domain which got penguin penalty , We have Spent alot of time in removing links and Still have domains where links can not be deleted duw to certain issues So Atlast We have to disavow them.

So I would advise you to Disavow all of the bad backlinks first and then spend time in removing them.

Also, As Matt said above, It is impossible to recover domain from penguin in around 3 weeks Time.

You my better to start a New domain.

Thanks

[WorldText]

Have to say I haven't done it your way round - we've completed three rounds of email outreach then submitted a disavow file, so I don't want to guess to far on advisability of doing it the other way around.  For starters I've no idea how well / quickly Google handles domains removed from a disavow list.

Your first assumption needs comment though - every domain we're removing links from was from a spammy website (zero quality SEO directory), as a result of a submission package they bought years back before I joined.

We managed to get about 50% of the list removed from that email outreach process.  Granted one was a directory network with over 100 domains, but even counting their domains as one that we got about 40% success.

Around 10% responded with a demand for a fee - ranging from 99c to $50.  Clearly all those were instant place in disavow list

So to summarise I was really surprised how successful the email outreach part was - we'd been expecting next to nothing by way of response rate rather than around 50% success.

Even if you do it disavow first, hoping for a Penguin update in the next three weeks so the file is actioned prior to your season starting is a little optimistic!