Bad Links to New Domain - Do I Disavow?
-
About 2 months ago a new client of mine bought a domain and we built him a nice new site; however, it appears the previous owner of the domain used some spammy SEO tactics. I've had to redirect about 30 pages and now I've found some spammy links. I've only discovered a few of them, but he doesn't have that many links yet so I'm wondering what kind of impact this will have. Is it worth disavowing a half dozen links? The sites are in Chinese and appear to be unmanaged link farms so getting the webmaster to remove them is unlikely. Also wondering what else is lurking out there that I haven't discovered yet...
I suggested to the client we consider a different domain since the site is new, but he's become pretty attached to it. Any ideas?
-
There is really nothing to say about the mistakes made by SMB owners who believe that they've contracted with a great SEO firm - and find out later that is not so true...
Which gets me to the real value of a referral. Look for - always look for an SEO firm that has the 'added value' of offering up a set of referral clients for you to check on yourownself. That is so important in that a real live SEO firm will always be able to supply that list- long or short - but that you can call on the phone or email to the CEO and ask "...hey, the XYZ SEO firm said you're a client...tell me about your experiences with using them...." type of contact.
Without that - on what core values are you really buying an SEO contractor?
Oh - the "recommended" list of companies can also be a great starting place too - use that list to drill down on, visit each of your final candidates from and THEN call/email their list of referral clients....
Anything else I'm afraid is just "burning" your money....sad to say...
-
Thanks JV. The problem is, I actually spent a good bit of money. That is the sad part.
-
Veebs..you should really start a brand new thread so others can join in on this topic...
But as you've explained things - it boils down to you need a brand new SEO who can delive serps that are solid and reliable without using tactics like you've outlined.
Small point but when we get a new client, and we do the same checking you appear to have done, what we find is that with these kind of tell-tale bloody awful SEO we learn that the client readily admits that yes they went to the cheapest SEO package they could find -- reinforcing the old adage that you do "get what you pay for!"
Do a google for "googel disavow" and you'll see they years ago now set up a way for any SMB site owner or SEO to lit the links you want Google to toss in the bin!
-
Not to sabotage the thread but I have a site that gets pretty good traffic and I I have hired an SEO who has been using a lot of directory linking and he swears it works and I feel like it doesn't. I have been dabbling with seo for about 6 years so I know a pretty good amount and know that many of these directory links are not worth having. Just checking some of the anchor texts, I have noticed some don't even have my respective keywords spelled correctly. The site has too many visitors to just start with a new slate. Any suggestions? Lastly, what does disavow mean? Is there a way to go on google and do that?
-
Yes, I think you are right. Thanks for the response.
-
Me? I'd do a full web audit...find all those IBLs....then disavow 'em all....incl the ones you've yet to find when you do!
Best to start with a completely new slate IMHO....
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
-
Is it a good practice to get link for your original page by shorter URL links
Hello Moz Community, I have a question regarding getting links on bitly, tiny, or an other url shortner, Is it a good practice to get link for your page by shorter url I mean lets suppose i am getting natural guest post link from content for my blog home page
Link Building | | JoeySolicitor
https://coupontoaster.com/blog/ ; and shorten it with bitly and then hyper link so is it a good practice am I getting the same power and SEO consideration as if i would have done this without url shortener. And what anchor texts shall i be using like rich anchor text or any other like click here, visit here, bitly or etc Please kindly help me with this thanks1 -
Is hiring bloggers to review my products while back linking to my website bad for SEO?
For many months I have been following this strategy of hiring high domain authority bloggers to review my products and link back to my website. For a month or two my rankings improved but now I suddenly lost rankings. Can Google penalize me for hiring bloggers to review my products? Bloggers do mention in the blog that the product was requested for editorial review. Any tips will be helpful. Regards
Link Building | | DebashishB
Deb0 -
Is it possible to un-disavow a link if we later decide that it isnt spammy / undesirable ?
Is it possible to un-disavow a link if we later decide that it isnt spammy / undesirable ? (i know best practice is to get it right first time, but worst comes to worst is it undo able ?)
Link Building | | jpeg800 -
I just uncovered a massive 500+ domain PBN linking to competitors
As the title, some competitors I've been watching are using a PBN they (or their agency) have built. I'm looking to get some discussion on how you approach situations like this - do you just report all of the domains to Google and pray they do something? There are 4 sites I'm looking at, all competing in the same niche with very similar websites (different branding and content, but essentially the same pages). I thought all were related, but after Excel-ing all the domains to see which overlap I've found that there's several sets; PBN 1 covers 117 domains that link to competitors A, B & C. Signaling to me that these are owned by the same person. PBN 2 links together B & C with 30 domains, PBN 3 is just C with 40 domains. PBN 4 is just B with 105 domains. PBN 5 is just A with 10 domains. PBN 6 is D by itself with more than 340 domains. Signaling to me that this one probably isn't owned by the same person. It looks like new domains are added to these PBNs every week and this has been going on for quite some time. Now, I'm fully against use of PBNs that don't use authentic websites that provide value, and I can't find any of these sites that aren't just a basic WP template with a single-word text logo followed by spun content. This is a goldmine, because according to Ahrefs these sites are pulling in well over 500,000 monthly visitors between them, and these links make up the majority of each site's link profile. If these networks were to crumble, that would open up a big opportunity for more authentic sites to rank well. How would you recommend to tackle this? Do I find example URLs and write reports for each of the 500+ domains or are there better ways of working through this?
Link Building | | Leads.Bz0 -
Is there a downside to "closing" a domain and 301'ing to to your main domain?
We have a domain which was optimized for a specific keyword. It does very well for that keyword, but seems like it has in turn caused our primary domain to be penalized (back to page 3) for that same keyword (We think they've figured out the connection). The optimized domain (only one page) has links on it to our primary domain, so I don't want to delete it as that's where our traffic currently comes from. But if I deleted it and 301'ed it to the primary domain is there a downside? Alternatively I could disavow it, but if the search engines know it's the same owner will they hold that against all domains? Or, alternatively again. Should I turn it into a more substantial website? Which could in turn remove it's "spamminess". Any suggestions are welcomed!
Link Building | | absoauto0 -
Indirect Link Earning via dofollow Links In News Articles
Hello, MOZ SEO Gurus. I've been trying to think some deep thoughts on safe, effective link earning for news publishing sites, and wanted to run this up the flagpole and see if you salute. Our site is a biotech news service -- we pump out copious amounts of news content each day, which works well for driving traffic. That being said, we also want to rank some optimized landing pages as well. Take, for example, this page, which we'd like to rank for "secondary progressive MS" and related keywords: http://bionews-tx.com/secondary-progressive-ms/ Now, as far as I'm concerned, shopping this page around to MS influencers isn't easy. I can go to Foundational websites, blogs, etc., and say, "hey, we have this info page on SPMS, and I thought that you might find it helpful/want to link to it." But chances are, the MS influencers already have their own proprietary content on SPMS, and there isn't much value to linking to it. Therefore, I think that we'll get few link earning conversions on the effort. However, what if I take our Secondary Progressive MS landing page, and I link to it in a corresponding article about SPMS research, as I did here: http://bionews-tx.com/news/2014/01/30/secondary-progressive-ms-natalizumab-clinical-trial/ Then, I go to the drug developer who is at the center of this story and say to them, "hey, we recently covered your drug in the news, and I thought you might want to link to it." Then, we get a link from an MS drug developer to the news article, which in turn has a prominent anchor text, dofollow internal link to the landing page for SPMS. If the link from the drug developer is dofollow, then we flow page rank juice from the drug developer page to our news page to our landing page. To me, it's much easier to earn safe links this way than to try and shop the landing page itself. That being said, if we get a dofollow link on the news piece, we only get a diminished portion of page rank going to the landing page. Is this strategy viable? Is the indirect flow of page rank from a linking site to a news article to a landing page even worth it? I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thanks!
Link Building | | bionewstx2 -
SEO Consultant Wants to Disavow Organic Links
Hi, We're working with a SEO consultant. They made a second check of our inbound links and want to disavow some of the links that seems organic to me. They claim they're bad by their characteristics. Should we act as they suggest or not? Or should we run from them?;-) Here are some links in question:
Link Building | | nikitin.i
http://www.wowresource.eu/index.php?showtopic=14942 http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080208070036AAE1ePo https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/39144/visual-watermark All point to http://www.visualwatermark.com0 -
When searching for high quality links, in a niche area such as real estate, does page rank factor into a search or is page / domain authority the most important factor?
After having employed many different methods for finding good link partners I am now finding it more difficult to reach out and identify good quality links for a niche area such as real estate. Does page rank factor into the search much or is it better to focus on page / domain authority as a major factor?
Link Building | | casper4340