Do I need to actively disavow links to my site?
-
I check the "Links to my site" section in Google WMT on a regular basis. In the past couple of months I've been seeing more and more weird links, from pretty spammy domains and even a few from weird Iranian domains.
It's Needless to say but I have never bought a link or been involved in any link schemes or the like. Like probably everyone in the Internet, I'm in a competitive vertical, and my competitors probably aren't so scrupulous.
The question is, do I actively need to disavow suspicious links? Should I contact the domains and ask to remove them? I have usually just ignored these links, and not wasted time in doing anything with them (since weird automated links are always around) but the proliferation in the last couple months has started to worry me.
-
In short - It's probably worth proactively disavowing those links since it's a quick and easy task, but the possibility of them actually causing you any harm is ultimately very small.
I wouldn't worry about asking the webmasters to remove the links unless you're under manual penality, as this won't be a particularly good use of time.
-
Yes I agree that it is a contended issue. I would think most industries this would be of little concern but as Matt points out in his video there are some industries that maybe more prone to this.
As you may know getting random links from sub-par sites is fairly common. I would of course be pro-active about checking my backlinks but not start worrying until I saw a large spike. If you do see this, you will likely have time to get your disavow done before anything happens.
-
It seems to me that it won't be really clear if I am the target of a Negative SEO campaign, and I remember the Matt Cutts video- He basically says not to worry about negative SEO, and to use Disavow only if you get a manual action penalty.
This is why I generally ignored these links, and I believe that my link profile is pretty solid. However as you can see in the answers to this question, its still a contended issue.
-
HI Don,
This is a regular concern I have seen here on Moz. Really we want to understand the purpose of Disavow, which is to remove penalties that were brought on by Link Spamming that many companies did to boost their rankings. Sometimes their selves, sometimes by hiring bad SEO companies. Either way the idea is a last resort for those who had fallen in a pit.
Early on people worried that Google's algorithm change could in fact bring a new type of SEO (Negative SEO) that is where a company is paid to use the same old spam tactics but instead of targeting the hiring company they target their competitors in hopes to inflict a penalty on them. Google was well aware of this possibility and tried their best to prevent that from happening. You should see Matt Cutts video about this topic on youtube here.
There are some crappy sites out there that regularly create links to good sites for whatever reason. This is actually normal, and should not be much of a concern unless it becomes apparent that you are being targeted by a Negative SEO campaign. If so, then yes use the disavow tool. If you already have a very strong back link profile the impact of a few random bad links should have no impact.
I hope this helps,
Don
-
Yes you do. If there are spammy links built to your site, you are likely to get a Penguin penalty at some point and that is a pain to recover from, so you want to be pro-active and minimise the risk of it happening by disavowing these links and also by removing them altogether if possible.
This is a video where Matt Cutts answers your question - http://youtu.be/eFJZXpnsRsc
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
-
When the site's entire URL structure changed, should we update the inbound links built pointing to the old URLs?
We're changing our website's URL structures, this means all our site URLs will be changed. After this is done, do we need to update the old inbound external links to point to the new URLs? Yes the old URLs will be 301 redirected to the new URLs too. Many thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jade1 -
I am launching a new site, what I need to know about backlinks
Hi 🙂 soon I am launching a new site. It will be focused on topics: Android, smartphones, reviews etc... First I will buy a good looking WP theme, it will be responsive theme. after that when I set up all in theme, after that I will start writing. I will try to write interesting and good content.... This content I will share on my pages: Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Youtube. So only remains, how to get good backlinks ? good backlinks for Google ? Blog commenting is not good, right ? Writing on relative forums and posting links as source of that information ? Contacting other relative sites for sharing my content ? Am I missed something or not ? In your opinion, which is the best way of getting good backlinks ? And what is the best solution in the beginning, because no one will know my site because my site is new. Thank you 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ivek990 -
I need your brains please - client site dropped significantly in search since hummingbird
I need your support. I've been doing "SEO" for several years - but sticking to sustainable methods. No junk links Decent content Decent site etc The site is advisein.com and it was ranking well for several terms such as: best lsat prep best lsat preparation best lsat course etc. Also there are some youtube videos (with the google thumbnail) that were doing extremely well in search and even those dropped in the rankings. Can any of you tell if there are some glaring issues that I am missing that would make the website and youtube videos drop 30 - 40+ spots in SERP's over the past few months after dominating for the last 3 years? Thank you in advance and I welcome additional questions and any ides....
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Intergen0 -
Disavowing Links for Subcategory of Site
Has anyone tried using Google's Disavow tool with only a specific subcategory of their site? We're an ecommerce company and our site took a small hit with this recent Penguin update. We're certain previous linkbuilding efforts are the cause. But we'd like to try the Disavow tool with 1 subcategory to start, see if our rankings for that category improve (we used to be top 3, now ~12 or 13), and if so then roll it out through the rest of the site. Looking for input from others on if they have any experience with this or if it'd be better to just go for the whole thing at once. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingof50 -
Need to shorten and change site-wide meta titles (50.000 pages). OK to do all at once?
Just noticed that google completely screws up our meta titles in the SERPs. Google decided to show titles which are not understandable to visitors and worst of all even shows titles in different languages than the actual page. The words of the displayedf titles are nowhere on the page (actually they are parts of old title tags that we stopped using 6 months ago and that we used on different pages). Pages are crawled weekly. All our meta titles are a bit longer than the 70 character limit, so I plan to rephrase and shorten them so that they are all max. 66 characters. Dynamically we choose different variations of title texts based on character length of keywords. Having titles that fit into SERPs without cutting are supposed to have less probability to be changed by google. I heard some people reporting loss of rankings after site-wide meta title changes. Especially since we changed title tags sitewide already about 6 months ago I am a bit concerned. How would you proceed? Just do the site-wide change all at once?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse0 -
Outbound link to PDF vs outbound link to page
If you're trying to create a site which is an information hub, obviously linking out to authoritative sites is a good idea. However, does linking to a PDF have the same effect? e.g Linking to Google's SEO starter guide PDF, as opposed to linking to a google article on SEO. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | underscorelive0 -
Can a Hosting provider that also hosts adult content sites negatively affect our SEO rankings on a non-adult site hosted on same platform?
We're considering moving a site to a host that also offers hosting for adult websites. Can this have a negative affect on SEO, if our hosting company is in any way associated with adult websites?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | grapevinemktg0 -
I currently have a client that has multiple domains for multiple brands that share the same IP Address. Will link juice be passed along to the different sites when they link to one another or will it simply be considered internal linking?
I have 7 brands that are owned by the same company, each with their own domain. The brands work together to form products that are then sold to the consumer although there is not a e-commerce aspect to any of the sites. I am looking to create a modified link wheel between the sites, but didn't know if my efforts would pay off due to the same IP Address for all the sites. Any insight on this would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HughesDigital0