Backlink quality vs quantity: Should I keep spammy backlinks?
-
Regarding backlinks, I'm wondering which is more advantageous for domain authority and Google reputation:
- Option 1: More backlinks including a lot of spammy links
- Option 2: Fewer backlinks but only reliable, non-spam links
I've researched this topic around the web a bit and understand that the answer is somewhere in the middle, but given my site's specific backlink volume, the answer might lean one way or the other.
For context, my site has a spam score of 2%, and when I did a quick backlink audit, roughly 20% are ones I want to disavow. However, I don't want to eliminate so many backlinks that my DA goes down. As always, we are working to build quality backlinks, but I'm interested in whether eliminating 20% of backlinks will hurt my DA.
Thank you!
-
Backlinks are always about quality not quantity. Google does not like too many backlinks and especially spammy backlinks. I would suggest you to go with quality backlinks if you want long term and sustainable results otherwise there will always be a threat of getting penalized by google if you focus on spammy backlinks.
-
It's a myth that your DA drops because you put links in disavow. Disavow is a google only (or bing) tool, where lets say you get spammy links from a rogue domain and there's no way you can get 'm removed.
MOZ cant read your disavow file either you file into google. So i'm not sure on how the link is being put here. With MOZ, or any other tool, they just calculate the amount of incoming, FOLLOW links and presume your DA on some magical number. Thats all there is to it. Again, PA/DA has nothing in common at all with Google as Google maintains their own algorithm.
-
Hello again,
Thanks for the clarification and the link. I've read through that and a few other sources across the web, but none of them seemed to answer my question the way you did, so thanks! Our backlink profile is pretty balanced with spammy and definitely not spammy, so I'm not super concerned about it, but I appreciate the reminder.
-
I should also clarify, these may hurt you if they are your only links. If you have very little equitable links, this may cause Google and other search engines to falsely recognize you as spam. So just be careful and be on the look out for extra suspicious spam links. The balanced approach is the best approach: don't worry but stay aware!
Here is a more technical write-up from Moz that I reccomend: https://mza.seotoolninja.com/help/link-explorer/link-building/spam-score
-
No problem Liana.
- That is correct. Google understands that you don't have control of 3rd party sites, so instead of penalizing you, they minimize/ delete the effect the spam site links have.
- Yes, but only kind of. It may or may not increase PA/ DA, but according to Google it shouldn't hurt you.
But yeah that's the gist of it! Instead taking the time investigating and disavowing links, you could spend that time cultivating relationships with other websites and businesses that could give you nice quality linkage.
Hope this answer works for you.
-
Hello Advanced Air Ambulance SEO!
Thanks for the quick and thorough response. Please confirm if I understand you correctly:
- I can leave spammy backlinks alone (not spend time disavowing them) _unless _I see a manual action in Search Console, which would indicate that Google sees an issue and is penalizing my site until I disavow the links. Without this manual action, there's no indication that the spam links are hurting my rankings or DA.
- Leaving spammy backlinks that don't incur a manual action may actually increase DA since leaving them maintains a higher volume of backlinks (albeit some spammy), and backlink quantity is a contributor to DA.
Thank you!
-
Hi Liana,
As far as spammy links, Google has done well detecting whether or not they are intentional, aka black hat. If they aren't, Google does not penalize you for these links, so it's best to leave them.
As far as a strategy for generating links to your website, you should always focus on high quality over quantity. High quality links give you exponentially more return than high quantity of bad links.
I recommend this article Google wrote for us to understand when and how to disavow links.
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487?hl=en
In short, rarely do you ever need to disavow links, even if they have a high spam score. You are only hurt when they sense you are gaming the system and in the case that they detect or suspect unethical backlinking, you will be penalized with a "manual action". You can check if you were penalized, as well as disavow flagged backlinks, in the Google Search Console.
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
-
Www vs non www - Crawl Error 902
I have just taken over admin of my company website and I have been confronted with crawl error 902 on the existing campaign that has been running for years in Moz. This seems like an intermittent problem. I have searched and tried to go over many of the other solutions and non of them seem to help. The campaign is currently set-up with the url http://companywebsite.co.uk when I tried to do a Moz manual crawl using this URL I got an error message. I changed the link to crawl to http://www.companywebsite.co.uk and the crawl went off without a hitch and im currently waiting on the results. From testing I now know that if i go to the non-www version of my companies website then nothing happens it never loads. But if I go to the www version then it loads right away. I know for SEO you only want 1 of these URLS so you dont have duplicate content. But i thought the non-www should redirect to the www version. Not just be completely missing. I tried to set-up a new campaign with the defaults URL being the www version but Moz automatically changed it to the non-www version. It seems a cannot set up a new campaign with it automatically crawling the www version. Does it sound like im out the right path to finding this cause? Or can somebody else offer up a solution? Many thanks,
Technical SEO | | ATP
Ben .0 -
Robots.txt on http vs. https
We recently changed our domain from http to https. When a user enters any URL on http, there is an global 301 redirect to the same page on https. I cannot find instructions about what to do with robots.txt. Now that https is the canonical version, should I block the http-Version with robots.txt? Strangely, I cannot find a single ressource about this...
Technical SEO | | zeepartner0 -
301 Redirect keep html files on server?
Hello just one quick question which came up in the discussion here: http://moz.com/community/q/take-a-good-amount-of-existing-landing-pages-offline-because-of-low-traffic-cannibalism-and-thin-content When I do 301 redirects where I put together content from 2 pages, should I keep the page/html which redirects on the server? Or should I delete? Or does it make no difference at all?
Technical SEO | | _Heiko_0 -
Title Tag vs. H1 / H2
OK, Title tag, no problem, it's the SEO juice, appears on SERP, etc. Got it. But I'm reading up on H1 and getting conflicting bits of information ... Only use H1 once? H1 is crucial for SERP Use H1s for subheads Google almost never looks past H2 for relevance So say I've got a blog post with three sections ... do I use H1 three times (or does Google think you're playing them ...) Or do I create a "big" H1 subhead and then use H2s? Or just use all H2s because H1s are scary? 🙂 I frequently use subheads, it would seem weird to me to have one a font size bigger than another, but of course I can adjust that in settings ... Thoughts? Lisa
Technical SEO | | ChristianRubio0 -
Google Webmaster tools Sitemap submitted vs indexed vs Index Status
I'm having an odd error I'm trying to diagnose. Our Index Status is growing and is now up to 1,115. However when I look at Sitemaps we have 763 submitted but only 134 indexed. The submitted and indexed were virtually the same around 750 until 15 days ago when the indexed dipped dramatically. Additionally when I look under HTML improvements I only find 3 duplicate pages, and I ran screaming frog on the site and got similar results, low duplicates. Our actual content should be around 950 pages counting all the category pages. What's going on here?
Technical SEO | | K-WINTER0 -
Subdomain hosted on a different server VS Subfolder on main server
We have a website developed in ColdFusion on a server does not support PHP. We have a blog for the site using WordPress (PHP), hosted on a different server, with a subdomain as the URL. (example: blog.website.com) I've heard that search engines treat subdomains as completely different websites from the main domain, so they could actually be in competition for rankings in the search engines - is that correct? I am under the impression that the traffic to the blog will not show as traffic to the main website, because it is hosted on a different server - is that right? If I am correct, I assume the best solution would be to install PHP on our main server, and put the blog in a subfolder ... or would the subdomain be OK as long as the blog is hosted on the main server? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | vermont0 -
HTACCESS redirect vs. forwarding
I'm having trouble using htaccess redirect to redirect a subdomain to a new domain on a different server. Tech support at godaddy suggested I forward the subdomain. The subdomain has already been cached by google. Will forwarding in this way have the same affect (SEO wise) as an htaccess redirect??
Technical SEO | | triple90 -
301 & backlinks
Apologies if my question sounds like a school Maths lesson 😉 If you have 2 sites: Site 1) is linked to by sites A,B & C Site 2) is linked to by sites X,Y & Z You then 301 redirect site 2 to site 1. Most of the juice from site 2 (obtained from links X,Y,Z) should be passed over to site 1. But what if site 2 is linked to by the same sites A,B,C as site 1 instead of X,Y,Z. Since both sites have exactly the same links will the same, less, or any weight be passed over by the 301 redirect? Many thanks.
Technical SEO | | martyc1