Should you proactively remove spammy links?
-
Occasionally I notice spammy sites linking to us. Should I proactively try to request that they take down the links to avoid getting penalized? Or should I just wait for Google to provide a disavow link tool.
-
I would go ahead and remove them as you come across them.
The disavow tool seems like it might have a lot of implications and Google is probably thinking about the best way to go about this before implementing. In my opinion it will cause a spike in spamming when people know they can simply disavow links if they get caught.
-
If its excessive yes. If it is not excessive, it doesn't need to be removed asap.
But one thing to consider, why is your site being linked on spam sites? You might need to look at why this is happening to prevent it. Because if you occasionally get it, it will occasionally build up and then it will become a problem.
If you only have 1-2 links a year or something of that nature, it can't be that bad because everyone get's bad links here and there. But again why is it happening in the first place is what you should do first.
-
You should take note of all these spammy links and put them into a spread sheet. I would also ask for the webmasters to remove them as well. Try contacting them through two different methods. Such as support ticket or through a contact us email. Document that as well.
In case you get penalized you will have the work already done in trying to get a reconsideration. I wouldn't sweat it too much though, Google is working on perfecting their algo to identify this type of problem & situation.
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
-
AllTop Linking Me to Other Sites Feeds, Webmasters Reporting Lots of Broken Links
I submitted my blog to All Top awhile ago and something seems to be wrong with their feed. They're sending people to mysite.com/truth-o-meter.com/this-is-a-post. It's not just truth-o-meter either. I'm getting links that are supposed to go to all kinds of political blogs. As a result, I'm getting a ton of broken links reported on Google Webmasters. I couldn't find any real support option on alltop.com, and when I log in, there are no sites for me to manage. Instead, I resubmitted the site with the correct feed address and in the comments, I mentioned the problem. All I got was a message saying the site was rejected. I believe because I already added the site. But I'm thinking they didn't pay attention to the comments. (In fact the message may have gone through an auto-filter considering how quickly it was rejected.) Is there a way to solve this? Is this a situation in which I would use the disavow tool? If All Top continues to create bad links, how do I stop the issue once and for all? Thanks!
Link Building | | eglove0 -
Should I be taking a gradual approach to link removals?
Quick background: My parents run a travel company and have seen their google ranks drop dramatically in the last few years (usual story: they employed an SEO agency, saw good results to begin with, and then a massive decline in their rankings post-Penguin). Over the last few months I've been working to remove as many of the spam links pointing to their site as I can. However, as I've been doing so, our keyword rankings have been declining even further, not improving. This time last year we were bottom of page 1 for one keyword, then we suddenly dropped to page 5 around Nov with the Penguin update, and now, since I started cleaning up our backlinks, we're no longer in the first 20 pages - we've vanished. Similar situation for other keywords (though not as dramatic) I've been pretty careful to only delete links that are clearly spam (article directories, forum signatures, spam comments on blogs with a keyword-rich username linking to our domain etc). It may be that some of these links were still helping us, but I'd be surprised - they were pretty obvious cases of spam. My question: Is it normal to see this sort of decline at the start of a clean-up campaign? Does google see a sudden decline in the number of links, spam or otherwise, as suspicious? I've devoted weeks already to trying to work on the problems affecting my parent's website, and the situation just seems to be getting worse and worse! Do websites ever recover from a severe Penguin hit?
Link Building | | mgane0 -
When pitching a whitepaper as Push Content for Link Building, is it ok to give the person I'm pitching a link to a landing page with a form on it?
When pitching a whitepaper as Push Content for Link Building (i.e. pushing out content that my client has created), is it ok to give the person I'm pitching a link to a landing page with a form on it? Or should I create a landing page with the whitepaper included on it? I’m not sure if the client will be ok with this b/c I know they use the whitepaper for sales purposes to gain leads. For example, my pitch email would include a line such as this, "the whitepaper can be found at LINK and I'd love if you could share it with your readers." I think it may be weird/a little wrong to ask a webmaster to include a link on his site to a landing page with a form to get the whitepaper. Does this make sense? What have others done with whitepapers as Push Content for link building?
Link Building | | ArketiGroup1 -
Linking Etiquette
Hi Moz Community, Long time lurker, first time poster. I work for a real estate firm and have recently done some link analysis. I'm noticing that my company is not getting linked to as frequently as we should be. Several news outlets (including NYT & Bloomberg) have cited our reports, interviews with employees and other original content belonging to my company without linking back to our site (although they do mention us).Some publications are even linking back to our competitors for similar content but not ours. Is it appropriate to reach out and ask for links from these outlets after they've been published? Does anybody have tips on making others aware we want links shared for future articles? Thanks in advance!
Link Building | | rlaughlin0 -
Deleting links
I've got 280 links on my wordpress blog site, apparently it's recommended to keep under 100 links. How would I know which links to get rid of and which links to keep?
Link Building | | gimes0 -
Why does my site only have 4 internal followed links/internal links?
When using Open Site Explorer my site is winning in many categories but lacking in others as compared to competitors. I intend to improve on this but am a little confused by the extremely low number of "internal followed links" and "internal links" at just 4. My competitors have much more than that. Does this mean links to the root domain? Total internal links? I have many internal links so I'm having a hard time figuring this one out. What four internal links are getting noticed? I just went through and changed all the links that went to index.html to link to the root domain at www.njlimocarservice.com as I just found a Q&A that indicates this was better. So as of Wed at 5:45 PM all my links to the homepage went to index.html and not the root which is no longer the case. Not sure if this matters. At the same time I also just put a 301 from index.html to redirect to www.njlimocarservice.com. Any help appreciated! h9QuF.png
Link Building | | kabledesigns0 -
Linking Root Domains V.s Total Links
When analysing a company's inbound links, what is more important to note: The number of linking root domains, or the total number of links? And why?
Link Building | | SEOrookie170 -
Looking at Page Authority of a link to our website... what Page Authority number should we use in deciding the link is junk?
What are the Page Authority ranges? 1. Excellent link 2. Moderate 3. Total junk link Of course you look at the anchor text you can use, how many links are on the site, how often it is cached. Thoughts?
Link Building | | RezStream80