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
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
-
So many links from single site?
this guy is ranking on all high volume keywords and has low quality content, he has 1600 ref domains check the attachment how did he get so many links from single site is he gonna be penalized YD2BvQ0
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SIMON-CULL0 -
Site architecture, inner link strategy and duplicate or thin content HELP :)
Ok, can I just say I love that Moz exists! I am still very new to this whole website stuff. I've had a site for about 2 years that I have re-designed several times. It has been published this entire time as I made changes but I am now ready to create amazing content for my niche. Trouble is my target audience is in a very focused niche and my site is really only about 1 topic - life insurance for military families. I'm a military spouse who happens to be an experience life insurance agent offering plans to active duty service members, their spouses as well as veterans and retirees. So really I have 3 niches within a niche. I'm REALLY struggling on how to set up my site architecture. My site is basically fresh so it's a good time to get it hammered down as best as possible with my limited knowledge. Might I also add this is a very competitive space. My competitors are big, established brands who offer life insurance along with unaffiliated, informational sites like military.com or the va benefits site. The people in my niche rarely actually search for life insurance because they think they are all set by the military. When they do search it's very short which is common as this niche lives in a world of acronyms. I'm going to have to get real creative to see if there are any long tail keywords I can use as supporting posts but I think my best route is to attempt to rank for the short one to three keyword phrases this niche looks for while searching. Given my expertise on the subject I am able to write long 1000-5000 content on the matter that will also point out some considerations my competitors dont really cover. My challenge is I cant see how this can be broken into sub topics without having thin supporting content. It's my understanding that I should create these in order to inner link and have a shot at ranking. In thinking about my topic I feel like the supporting posts can only be so long. Furthermore, my three niches within my small overall niche search for short but different keywords. Seems I am struggling to put it all into words. Let me stop here with a question - is it bad to have one category in a website? If not I feel like this would solve my dilemma in making a good site map and content plan. it is possible to split my main topic into 3 categories. I heard somewhere you shouldn't inner link posts from different categories. Problem is if I dont it's not ideal for the user experience as the topics really arent that different. Example a military member might be researching his/her own life insurance and be curious about his spouses coverage. In order to satisfy this user's experience and increase the time on my site I should link to where they can find more dept on their spouses coverage which would be in a different category. Is this still acceptable since it's really not a different subject?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | insuretheheroes.com0 -
Google cache is showing my UK homepage site instead of the US homepage and ranking the UK site in US
Hi There, When I check the cache of the US website (www.us.allsaints.com) Google returns the UK website. This is also reflected in the US Google Search Results when the UK site ranks for our brand name instead of the US site. The homepage has hreflang tags only on the homepage and the domains have been pointed correctly to the right territories via Google Webmaster Console.This has happened before in 26th July 2015 and was wondering if any had any idea why this is happening or if any one has experienced the same issueFDGjldR
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | adzhass0 -
Site Wide Footer Links Exception, Any Advice ?
I was reading the following Q&A on site wide footer links, http://moz.com/community/q/site-wide-links-from-another-domain-could-these-cause-a-problem I feel my situation is slightly different however,we have lots of international sites linking to each other through these links like our sites for different counties and languages so our German, French and Spanish sites, http://www.cirrusresearch.co.uk/ Our main UK site has always ranked very well and has never really had a problem despite always having had these followed sitewide footer links, Because of this we regularly get high amount of visitors performing English language searches from different counties and i don't think it is a bad thing having more country/language specific sites of ours available in the footer for visitors that may prefer a more localized site, Our main website has to be at least 10+ years old at least, has a lot of strong links compared to our competitors, but the smaller German and Spanish sites are relatively smaller in size and most only 1-2 years old, my big fear is that these smaller sites would not be able to stand on there own without these footer links from our main site, After reading the community question caused me to question this ?, should i take a leap of faith and no-follow all of these site wide footer links connecting all of our sites ? we never really had a problem ranking so i don't really see the need but would this be the best thing to do ? Thank you, James
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Antony_Towle0 -
Will an inbound follow link on a site be devalued by an inbound affiliate link on the same site?
Hey guys, quick question I didn't find an answer to online. Scenario: 1. Site A links to Site B. It's a natural, regular, follow-link 2. Site A joins Site B's affiliate program, and adds an affiliate link Question: Does the first, regular follow link get devalued by the second affiliate link? Cheers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ipancake0 -
To recover from Penguin update, shall i remove the links or disavow links?
Hi, One of our websites hit by Penguin update and I now know where the links are coming from. I have chance to remove the links from those incoming links but I am a little confused whether i should just remove the links from incoming links or disavow the links? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rubix0 -
Do nofollow links affect link profile?
I've read that it's good to keep a natural link profile. Some naked links, some links going to our company name, some with anchor text, etc. Do nofollow links affect this link profile, or is it only followed links that are taken into account?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lighttable0 -
Migrating a site from a standalone site to a subdivision of large .gov.uk site
The scenario We’ve been asked by a client, a Non-Government Organisation who are being absorbed by a larger government ministry, for help with the SEO of their site. They will be going from a reasonably large standalone site to a small sub-directory on a high authority government site and they want some input on how best to maintain their rankings. They will be going from the Number 1 ranked site in their niche (current site domainRank 59) to being a sub directory on a domainRank 100 site). The current site will remain, but as a members only resource, behind a paywall. I’ve been checking to see the impact that it had on a related site, but that one has put a catch all 302 redirect on it’s pages so is losing the benefit of a it’s historical authority. My thoughts Robust 301 redirect set up to pass as much benefit as possible to the new pages. Focus on rewriting content to promote most effective keywords – would suggest testing of titles, meta descriptions etc but not sure how often they will be able to edit the new site. ‘We have moved’ messaging going out to webmasters of existing linking sites to try to encourage as much revision of linking as possible. Development of link-bait to try and get the new pages seen. Am I going about this the right way? Thanks in advance. Phil
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | smrs-digital0