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
-
Are you Able to keep 100% traffice when do domain redirect?
Let's say you consider re-branding and purchased a new domain, however, during past 3-5 years your page has got some content, CF, TF which appears to be quite good and not easy to build within a few mths. GWT says if you do 301 redirect from the old domain then you should transfer 100% juice from the old domain as well as the juice from old external links to old domain to the new one I did some Tech Seo improvements and while ago and my experience is GWT says one but life shows slightly opposite. This is a big thing with no Emergency exit so I have got some concerns. What is your experience with that? Have you done any transfers if so what was the result? Thanks in advance for your feedback
Technical SEO | | Miniorek0 -
How much difference does .co.uk vs .com for SEO make?
My Website has a .com domain. However I have noticed that for local businesses all of them have a .co.uk (UK business) TLD (check plumbers southampton for example). I have also noticed that on checking my serp rankings, I'm on page 1 if searched on Google.com but page 2 if searched on google.co.uk. Now being UK based I would assume most of my customers will be redirected to google.co.uk so I'm wondering how much of an impact this actually makes? Would it be worth purchasing .co.uk domain and transferring my website to that? Or run them both at the same time and set up 301 direct on my .com to .co.uk? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Marvellous0 -
Keep the blog separate or incorporate into main domain?
So my organization currently has both a main site and on a separate domain and separate host a wordpress blog. (our own domain not a wordpress.com) the content posted on this blog is local, community driven, and related to our business but it is not used in anyway as a "sales" tool. It's more for interaction purposes with members and employees. This blog has a lot of content and is updated with new posts very often. (generate traffic from a pretty wide variety of searches some related some not) My plan has been to 301 the old domain and move the wordpress blog over to our root domain in a subdirectory such as oursite.com/blog. Does anyone have tips for moving a blog over like this? I'm concerned about any link juice it has dropping off and since it does provide some links to our root site currently (since it's basically a separate site). Basically i'm wondering if it'll be worth the effort or if i should just keep it separate and focus on other content gen strategies.
Technical SEO | | SCFederal0 -
Why is there such a big discrepancy between OSE and GWT regarding # backlinks?
Hello, We have been doing some analysis around our backlink profiles for our sites and have been experiencing a massive discrepancy between what is reported as number of C class linking domains in OSE and the information returned in Google Webmaster tools. For a variety of sites OSE is reporting numbers < 10 for C class linking doamins while GWT shows >100 unique domains linking (we confirmed that the majority of these links are in different C classes) Is this simply a matter of the limited index size of OSE or could there be another explanation? It is interesting that the links that do show up in OSE a nearly exclusively sites that we own. /T
Technical SEO | | tomypro0 -
Google Webmaster redirect vs 301 redirect
OK assuming a client's website has the right tracking script (hopefully analytics isn't effected by this issue), ... what happens if the htaccess file has a 301 redirect to the www-address, but within Google Webmaster Tools, the address chosen to crawl by Google is the non-www address? How will Google handle and which address takes precedence in this situation? _Cindy
Technical SEO | | CeCeBar0 -
Backlinks to home page vs internal page
Hello, What is the point of getting a large amount of backlinks to internal pages of an ecommerce site? Although it would be great to make your articles (for example) strong, isn't it more important to build up the strength of the home page. All of My SEO has had a long term goal of strengthening the home page, with just enough backlinks to internal pages to have balance, which is happening naturally. The home page of our main site is what comes up on tons of our keyword searches since it is so strong. Please let me know why so much effort is put into getting backlinks to internal pages. Thank you,
Technical SEO | | BobGW0 -
Syndication: Link back vs. Rel Canonical
For content syndication, let's say I have the choice of (1) a link back or (2) a cross domain rel canonical to the original page, which one would you choose and why? (I'm trying to pick the best option to save dev time!) I'm also curious to know what would be the difference in SERPs between the link back & the canonical solution for the original publisher and for sydication partners? (I would prefer not having the syndication partners disappeared entirely from SERPs, I just want to make sure I'm first!) A side question: What's the difference in real life between the Google source attribution tag & the cross domain rel canonical tag? Thanks! PS: Don't know if it helps but note that we can syndicate 1 article to multiple syndication partners (It would't be impossible to see 1 article syndicated to 50 partners)
Technical SEO | | raywatson0 -
404 vs. 200?
Is it better to have an error page return a 404 or 200? If I change it to 200, will I still be able to see reports of 404's and/ or broken links? Is there a valid SEO reason that Google would have for not wanting error pages to return 200? In other words, is there any SEO reason to absolutely change it to return a 404? I would rather let it return 200 if no priority reason to change. [title edited by staff to provide clarity]
Technical SEO | | cindyt-170380