How to remove seemingly untouchable link spam

[evan89]

Hey Mozzers,

I have been struggling with this issue, and I am hoping someone can help.

I have a number of bad/spammy links to my site. We have never engaged in "bad SEO", but an old subdomain received a number of spammy blog comments, and everything seemed to escalate from there.

We have removed a subdomain that received all of the bad links from our DNS settings (about a year ago), but these links are still there when using Ahrefs or MajesticSEO. I don't think we have been penalized for these links, but I would just like to clean them up because, well, it's the right thing to do.

How does one do this when these sites seem so untouchable. Either they are from China, Russia, Denmark, abandoned in 2009, etc. If I look for someone to contact, I can't seem to find anyone to even email.

Suggestions?

[Andy-Halliday]

Just put them in a disavow file and forget about them.

Your telling Google that you know these are bad links and you don't want them associated with your domain. I would do this sooner rather than later.

If you get a penalty you have to show evidence you have tried to contact these and get them some removed - whereas if you simply upload your disavow file you can forget about them.

Simple guide here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487?hl=en

Thanks

Andy

[Sheena_Schleicher]

As Andy stated, submitting a disavow request is your best bet, but it's not a quick, easy, or guaranteed solution. I found this article to be very helpful: http://moz.com/blog/google-disavow-tool

If these spammy links are really from China, Russia, etc, then it's unlikely asking the site owners to remove them will get you anywhere - I guess it's worth a shot though. I would also work to build your site up with quality, shareable content that will help build natural links that are helpful to both the user & your site's domain authority - basically try to outnumber those old, spam links with good ones... and really, do this regardless of those old links.

I hope this helps!

[evan89]

Do you recommend disavowing them, even if they don't show up in my WMT Links?

[Andy-Halliday]

yes I wouldn't wait for them to appear in WMT - just disavow them straight away.

[evan89]

Thanks Andy,

Appreciate your feedback.