Can any one give some advise on how to work out which back links are bad

[CostumeD]

we are trying to clean up our site and believe we have bad back links

can any one tell me how to work out which ones to disavow

[donford]

HI Li,

I think I answered this in your other question.

"...If your goal is to get rid of bad links, you can use the Open Site Explorer to see a sites "Spam Score". Any domain with a rating of 7+ is probably a good candidate."

REF: https://moz.com/community/q/does-google-flag-bad-back-links

Good luck,

Don

[Happy-SEO]

Also, don't just look to the spam score but check what the score was based on.

Example: A real good and populair site without contact information will get a spam score.

Use Open Site Explorer as an indicator but just check those sites manualy. It would be a pitty if you deleted realy good backlinks only beacause OSE says it has a spam score.

[Toddfoster]

Hi Li,

You can use Moz Spam Score but you probably want to use a more specialized link-profile tool like Majestic or AHRefs.

Majestic: www.majestic.com

AHRefs: https://ahrefs.com

These options are great for determining the value of links coming into your site. I personally use Majestic since it's easy to present to clients and help them understand link profiles, but AHRefs has a larger database.

When it comes to disavowing, you just want to conduct a domain search through one of these tools, and the spammy websites will be readily apparent. Look for inbound links coming from sites that are irrelevant to your website. You may have to go through the link lists manually and judge for yourself whether they are coming from spammy sources. You will know based on whether or not the website uses the same language your website does, whether the link metrics are good (are there tons of links coming from a few referring domains, or are these numbers roughly equal?) and where are these websites hosted?

Check into these metrics and you are well on your way to determining which links are worthy of removal/disavowal.

Hope this helps!

Rob