Disavowing Links

[LukeBTDT]

I need some advice... I've noticed our link profile has increased with many comments links --- something I certainly have not pursued manually.

I'm new to disavowing links. However, before I go ahead and disavow them, I'd like to ask how harmful these links are and would you recommend this is something I can do myself (relatively novice SEO) or if you'd recommend someone who could do this for a reasonable cost.

In one instance, the link from this comment thread is with the anchor text, "porn"... Certainly not something we want to rank for, haha!

I look forward to your advice

[effectdigital]

That sounds like a negative SEO attack, let me explain that for you. In the past, the volume of backlinks mattered more than their quality (before PageRank was refined more, before Google's Penguin algorithm updates)

As you can imagine, this was heavily abused so Google took measures to counteract the worst of the SEO industry. They created clever algorithms which attempted to determine, whether links had been built 'just for SEO' or whether the links in question were truly relevant. For sites attempting to manipulate Google's rankings, they de-valued the linking sites or in the worst cases, applied manual penalties - nullifying all their rankings

Again the industry adapted to Google's changes. People learned that if they created links which 'looked like' they had been manufactured to raise Google rankings, they could penalise the site they were pointing to (enter: Negative SEO)

Google's algorithms have come on since then but IMO still take a harsh line and have a very difficult time distinguishing between manipulative links and negative SEO links

As such, it's wise to take action on this kind of stuff. Whilst a disavow project may slightly lower rankings a small amount (as an SEOs view of what's a bad link, is never 'perfectly' aligned to Google's view) - it's still worth doing. If you ignore such things for too long and they mount up, instead of seeing a small dip - you can lose ALL your rankings (when Google's algorithms fail to evaluate the links correctly)

Personally I'd take action, especially as some links are porn related ('bad neighbourhood' links)

The best thing to do is download all links from all the main backlink sources (Ahrefs, Moz, SEMRush, Majestic SEO). Once this is done you can use something like URL profiler to set metrics against each link (adding of course, your referral traffic data from GA). You can weight or balance these metrics in a new column in Excel, and then evaluate which links are good or spammy

At the end of the process, you have a list of domains to disavow. At Effect, we've got really good at this actually. Even though we always tell clients they could see a small dip in results, in many cases they don't even see that. Then they can have peace of mind ,that their backlink profile (at least for a few months, or couple of years) is 'insulated'

Email address is on our Moz community profile if interested

[bagia]

effectdigital Nailed it. I couldn't explain it better. One thing I can point out is, once you create the disavow file, update that file and upload. If you have lost your disavow file, download from Google webmaster account and update it, re-upload it.

[jasongmcmahon]

I use the MOZ link explorer to get a report a backlink profile, then I create a shortlist us isolating High SPAM domains, low DA domains.

Then check I check all of these domains & create a Disavow file based on all the domains that are obviously poor quality, rinse & repeat every 3-4 months.

As always the MOZ team have an excellent article on this topic - https://moz.com/blog/links-to-target-with-disavow.

[samdland]

I recently had the experience of manually looking at over 3,000 domains. I am a programmer and so I made utility that will scan each domain in a MOZ Linking Domains csv file and search for specified text. It can pick out every Globe.com domain and other spam sites from a list in a number of minutes. I would love the feedback, and so I would share this utility.

I found that in my case using the keywords below got 95% or better of my bad links. It can also use the Spam and DA values etc..

keyword research,See related links to what you are looking for,popstripeRs,Search_Engine_Optimization_Services,Keyword Suggestions,This domain may be for sale,data-adblockkey,List website,complete online resource for web host providers,URLs categories for query and submission,Estadísticas web y datos de valoración simplificados,Ashibka.ru,Check Website IP on Server,Recently Analyzed Sites,research and analysis,Tools check keyword with Search Engines,1000 domain,the_worlds_most_visited

If you would like to give it a try please see https://dynamic.domains/disavow-utility.zip

This is not a commercial application, and although I am working on it to release the same, it just does the one thing right now. It does do it quite well though. It is an .exe in a zip file. I know there are trust issues, but at the same time you cant get a MOZ pro account without CC, and dynamic.domains is mine. I am the author of MintDNS. This app is 100% clean and in no way malicious etc..

Right now it only works with MOZ Linking Domains CSV files. If you have a sample Aherfs file I would love to add support.

If you try it out and find it handy please give me your feedback and suggestions etc..