Is it good practice to update your disavow file after a penalty is removed.
-
I was wondering if you could use the disavow file by adding to it - even after your site has recovered from a partial site penalty.
As a recurring SEO procedure, we are always looking at links pointing to our Website. We then ascertain those links that are clearly of no value. In order to clean these up, would it be good practice to update your disavow file with more of theses domains.
Is the disavow file just used for penalty issues to alert google of the work you have done? (we have had penalty in the past but fine now)
Would this method help in keeping high quality links to the fore and therefore removing low quality links from Googles eyes?
I would welcome your comments.
-
Thanks -really good advice
-
Sounds good. When it comes to deciding on disavow vs removal, if you have no manual penalty, then my advice is to remove any links you actively control and then disavow the rest.
Here's more info:
-
HI Marie and thanks for your response.
Our penalty recovered about 7 months ago and we have seen a gradual increase in rankings.
However I keep finding unnatural links appearing and there are no contact details associated with these sites.
I had set in place a regular procedure to check out what's happening link-wise and I think its good practise to somehow remove these links. We can't manually get rid of them so to disavow was our next logical step. it keeps things clean but I wasn't sure if it would be shaking the Google tree!!
I will download the file and update with new spam sites.
-
In addendum to my response....
I would take pretty much anything MarieHaynes says as The Word when it come to anything relating to disavowing. She is the resident queen when it comes to penalties. She assisted me early on with some of my struggles and happens to know a lot more about this stuff than me!
-
Yes!
In almost every site for which I have removed a penalty, we keep seeing unnatural links that appear over time. Some of them may be the result of old automated link building tactics that are still replicating. Some may be negative SEO. And I think many of them are old links that just couldn't be found by the link checking tools until now.
You will likely want to do monthly disavows for some time until you start seeing that no new unnatural links are appearing.
Keep in mind that when you update your disavow you are overwriting your current file, so you need to download your file, convert it to .txt, add on to it, and then reupload it.
-
Good Morning!
The disavow tool, is a very powerful tool, and one that should, in my opinion, be used with caution. Google even hands out a warning before doing anything.
The strictly state that it should be used as a last ditch effort. My personal opinion is to only use it as that, last case scenario. If there are links that are just low-quality and not necessarily associated with your website, I personally wouldn't use the disavow.
There is no such thing as a link with no value, look at the site it's coming from, and the page it's going to. Is there anyway you could leverage potential traffic from that page?
If the links are 100% spam, and are causing you to be concerned, then I think that warrants uploading to the disavow tool.
Use the tool with caution my friend.
Hope that helps.
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
-
Removing extension
Hi there, I have thousands of pages that use the extension .php and thought about cleaning these URLs up for example rather than www.mysite.com/trainers/adidias/samba.php I could have have www.mysite.com/trainers/adidas/samba/ is it worth changing? Currently driving around 1 million visits to the website each month from organic search and slightly concerned it could have a negative impact on my rankings. Thanks for any help.
Technical SEO | | Paul780 -
Confirmation of penalty
Hi, I have been discussing with friends about possible penalties on few domains [listed below]. I would appreciate if any of seomoz staff could check them and explain if these sites are penalized in full, or part of these websites are penalized or homepage being penalized, any identification of penalty being imposed, and how to get these sites restored. http://www.google.com.pk/#sclient=psy-ab&q=123businesslistings.com&oq=123businesslistings.com&gs_l=hp.3...4797.4797.1.5047.1.1.0.0.0.0.0.0..0.0...0.0...1c.1.8.psy-ab.xDG3ytsYUVU&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_qf.&bvm=bv.45107431,d.aWc&fp=db751f8c4669b6fe&biw=1441&bih=603 keyword searched=123businesslistings.com
Technical SEO | | ClaudioJudsoni0 -
Help removing duplicate content from the index?
Last week, after a significant drop in traffic, I noticed a subdomain in the index with duplicate content. The main site and subdomain can be found below. http://mobile17.com http://232315.mobile17.com/ I've 301'd everything on the subdomain to the appropriate location on the main site. Problem is, site: searches show me that if the subdomain content is being deindexed, it's happening really slowly. Traffic is still down about 50% in the last week or so... what's the best way to tackle this issue moving forward?
Technical SEO | | ccorlando0 -
Use of Robots.txt file on a job site
We are performing SEO on a large niche Job Board. My question revolves around the thought of no following all the actual job postings from their clients as they only last for 30 to 60 days. Anybody have any idea on the best way to handle this?
Technical SEO | | WebTalent0 -
Home page penalty?
What does it mean when your home page has a penalty? I have a site that has good rankings for many pages, but my home page seems to be penalized by Google. I tried searching for my home page URL in Google, www.xxxxxx.com and my page doesn't show up, but sub pages do show up? What would cause this penalty and how do you correct this issue.
Technical SEO | | tadden0 -
Removing inbound Spam Links
Hello, Last February one of my clients websites was delisted. It turns out that some time ago that had attempted to launch a social network along time lines of ning. The project had fallen apart of the was still up. At some point spammers found it and started using it as part of a link farm. Once it was discovered, the subdomain it was posted on was removed and the website returned to search within 2 weeks. Last week, the website disappeared again OSE shows that in the last 2 months the website has got 2000 (There are about 16,000 total spam links) additional spam links now pointing and the root domain. On top of that, Google Webmaster Tools is reporting about 15,000 404 errors. I have blocked Google from crawling the path where the path were the spam pages used to be. If there a way to block the 1000s of inbound spam links?
Technical SEO | | Simple_Machines0 -
Is having a sitemap.xml file still beneficial?
Hi, I'm pretty new to SEO and something I've noticed is that a lot of things become relevant and irrelevant like the weather. I was just wondering if having a sitemap.xml file for Google's use is still a good idea and beneficial? Logically thinking, my websites would get crawled faster by having one. Cheers.
Technical SEO | | davieshussein0 -
.htacess file format for Apache Server
Hi, My website having canonical issue for home page, I have written the .htaccess file and upload the root directory. But still I didn't see any changes in the home page. I am copying syntax which one I have written in the .htaccess file. Please review the syntax and let me know the changes. Options +FollowSymlinks RewriteEngine on #RewriteBase / re-direct index.htm to root / ### RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.htm\ HTTP/ RewriteRule ^(.)index.htm$ /$1 [R=301,L] re-direct IP address to www ### re-direct non-www to www ### re-direct any parked domain to www of main domain RewriteCond %{http_host} !^www.metricstream.com$ [nc] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.metricstream.com/$1 [r=301,nc,L] Is there any specific htaccess file format for apache server? Thanks, Karthik
Technical SEO | | karthik-1755440