Google – No Manual Action No Disavow 

Well now. Disavowing links is a thorny issue, and Gary Illyes has waded right in there.

Google is now saying you don’t really need to spend your time submitting link disavow files to Google unless you’ve got a Manual Action from the webspam team. Unsurprisingly, some webmasters disagree. Often they have built services on disavowing links.

Read about it in this extract from TWIS SEO News & Updates 10th November 2017.

#SEO #SEONews #LinkSpam #LinkBuilding #LinkDisavowal #WebSpam

Key Issues Summary:

• Gary Illyes caused a bit of a ruckus last week when he said “if you do not have a manual action, there is no need to disavow“
• Many SEOs are dead keen on the disavow tool, so they got rather upset by this assertion.
• Many SEOs also disbelieve Google’s ability to disambiguate between a good link and a bad link, and still believe that Google needs a disavow file to set itself back on the straight and narrow.
• Of course, as Google doesn’t release a list of bad links, everyone is shooting into the dark on this.

Key Actions To Take:

1. Think long and hard before disavowing links, in very few instances is it a viable option.
2. Don’t believe toolsets that claim links are “toxic”. They call out way too many false positives to be trustworthy.
3. Always keep an eye on your link profile, but only to ensure it is normal in relation to your ranking competitors.
4. Expect your link profile to have some “bad” links, and some good links.
5. Work harder to acquire good links from relevant authorities than you do to get rid of bad links.
6. Click here to contact me to discuss how to manage your link profile and create great links.

Insights & Discussion:

Since Penguin, the release of the Disavow Tool and the rise of Negative SEO this has been a matter of huge discussion in the wider SEO community.

The simple truth is that Google should have left things as they were. Penalising sites for accruing links of an arbitrary “bad” nature, when you don’t release details of the “bad” links was always going to be a “bad” idea. (See what I did there?). Without the data, you really are shooting into the dark, with the potential to do more harm than good. I’ve seen plenty of websites do themselves harm by disavowing bad links.

The best course of action has always been not to disavow links, unless you were specifically penalised by Google, but to acquire good, great and fantastic links. You do that by creating good content, becoming an expert in your field and by being viewed as an authority.

More Information:

• Link Spam Algorithms Don’t Use Disavow
• Google Ignores or Penalises Guest Post Link Spam
• Google Gary’s SMX AMA
• Basic External Linking & Mentions

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We recently released the super-exciting The State of SEO in mid-2017. Read it now.

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• Cat meet pigeons. Pigeons meet cat.
• Some people love disavowing links, others do better things with their time.
• Rarely, unless you have been actively engaging in link spam tactics do you need to disavow links.
• If you have been spamming links, then you need to stop, and then you need to clean up.
• Read The State of SEO in mid-2017.
• Read about how Google’s Mobile First Index is not Mobile Friendly.
• Finally, get your content ranking well on Google by starting to understand Find Crawl Index.

Thanks for reading. If you would like to discuss what these changes mean for your web property, or would like to know how to implement them, please feel free to contact me.

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