Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Spam Score & Redirecting Inbound Links
-
Hi,
I recently downloaded a spreadsheet of inbound links to my client sites and am trying to 301 redirect the ones that are formatted incorrectly or just bad links in general (they all link to the site domain, but they used to have differently formatted urls on their old site, or the link URL in general has strange stuff on it).
My question is, should I even bother redirecting these links if their spam score is a little high (i.e. 20-40%)? it already links to the existing domain, just with a differently formatted URL. I just want to make sure it goes to a valid URL on the site, but I don't want to redirect to a valid URL if it's going to harm the client's SEO. Also not sure what to do about the links with the --% spam score.
I really appreciate any input as I don't have a lot of experience with how to deal with spammy links.
-
Hi Ali,
Yeah, I would agree that it is a spammy site. When I tried visiting it, I went through a lot of redirects and ended up on some random page. I would disavow the domain and still implement 301 redirects.
-
Hi Mazen,
Thank you so much for your reply.
Here's an example of a domain with a 43% spam score: 123coolpictures.com. The DA is 26 though. Still seems like a spammy site?
-
Hi,
A spam score of 20%-40% doesn't necessarily mean that the backlink is bad/spammy. It's only an indication - you can read more about MOZ's spam score calculation here.
I would strongly advise implementing 301 redirects because the old URL can have more valuable backlinks that you still can't see. As good as MOZ's crawler is, it won't pick up everything Google does.
If you're worried about a certain link being spammy, I would go visit it and see what kind of website/page it's sitting on and if it does turn out to be pure spam, you can Disavow that link from Google Search Console. Otherwise, I'd keep the link.
Hope that helps!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Do links from subdomains pass the authority and link juice of main domain ?
Hi, There is a subdomain with a root domain's DA 90. I can earn a backlink from that subdomain. This subdomain is fresh with no traffic yet. Do I get the ranking boost and authority from the subdomain? Example: I can earn a do-follow link from **https://what-is-crm.netlify.app/ **but not from https://netlify.app
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | teamtc0 -
How to find Spam Website?
Hi guys, I'm seo newbie and really want to find websites that hurt seo ranking to avoid get link. Which tools or trick can help me to find those site?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | denakalami0 -
Advice needed! How to clear a website of a Wordpress Spam Link Injection Google penalty?
Hi Guys, I am currently working on website that has been penalised by Google for a spam link injection. The website was hacked and 17,000 hidden links were injected. All the links have been removed and the site has subsequently been redesigned and re-built. That was the easy part 🙂 The problems comes when I look on Webmaster. Google is showing 1000's of internal spam links to the homepage and other pages within the site. These pages do not actually exist as they were cleared along with all the other spam links. I do believe though this is causing problems with the websites rankings. Certain pages are not ranking on Google and the homepage keyword rankings are fluctuating massively. I have reviewed the website's external links and these are all fine. Does anyone have any experience of this and can provide any recommendations / advice for clearing the site from Google penalty? Thanks, Duncan
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CayenneRed890 -
Suspicious external links to site have 302 redirects
Hi, I have been asked to look at a site where I suspect some questionable SEO work, particularly link building. The site does seem to be performing very poorly in Google since January 2014, although there are no messages in WMT. Using WMT, OPenSiteExplorer, Majestic & NetPeak, I have analysed inbound links and found a group of links which although are listed in WMT, etc appear to 302 redirect to a directory in China (therefore the actual linking domain is not visible). It looks like a crude type of link farm, but I cant understand why they would use 302s not 301s. The domains are not visible due to redirects. Should I request a disavow or ignore? The linking domains are listed below: http://www.basalts.cn/
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | crescentdigital
http://www.chinamarbles.com.cn/
http://www.china-slate.com.cn/
http://www.granitecountertop.com.cn/
http://www.granite-exporter.com/
http://www.sandstones.biz/
http://www.stone-2.com/
http://www.stonebuild.cn/
http://www.stonecompany.com.cn/
http://www.stonecontact.cn/
http://www.stonecrate.com/
http://www.stonedesk.com/
http://www.stonedvd.com/
http://www.stonepark.cn/
http://www.stonetool.com.cn/
http://www.stonewebsite.com/ Thanks Steve0 -
Pages linked with Spam been 301 redirected to 404\. Is it ok
Pl suggest, some pages having some spam links pointed to those pages are been redirected to 404 error page (through 301 redirect) - as removing them manually was not possible due to part of core component of cms and many other coding issue, the only way as advised by developer was making 301 redirect to 404 page. Does by redirecting these pages to 404 page using 301 redirect, will nullify all negative or spam links pointing to them and eventually will remove the resulting spam impact on the site too. Many Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Modi0 -
Is it worth getting links from .blogspot.com and .wordpress.com?
Our niche ecommerce site has only one thing going for it: We have numerous opportunities on a weekly basis to get reviews from "mom bloggers". We need links - our domain authority is depressing. My concern is that these "mom bloggers" tend to have blogs that end with .blogspot.com or .wordpress.com. How do I screen for "reviewers" that are worth getting links from and how can I make the most of the community we have available to us?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Wilkerson1 -
Closing down site and redirecting its traffic to another
OK - so we currently own two websites that are in the same industry. Site A is our main site which hosts real estate listings and rentals in Canada and the US. Site B hosts rentals in Canada only. We are shutting down site B to concentrate solely on Site A, and will be looking to redirect all traffic from Site B to Site A, ie. user lands on Toronto Rentals page on Site B, we're looking to forward them off to Toronto Rentals page on Site A, and so on. Site A has all the same locations and property types as Site B. On to the question: We are trying to figure out the best method of doing this that will appease both users and the Google machine. Here's what we've come up with (2 options): When user hits Site B via Google/bookmark/whatever, do we: 1. Automatically/instantly (301) redirect them to the applicable page on Site A? 2. Present them with a splash page of sorts ("This page has been moved to Site A. Please click the following link <insert anchor="" text="" rich="" url="" here="">to visit the new page.").</insert> We're worried that option #1 might confuse some users and are not sure how crawlers might react to thousands of instant redirects like that. Option #2 would be most beneficial to the end-user (we're thinking) as they're being notified, on page, of what's going on. Crawlers would still be able to follow the URL that is presented within the splash write-up. Thoughts? We've never done this before. It's basically like one site acquiring another site; however, in this case, we already owned both sites. We just don't have time to take care of Site B any longer due to the massive growth of Site A. Thanks for any/all help. Marc
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | THB0
