Disavowing Press Release Links

[ash-grin]

We have a client who their prior SEO firm published numerous articles through a PR service. They have hundreds of backlinks with articles on sites that are not necessarily "toxic" but definitely not the best quality. A lot of the sites are not really relevant in topic to our client either. Some examples of these backlinks include bursakl. com celebwired. com and duniaga. com

My question is should we worry about disavowing any of these? I would hate to disavow tons of backlinks that could potentially be helping them. They are not really the quality I would recommend to build but I am not sure the best steps to take.

 

[djbaxter]

Google Discourages Use of Disavow Tool. Unless You Know the Bad Links

Google's John Mueller stated that "vast majority of sites" do not need to use disavow tool.

www.searchenginejournal.com

 

[ash-grin]

Google Discourages Use of Disavow Tool. Unless You Know the Bad Links

Google's John Mueller stated that "vast majority of sites" do not need to use disavow tool.

www.searchenginejournal.com

Hi @djbaxter Yes, I know disavowing random low quality links is not necessary, but we are on the fence since it is recommended to disavow links that you or your SEO are responsible for which technically includes all of these PR backlinks. This is where I am having the debate and looking for recommendations. Are you saying we should disavow every single PR link then since their past SEO team created these? Wouldn't disavowing hundreds of these links at once possibly be a bad idea? We were thinking to remove the lower quality ones and keep the rest. The clients rankings are not horrific but could certainly improve. Let me know your thoughts!

 

[Phil Rozek]

@ash-grin, based on what you say, I wouldn't bother disavowing those. Many links you get from press releases are nofollowed, or they disappear after a while anyway.

Especially if your client has some solid links under the belt, and not just iffy links, there's little to no upside in disavowing. Sites that have good links inevitably get crappy ones over time, too. In my experience Google recognizes that, and is more forgiving of shaky links when a solid site gets them than when a shaky site gets even more shaky links.

 

[ash-grin]

@Phil Rozek Thank you so much for the feedback. Their links are kind of lacking overall (if you ignore the PR links), so we definitely want to focus on helping them build up quality links. So it sounds like the best route is just focus on new ones and let the PR ones be.

 

[Phil Rozek]

@ash-grin, yeah, that is what I'd do in this case. (Again, based just on what you've described.) You may even get a couple of decent links as a result of the press release, if it was even somewhat "newsworthy" (and not just the usual self-promo). Those would be a shame to disavow, whereas most of the clunker links will disappear over time or just not be bad enough to have ill effects.