Ignite Visibility has recently conducted a study on 10 websites to determine whether or not the Google disavow tool could be used to increase traffic and rankings in the current SEO environment. This study was conducted from the time period of 5/01/13 to 7/20/13.
Important Study Points
- All domains were over 5 years old.
- All domains had over 600 domains linking in.
- All domains had over 300 “low quality” links pointing at the site.
- Low quality links were determined as follows.
- Page rank of 2 or below.
- Domains ranked for 0 terms in SEM rush.
- Links were on websites that were off topic and links were unnatural
Study Process
During this period over 300 links were blocked on each of the 10 domains. Links were evaluated on a one-by-one basis. The Ignite Visibility team grouped together low quality links based on the criteria above. Following this, they reviewed each link individually. Ignite Visibility then performed a disavow on the links. When the link disavow was performed an annotation was made in Google Analytics to account for the exact date.
The Result
9 of the 10 websites saw a jump in both webmaster tools search queries and Google Analytics organic traffic. It is important to note that the one website which did not had a malware issue that was resolved prior to the disavow link request.
Important Points
Ignite Visibility does not recommend doing this without a professional. Ignite Visibility took great time and effort to look through every single link. They then used their industry knowledge to select the links that were clearly on low quality websites.
Conclusion
Ignite Visibility feels there is a strong correlation here. Although this study was only performed on 10 websites, they believe these findings to be relevant. Ignite Visibility believes that by blocking low quality links to a website with the Google Disavow tool, better rankings and traffic can be achieved.
John E Lincoln, President of SEO and Social at Ignite Visibility, says, “We see a strong correlation here. Google seems to suppress websites with a large amount of low quality links. Less is certainly more in the new world of SEO. We have seen excellent results for our clients with our updated, white hat SEO and social media strategies.”