Google’s John Mueller posted one of his classic tweets the other day around links. He said to an established SEO when he was asked which links should they disavow. John said “If it’s not obvious to someone like you, then those links are probably neither helping nor harming, so it wouldn’t matter if you had them disavowed or not.”
The specific question was “I guess what this leaves us to figure out is how many links (or what %) which go against G’s guidelines are enough to prompt a manual action, if spotted. Everyone is going to have “Low-quality directory or bookmark site links” so what’s the tipping point?”
So John responded basically saying – stop worrying about it. If it isn’t a link that is so bad and so in your face that it is obvious to you, then that link is probably not really harming you – it might not help you (i.e. Google might ignore it) but it probably isn’t so bad where it will hurt you (i.e. manual action).
He then added “It’s easy to focus too much on links – if you’re worried, then disavow, otherwise spend more time making the site fantastic!.”
Here are those tweets:
If it’s not obvious to someone like you, then those links are probably neither helping nor harming, so it wouldn’t matter if you had them disavowed or not. It’s easy to focus too much on links – if you’re worried, then disavow, otherwise spend more time making the site fantastic!
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) May 1, 2019
I assume this answer won’t satisfy you all – but I kind of like it.
Forum discussion at Twitter.