Remove Unatural Links by SEO Co.
-
The SEO firm we hired built 2797 links with 123 domain within two month period (March and April) when we don't know better.
We received Google's warning on 3/28, and they didn't tell us anything but keep building. Well, that's history now. We learned our lesson. That's why we are a member of SEOmoz.
The SEO firm is not too keen on helping us remove the link (we've discontinue the service) after one initial attempt to a few site with tons of links (performed by their Indian team).
I've got advice from this Forum regarding link removal. The most suggestions we get is to remove it as many as possible and move on building good links. But, I am afraid such approach will take us years to come ahead as we are under staffed.
I saw here that someone mentioned their link building firm wants to charge $10 for links removed. Based on that idea, I wonder if I should offer some monetary incentive? If so, what amount would make financial sense?
-
Hi Nakul,
Thanks for the detailed suggestion again.
We will take Richard's suggestion to explore the possibility of hiring Virante if the price is right. However, it is great learning experience to gain insight to your thought process.
Have a great weekend!
-
Richard,
Thank you so much for sharing the info. I will definitely give them a call and compare their cost vs. what Nakul suggested.
It's very kind of you to share the "secret".
-
Hi Richard please can you tell me the price you paid for virante to remove the links for you, we to are in the same boat,.
-
We were penalized for back links our SEO firm acquired for us long before the Penguin update. As I found out, link removal can be a slow, painful process. After months of trying to do it ourselves, we hired Virante, a company that is SEOMoz-recommended. They are fast and efficient and it was well worth the money.
Only one of the directories they contacted wanted to be paid $10 per removed link. It's no wonder they were one of the spammiest site contacted.
-
Honestly, my advice would be to grab a list of your backlinks using both Google Webmaster Console as well as the OpenSiteExplorer and merge them into a spreadsheet and get rid of all the duplicates.
Next step would be to identify which of those links are spammy and you'd be better of having them removed. This is in my opinion the hardest part depending upon the volume of sites/links.
Then hire somebody to find email addresses of the websites where you want links removed. Finding something on the page and if nothing else, using whois. I would then send an email to each one of those contacts and in a quick short email, tell me the URL where the link is located and your site URL. Tell them to remove the link right away since you have received a Google Warning. I would imagine this taking care of a good portion of those links. I would send another email in a week and then again for a total of 2-4 times to see if you get a response and get the link removed. When nothing else worked, offer then $10 for the link removal and that should gain their attention. If that does not work either, I would suggest you move on.
I hope this helps. You could get somebody on odesk.com or a similar site to get all the labor intensive work done.
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
-
Unsolved Are links from staff profile pages no longer good for SEO?
Hey there, We run a small site that lists lawyers and we have an opportunity to ask the lawyers to display a 'badge' on their own website's staff page, linked back to the page on our site that they are listed on. Initially I thought this would be good link building (i.e. the lawyer's own staff/profile pages on their website linking to our site where they are listed = a highly relevant link). I was less concerned about the authority of the law firm's sites, though these will range from sometimes low-ish to medium. I just assumed that Google would see the value in the lawyer wanting to link to our site where they are listed. However, our SEO has said that these days Google doesn't give much/any value to these types of links from individual staff pages. His advice was to try and get the badge added to one of their service pages (or their About page) which will be unlikely as the badge is person-specific. I thought I'd ask if this was everyone else's experience regarding Google not valuing links from individual staff pages? Thanks for you help 🙂
Link Building | | Andy-H0 -
How to decide which links to remove.
I manage the seo for a bunch of different websites. We currently have a problem with links from low quality sources.... way too many of them and then way too much exact match anchor text. We have a lot of sites that we basically linked together (blog network) and we are in the process of correcting this. We know we have a lot of links we need to remove and/or anchor text we need to rewrite. My question is how do I know which ones to remove and/or edit. I know that having some links from low quality sources isn't bad, or links from some other sites you own, or having some exact match anchor text. I know this isn't all bad, and some of it is expected but we have a LOT of this going on. So basically I need to make decisions on each and every link as to whether we want to keep it, edit the anchor text, nofollow it, or delete it. I'm just not sure of what the best action is that should to be taken for each link. Any help would be really appreciated. http://jesus.christ.org/ If you browse around on there you will see what I'm talking about with the low quality links, or if you run it through open site explorer you will really see what I mean 🙂 Thank you, I hope to get some responses soon.
Link Building | | ThridHour0 -
Will removing a 301 re-direct from an old spammed URL drop the links from our profile?
Essentially there is an old page that has been the target of an old school link building agency. There is a 301 re-direct from the old page to the newer version. if I drop the 301 re-direct and update our sitemaps. Will those links be removed from our profile? The old URL passes nothing in actual value & a link building campaign has been running on the new page for over a year.
Link Building | | BenjyH0 -
Link Detox and Link Removal
I have a question about which links to remove after running a link detox from Link Research Tools. First a little back story. I had had an SEO company link building for one of the websites I own. But I have recently stopped working with them. In the last month my rankings have near dropped off the charts. I have just recently gotten access to Google webmaster tools and noticed an unnatural link warning from back in March. So yesterday I ran link detox and it reported 19 toxic links, 120 suspicious links, and 24 healthy links. It's rather obvious that I should remove all of the toxic links. They all from sites that have been deindexed by google. But my question is a about the suspicious links. What should my criteria be for removing them? Am I better off removing them all and leaving my site with only 24 healthy links or should I personally comb through them and remove only the worst of the worst so that I leave my site with a few more links? I'd really like to get the site ready to resubmit to google as soon as I can. Thoughts? yyCOf.png
Link Building | | CobraJones950 -
Penalized by SEO Link Wheelers Backlinks
Just over a year ago, I've bought 4 link building packages from SEO Link Wheelers. From what I see now, most of their website network has been penalized / banned and now it's hurting my websites. I've tried to contact them but they won't reply. I'd be willing to pay to have them remove the links but they simply won't answer. And I haven't been rude or impolite at all in my communications with them. I've tried calling them to but to no avail. I know where most of the bad links are, thanks to linkresearchtools.com Now I gotta get rid of that crap. Any suggestions?
Link Building | | sbrault740 -
EBay listing links SEO value?
Hi guys, Our website has an eBay widget which lots of eBay users put on their listings. We are thinking of using that as a way to get links from eBay listings. However, since most eBay listings will disappear after 90 days, is this worth doing and also will Google count those links? Many thanks David
Link Building | | sssrpm0 -
How might Google differentiate between an artificial link exchange and partners linking to each other?
Hi, All! Artificial link exchanges (contacting a vaguely connected site and requesting to exchange links to increase your PR) is, as far as I know, considered an outdated, not-so-smart technique, as Google might devalue them. Yet, for real business partners to exchange links seems to be an entirely accepted and encouraged technique. While that would be intuitive to a human who's viewing the pages. how might Google detect when two sites that link to each other are linking because they are trusted business associates (valuable) as opposed to when they are doing a link exchange (devalued)? Thanks! Aviva
Link Building | | debi_zyx0 -
Are 36 links from one site to nested pages better than one link to the root domain?
I have a Driving School website www.1stclassdriving.co.uk. The site is structured geographically with 36 area pages, one
Link Building | | Brian_Worger
page per area post code and one page per Driving Instructor. I am trying to develop links and have found a site (da91 pa
63) where I can create area links to each of my area pages if I
wish. Is it best to just create one link to the root page or
should I create 36 individual links to each area page? - which is most valuable?0