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.
Remove links or change anchor text?
-
I am currently in the process of cleaning up the link profile for a website that has been hit by Penguin thanks to loads of links from free directories with exact match keyword anchor texts (about 200 root domains from total of 300 root domains).
I was wondering whether it's best to remove these un-natrual keyword anchor text links altogether, or change the anchor texts to brand (domain name, domainname.com, www.domainname.com, http://www.domainname.com)?
I am currently trying to remove these links but was thinking it would be quicker to get to a healthier link profile (in terms of brand/commercial anchor text split) by altering the anchor texts and not removing them. Some of these directories are the worst of the worst on the other hand.
Also note that I'm only really getting about a 30% response rate from the owners of these directories.
Any thoughts?
Many thanks in advance.
-
Both of these comments are on target, that said, I would remove any links you can.... within reason. And, I am generally a big fan of updating content. Regardless of the successes of the page. I think fresh is good, it keeps people coming back......... cheers!
-
you're lucky that is a manageable number. i would remove all crap directory links since you are saying they are the worst of the worst it can only hurt you.
-
I've recently undertaken the same task and I decided to make a decision based on the quality of the directory. If you currently have a low amount of back links with your brand/domain in them then changing the anchor text on some of the links will definitely help you build a more natural and strongly branded profile.
Install a page rank toolbar if you don't have one already and check the PR on the home page of each directory. If it comes up as 0 then rather just remove the link (if possible) as it's either a low quality directory to begin with or it's been totally devalued by Google.
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
-
If I disavow bad links on "disavow link webmaster" will they still show up on my moz reports?
We recently found out we have a lot of bad links linking back to our website from spam sites, I disavowed them through the google disavow link webmaster. On my moz report it still shows the links, is that normal?
Link Building | | Ryan.Cruz0 -
Sitemap.xml change to anchor links (converter)
Hi all, I would like import the sitemap.xml to an anchorlinks list. List with links navigatetion html ^^. Is there a posibility to use a tool or in excel? Because I will use 5000 products and 1000 brands.
Link Building | | Dreamgame20160 -
Drop in Rankings After Removing Links
So I removed some links to a particular homepage for one of the sites we own, this page had A LOT of links pointing to it using exact match anchors. And for the most part the links were coming from low quality pages/content. After removing a good chunk of them I noticed are rankings went down from around 8-9th two weeks ago to 21 as of today. Has anyone else had a problem like this before? I'm thinking about restoring some of these links now to see if I can recover some of that. Any thoughts on doing this? Thanks
Link Building | | ThridHour0 -
Adding Anchor Text in Blog Comments
Hi, could someone please let me know the correct html code to get an anchor text link in a blog comment please? Thanks!
Link Building | | Clicksjim1 -
What is keyword rich anchor text?
So, I have searched around the internet but, I still can't find the answer.What is Keyword Rich Anchor Text? Is it basically just exact matching to the page. For example if my page was www.randonmpage.com would a keyword rich anchor text be randompage? Thanks. Peter
Link Building | | PeterRota0 -
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 -
How to remove backlinks?
Hey guys, With all this anti over optimization movement going around with Google, I decided to do a link building profile audit. I see some pages with PR 0 and some pages that expired. My websites are not penalized at this moment, however I do want to avoid this at all costs. What can I do? Could a backlink from an expired domain penalize my site?
Link Building | | nrv0 -
Porn link ...
I just ran https://www.majesticseo.com report for back links and showed me that I have one link at porn site ... not sure if it will be appropriate to post it here. The link was discovered on 03.05.11 and when I visited today link is not there... I dont know who put that link there. Can I get penalty for that from google? Can it be a mistake?
Link Building | | DiamondJewelryEmpire1