Should I get these links removed?
-
Hi, I am trying to clean up the seo of my website. Recently stopped using a professional which might have been using grey hat tactics.
I am researching, researching , researching but having trouble pulling the trigger on what I am finding.
I have a couple old link exchanges going on. They are quite old. Some of them are on the footer of a website, and therefore bring in a lot of links (ie every time a new page is created). I am wondering if I should ask to get these links removed..
My link profile is pretty bad(at least according to me), nothing extremely bad, but lots of leftover of links coming from petitions, forums etc.. that I can't get removed.
I have recently gotten some mention on good website but they have a way around linking directly to any website so I dont get much help from that..
If you guys need my website I can share if need be.
thanks!
-
If the links are exact anchors (which I assume they are if you were doing link exchanges) and are in the footer, I would get them removed. I have not heard of anyone linkbuilding their way out of Penguin; only by removing bad links have people recovere. So yes, I would remove these links if they are this way.
Branded links are usually fine, unless they are something like what WPMU dealt with and they were too close to exact anchors.
Penguin seems to mean that there are specific links that Google does not like. Go look at the posts that have been written for the different types they don't like, and look through your backlink profile to find the money terms where you might have too many exact anchors.
Good luck.
-
Normally it is not a good idea to remove bad links, as it is more fruitful to build new and better ones, but with sidewide links it could be a good idea, depending on how well related the website is to yours and what anchor text is used.
If the sidewide/footer links are on very related websites with your brand/url as anchor text, I would say do nothing.
If unrelated and keyword anchor, I would say delete them and anything in the middle, well up to you.
This all assumes that your rankings plummeted after Penguin, if they did not, then leave the links anyway and just try to get better new ones.
-
take a look at this old link you are getting the link exchange for , what is the DA of this site and the PA of the page(if you don't know what they are join Seomoz or download the free extension , also another very impotent factors:
is it relevant ???
how many links he have to others , is he web spamming ??
that's really the factors you need to look for when you get links , problem is sometimes we get great links and then after few months this site sold to many like us and the same site that was great now flag by Google.
so don't rush with removing this links , do inspect them.
hope that help you
Mike
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
-
Inbound Links not showing. Links are not no follow
Over the past several months I have definitely received inbound links to my website ( none of which are no follow). I have HubSpot as well s Moz and none of the links are showing. My competitors with the same link sources are showing though. I am completely dumbfounded. Why are my inbound links not showing and how much time does it take for them to show if they show at all? Thank you!
Link Building | | NPatt0 -
How do I search for a link within a competitors website that is linking my website?
Hello, I have just been checking my link profile and according to webmaster tools a competitor is linking to my website. Is there anyway of finding this link besides looking at every page within their website? Many thanks
Link Building | | mblsolutions0 -
Internal linking anchor text with automated ASP.NET link building
Hi Everyone I really need some help here, the problem I have must be one that many have. I have a simple e-commerce style website so 1 product page can in fact get 40-50 internal links to it. These links come from a mixture of: 1. The parent category pages that the product sits on (Rugged PDA) and in turn the 10 filter pages of this category page (Rugged PDA, ordered by battery size). 2. Alternative product list on other product pages, So many products link to each other as alternatives. From Google analytics we can see that visitors like to browse product to product seeing 5 alternatives on each page with titles like "Smaller", "more rugged" etc. 3. Manufactuer pages, so we have a link to each product from each manufacturer home page where we talk lots about each manufacture we resell. We also have links from images used in the website. So its a nice usable website but we're finding that Google is still telling us in Webmaster tools that it thinks some links are dubious and we're trying to find out why. We only now have 190 external links to the website, most are internal and from the website or our blog on a subdomain. The problem we think is that we generate the category and products pages all dynamically so the anchor text is looking the same. Will this potentially create issues for us? Dave
Link Building | | Raptor-crew0 -
Honest thoughts needed about link building / removal.
I have a small online business that has suffered through Google updates over the past year. Turns out that the links built by a previous SEO were harmful - yes, it's the usual story, I know. I've been in touch with an SEO about link removal/link building and have had a proposal. It's not cheap and I would need to dig deep, but it'll certainly be worth it if things work out. If it doesn't, it'll probably become impossible to continue the business. Personally speaking, it's a sorry situation. For link removal, the SEO's proposing to contact the webmasters followed by disavowing, if needed. There's 15k links, but I think a high percentage of these are from industry blogs that I sponsor that have site wide links. Have you heard many success stories about outsourced link removal? For link building, they will be targeting industry websites and blogs. The thing is, I know most of the industry bloggers anyway, and can probably reach out to them myself, if I can develop the right high quality content that they will want to feature. Call me a cynic, but I'm not sure how the SEO can do this. The quality of content on these blogs is extremely high as it's a very creative/visual industry that I'm involved in. I'm just not sure how much scope there is for a third party (with no knowledge of the industry) to do this effectively. That said, there's blogs that aren't directly related to my niche, and I suppose there's possible opportunity there. Maybe??! If the link removal is a good idea, am I better off trying to build links myself and combine that with the link removal service?
Link Building | | Coraltoes770 -
To Remove or not to Remove?
Howdy! In the midst of communicating with Google because of a robots.txt issue, we had a bit of a backfire of sorts and received a notice of unnatural links. It's not a horror story or anything. It's seems more like, "Hey, before we address your other issues, here is something you should clean up" although I don't dare put words in Google's mouth. A few years ago we hired an SEO company which shall remain nameless who did some anchor text blog posts for us which at the time, we had no idea was an issue. There aren't an enormous number of these links hanging around, but checking our anchor text, in OSE, we saw that there are around 50 or so. We decided to use removeem.com as an easy way to request removal of these links. However, on first run, removeem returned a large number of anchor text links beyond just these obvious ones that are actually natural links from users, fans or those that sell their goods on our website. Examples of these anchor text links would be: "DEMO" or "Find My Products Here" or "Home Page" http://www.mysite.com/goodstuff/foryoutubuy/html We are a media selling site and we do have a lot of download sites that attempt to "share" content and link back to us via a DEMO link, etc. While these aren't the greatest sites in the world, they are nevertheless natural links. Heck, they are pirating our goods, shouldn't we at least garner the link juice from them?!!? 😉 So, questions: Should we remove all of these links as removem.com suggests or only remove the ones that are unnatural and clarify with google that these other links are natural? Thanks for your help! Craig
Link Building | | TheCraig0 -
Link Analysis shows no external sites linking to me?
Hi All, I hope you can help. Link Analysis shows no external sites linking to me? but I know for a fact there are. Why is this? I have submitted my site to a few local directories and can see my site is on their site but when I run a Link Analysis it shows that I have no links. Does anyone know why this is? Many thanks, Aidan My site is http://www.theethicalsilkco.com/
Link Building | | aidanlawlor0 -
How do I start trying to get links from blogs
Do I just find blogs websites that are in the same topical area and ask them can i link back?
Link Building | | Feily0 -
Should I unify my links?
Checking at opensiteexplorer.org I can see that: mydomain.com has has DA 26, linking root domains 1, total links 22 www.mydomain.com has DA 26, linking root domains 31, total links 89 The 22 links to the non-www domain come from the same site, which I would be able to convince to change to the www domain. Is it worth doing it? Will it add up to better DA? Thanks J PS: with only 32 root domains I think I have to do some serious link building...
Link Building | | TIBA0