Removing thousands of shady backlinks?
-
Hey guys,
We've been hired to redesign a website that has thousands of backlinks created by a (possibly) shady offshore company, and I'm wondering if anyone out there has experience dealing with a deletion of this size and type. Is it as simple as just disavowing the whole lot?
Thanks,
Jason
-
The site is ranking well and was not affected from Penguin. However, we believe the amount of bad backlinks (ranging from hundreds to thousands) will hurt the site's ranking soon. Our client has yet to receive any manual warning from Google as well.
-
Jason
You have some great detailed answers from Marie and Marcus. I guess the question I'd like to ask is, Why are you looking into this ? Did you get to a point where your site is not ranking as well before ? Or is it that you got an actual un-natural links warning ?
That could help justify what the next steps should be.
-
Marie:
Sorry, but I couldn't resist responding to this one. It's not the answer that's confusing, it's the situation. I like to compare modern SEO to fixing Macs (what I did in my previous lifetime). Sometimes you have to get out the goat entrails and burn the incense.
Sometimes there isn't an easy answer. Strangely enough on my site (which I inherited 3 months ago), the "bad" links don't seem to have really damaged it, as we have a Domain Authority of 63. Go figure.
Jim
-
The answer depends on whether or not the site has a manual penalty against it. If there is a message in WMT of unnatural links then it won't be enough to just disavow. You've got to go through a whole process of trying to manually remove links and reporting your efforts to Google and then disavowing the rest.
If you want to simply have those backlinks nofollowed then disavowing the whole lot will do the trick.
However, be careful if you're disavowing all of the links. I have seen cases where people went disavowing links willy nilly and did more harm than good. If the plan is to simply start over with a clean slate then go ahead and disavow. The problem is that these links will still be present in your backlink profile whether you use OSE, ahrefs, majestic or even WMT. They will simply be treated as nofollowed by Google.
But if you are trying to save some of the existing rankings then whether or not you disavow can be a complicated decision.
For example, the links could be shady, but if the site hasn't been affected by Penguin then you may not have to remove them. Some of them could actually be helping. Remember, Penguin is an algorithm and doesn't catch EVERYTHING.
Or, for another example, if the site has been affected by Penguin for certain keywords then you may not be able to rank for those keywords until you get rid of Penguin. But here's the problem - no one really knows with certainty how to do that. Some SEOs will tell you that disavowing all your links will clear it. Some will tell you that Penguin has already disavowed all of your links and all you need to do is get some good links. There are very few (if any) case studies that really show a site what to do.
How's that for a confusing answer? LOL!
-
Hey Jason
In a word, no, no way that simple. Google are simply not going to process that disavow unless they see you (or your client) have made a considerable effort in the removal of those links. In all likelyhood, it will take a good few months and some considerable effort to show that you have gone to lengths enough to satisfy them.
There are a bunch of tools that can help, but ultimately, there is still a lot of manual work involved in any clean up.
Few pointers.
Tools worth bothering with.
- Removeem
- Rmoov
- Link Detox
None of these will do the job for you and in all likelihood, you will want to use all three. Beyond that, if there is a redesign you can 404 old pages on the other site to kill inbound links but if most of your shady links are pointing at the homepage, there is not a lot you can do about them other than clean up and attempt a disavow.
You are going to have to document the whole process from putting together a list of candidate links for removal & collecting email addresses through to every removal request. I would also suggest possibly going beyond just the email and looking at phone numbers, letters and anything else you can do to show the level of effort required.
Depending on the history and any penalties you are going to want to submit your disavow and a reconsideration request detailing all of your tireless and persistant efforts.
In summary, it's not terribly hard or complicated, but there is just a whole bunch of work involved to do the job properly and to a level that Google is going to be happy with and don't expect results over night. My advice would be to brief your client that a honest clean up could take up to three months and three reinclusion requests along with a considerable investment in man hours to do the job properly.
This is a good job for an intern or apprentice. Well, let me rephrase that, it's a good job to give to an intern or apprentice, it's likely going to be quite a sucky job for them to have to do but baptism of fire and all!
Hope that helps!
Marcus
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
-
Error got removed by request
hey there, I have website, Which is Doing best on google, But from last 2-3 times i am Getting error in Google Search Console, removed by request., here is screenshot http://prntscr.com/iva5y0 My Question is i have Not Requested Google to Remove My Homepage URL, Then 1. Why I am Getting This warning again & again, ?? 2. Will this Harm My Sites Current traffic & Ranking Status ? 3.What Steps I need Take to stop This warning came again & again ??? Thnx in advance & please Help Out on this Query
Technical SEO | | innovative.rohit0 -
Using the Google Remove URL Tool to remove https pages
I have found a way to get a list of 'some' of my 180,000+ garbage URLs now, and I'm going through the tedious task of using the URL removal tool to put them in one at a time. Between that and my robots.txt file and the URL Parameters, I'm hoping to see some change each week. I have noticed when I put URL's starting with https:// in to the removal tool, it adds the http:// main URL at the front. For example, I add to the removal tool:- https://www.mydomain.com/blah.html?search_garbage_url_addition On the confirmation page, the URL actually shows as:- http://www.mydomain.com/https://www.mydomain.com/blah.html?search_garbage_url_addition I don't want to accidentally remove my main URL or cause problems. Is this the right way this should look? AND PART 2 OF MY QUESTION If you see the search description in Google for a page you want removed that says the following in the SERP results, should I still go to the trouble of putting in the removal request? www.domain.com/url.html?xsearch_... A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt – learn more.
Technical SEO | | sparrowdog1 -
Should I consider webmaster tools links and linked pages ratio to remove unnatural links?
I don't know this is a suitable place for post this question. Anyway I have done it. According to the Google webmaster tools, Links to your site page. My blog has considerable amount of links, from linked pages (from certain domain names). For an instance please refer following screenshot. When I am removing unnatural links, should I consider these, links from linked pages ratio? Almost all of these sites are social bookmarking sites. When I publish a new bookmark on those sites, they automatically add a homepage link. As a result of that, I got a huge number of home page links from linked pages. What is your recommendation? Thanks! webmaster.png web_master_tools.png
Technical SEO | | Godad0 -
Link removal from search rank checking sites
I'm going through the link removal process for unnatural links to a site. While I'm able to identify the obvious link profile and seo-article links that Google wants removed, what should we do about the links that are generated by the various seo link investigation and ranking services? Example: http://www.seoprofiler.com/analyze/allamericanfencing.com This site (seoprofiler) automatically creates these links to web sites when it generates its reports. Are those links that need to be removed or disavowed, or will Google not care? I want to err on the side of caution, but don't know how to treat these types of pages. The site didn't ask for or lobby for those links, so it's "natural" in that sense, but they're not editorially earned either (except for happen to be ranking for a similar term). Does anyone have experience on this aspect of the unnatural link grooming process?
Technical SEO | | CHarkins0 -
Would removing or making non relevant links no follow boost a site?
Hi, I have just been checking out the backlinks for a prospective new client. It appears they have a number of links that are totally irrelevant to their nature of business and I was wondering if they would improve in the rankings etc if I removed them or made them no follow instead? Or would I simply just be throwing away crucial link juice? Thanks in advance
Technical SEO | | Benjamin3790 -
Block or remove pages using a robots.txt
I want to use robots.txt to prevent googlebot access the specific folder on the server, Please tell me if the syntax below is correct User-Agent: Googlebot Disallow: /folder/ I want to use robots.txt to prevent google image index the images of my website , Please tell me if the syntax below is correct User-agent: Googlebot-Image Disallow: /
Technical SEO | | semer0 -
Remove Links or 301
Howdy Guys, Our main site has been hit pretty hard by penguin and we are just wondering what steps we should now take. For the past 2 months we have been working through our back link profile removing spammy / un-natural links, we have documented everything in a spreadsheet... We recently submitted a reconsideration request to Google and they have now responded saying we still have bad links. I'm just wondering would be it easier just to 301 redirect our site to another TLD we have for our main site? Or Do we keep working through our links 1 by 1 and removing them? Has anyone had any success in 301ing? Thanks, Scott
Technical SEO | | ScottBaxterWW0 -
Will removing the main nav from the homepage penalize the site?
I have a client who offers residential and commercial services. We are dividing up the site into two sections that distinguish between these services and the clients. On the homepage, we ask site visitors to first choose from the Commercial or Residential services. I don't want to have any main navigation options on the homepage because they will change depending on whether you select the commercial option or the residential. Will this hurt the site in terms of SEO? Are there any suggestions of how to structure the home nav so it is not confusing to the visitor, but won't hurt the optimization of the site? Thank you.
Technical SEO | | WebsightDesign0