Is removing inorganic links a bad idea?
-
Hey there,
We have recently been in touch with a SEO agency that recomended we remove all inorganic links from our backlink profile.
Most of the links are pretty good but there are some news sites that have sitewide links to our site. The link is in the nav menu, as a useful link. We didn't ask for this link it was totally organic.
Also some link building in the past was focused on anchor text so some of the keywords may have been over emphasised.
Is it a good idea to go about removing all of the potentially inorganic looking links?
My concern is that we wipe out links that google are actually valuing. I still know sites are ranking #1 with much more dubious backlink profiles, and then there's this guy who removed his sitewide backlinks and dropped in his ranking:
http://www.seomoz.org/q/removed-site-wide-links
If a competitor decided to add negative links to our site, it would take longer to find and remove negative links than it would for them to add them. It seems odd that google would allow negative SEO to be that easy..
What do you think?
-
There isn't much traffic at all as the link is actually in a sub-sub-menu in the nav (the strange things people do).
But I'm more concerned whether removing the link will actually have a negative effect on our SEO
-
Yeah it's linked with our company name so not too dodgey
We also have other sites linking sitewide with our logo, also not paid, just people are saying we are good place to get info from. Some of these are in the sidebar so could look like paid ads..
We have 10,000 links from 350 domains in OSE. Probably 97% of those links are organic. Do you think that would be causing an impact?
-
How much traffic is this site wide link providing? None? Deal with it! Tons? Leave it be.
-
What keyword are they using to link to you? Have you noticed that your rankings have dropped for that keyword? If it's an exact anchor text match keyword, you could consider asking them to change it to your brandname, but again only if you believe that link is negatively impacting you.
It also depends on how robust your link profile is. If you already have thousands of links, then 1 site with a sitewide link probably won't impact you that much, compared to if you have a relatively small link profile.
-
Thanks Irving. The issue isn't so much about removing all the links, but rather what to do with sitewide ones that provide a disproportionate amount of links from one domain.
Should they be dealt to, we could ask them to remove it or make it nofollow, or should we just roll on with the rest of our SEO work, and only respond to that issue if we see a manual penalty?
You're right about dodgey ones too, definitely worth dealing to them now.
-
Yeah that was my feeling too.
However their response is that we are being algorithmically penalized because we have a 10,000's of links from 100's of domains, so a large amount of those links are potentially site wide.
(1 site for example has 100,000's pages with us in their main sitewide navigation).
So to move forward with our SEO work we first need to remove the links that appear inorganic.
Could this be possible or do links only need to be removed when you have a link warning?
-
I would look at the sites linking to you (always a good practice) and if you see any really dodgy ones have them removed. I wouldn't go removing all of your links if you have not incurred a penalty. I'd use that effort on getting new good links to improve your link profile.
-
Have you received any warnings in Google Webmaster Tools or seen a drop in ranking for keywords that are targeted in the sitewide links? If not, I would not remove any links, as they could be passing link juice. If you ever receive a link warning, then I would consider disavowing or removing links at that time.
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
-
Are These Links Junk?
I hired an SEO to create incoming links to me website insisting that only white hat techniques be used. The SEO was highly recommended by a family friend. In 3 months about 14 links to my site were obtained. The URLs for the domains where the links originate are below. I paid $8,000 for the services of the SEO provider to create the links over 4 months. When I looked at the links more carefully I noticed that the sites did not seem to have owners. That there was no phone number, physical address and scant information about ownership. I also noticed that most pages had outgoing links of a promotional nature. Also, that content created for me had grammatical and occasional spelling errors. The links did not look bad in terms of MOZ domain authority and MOZ page authority, but when I went subscribed to AHREFS a few days ago and evaluated the links, I noticed that the URL rating (somewhat equivalent to MOZ page authority) was really low. Furthermore, noticed that one of the domains solicits paid links from gambling sites. The SEO who sourced the links on my behalf says he will explain why I "have nothing to worry about". Dividing his monthly fee by the number of links and I paid $571 per link. Is it possible the the below domains could have pages that I would want links from? Would these links be potentially worth more than a few hundred dollars? O are these sites more like a cheap PBN or maybe "the hoth". If the links are in fact good I would be delighted. But if they are of poor quality could I legitimately ask for a refund? Also, are these domains so bad that it is imperative for me to get the links removed? <colgroup><col width="198"></colgroup>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
| https://www.equities.com |
| http://www.realestaterama.com |
| https://moneyinc.com |
| https://homebusinessmag.com |
| http://digitalconnectmag.com |
| https://suburbanfinance.com/ |
| http://www.homebunch.com |
| http://inman.com |
| https://www.propertytalk.com/ |
| http://activerain.com |
| https://www.conservativedailynews.com/ |
| http://moneyforlunch.com/ |
| http://baltimorepostexaminer.com/ |
| https://www.tgdaily.com/ |
| |0 -
External Keyword Anchor Links - Always Bad?
1) I've been told that other sites linking to my site with keyword-rich text are bad. 2) But Google Console / Analytics shows that we rank extremely high for random, pointless phrases loosely tied to the topic of our site. Like "dht blocker". (its a hair loss site) 3) This week I began analyzing our backlinks. Guess what I found? Literally hundreds of bot-created spammy trackback and pingback text links around the phrase "dht blocker" It seems to me that keyword rich anchor text on external sites is NOT a bad thing. In fact its an outstanding way to rank better for your desired keywords. Obviously the "bad" is the spam element. Probably the high quantity. On unrelated websites. But guess what? It worked. _We are ranking extremely well for these pointless phrases, thanks to these spam bots. _ Obviously we will be disavowing all these sites. But I want to start building quality links via legitimate, honest means. So here is my question: If I begin a legitimate honest link building campaign with other websites, and request that they put the HREF around our most coveted keyword phrase - is this inherently BAD? Or is it actually possibly GOOD? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HLTalk1 -
Bad Backlink?
Hi I found this site whilst looking through WMT backlinks to our site: http://www.buildingarena.co.uk/companies/key-industrial-equipment Is this type of iFrame of our site a bad signal to Google? It's not something we've done, so I'd like to know before getting it removed. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Does the number of links on a page metric include repeated links?
Just wondering if the number of links on the page metric includes links that are repeated? So, if I had 100 links to one page would this count as 100 or 1 link?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cornwall
If it's the former does this mean more links to one page adds weight? Thanks0 -
Removing old versions of a page.
Recently one of my good friends updated his iweb based screen printing site to wordpress per my recommendation. This update has helped dramatically boost his rankings to #3 for most local keywords. This new site is now V5 of his site, but all older iweb versions are still on the ftp. There are a total of 209 pages on the ftp, as versions of about 30 actual pages. The pages have changed significantly with each update, leaving very little duplicate content, but the old ones are still on the google index. Would it hurt the rankings to clean up these older versions & 301 redirect to the new versions, or should we leave them? The site for reference is: http://takeholdprinting.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GoogleMcDougald0 -
Removing Canonical Links
We implemented rel=canonical as we decided to paginate our pages. We then ran some testing and on the whole pagination did not work out so we removed all on-page pagination. Now, internally when I click for example a link for Widgets I get the /widgets.php but searching through Google I get to /widgets.php?page=all . There are not redirects in place at the moment. The '?page=all' page has been rated 'A' by the SEOmoz tool under On Page Optimization reports and performs much better than the exact same page without the '?page=all' (the score dips to a 'D' grade) so need to tread carefully so we don't lose the link value. Can anyone advise us on the best way forward? Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jannkuzel0 -
Link Building Tactics for 2012?
Hi all! Happy New Year! Just wanted to pop in here and start a discussion to see what are some of the most effective link building techniques you'll be using for 2012? -Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | alhallinan1 -
Advertising links hurt SEO?
I'm working with a publisher who said that having DFA links on his site will hurt his SEO. He is taking my link and pointing it back to his site and then to mine. Does that sound right to you?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GFTMarketer0