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 feeds bad for duplicate content?
One of my clients has been invited to feature his blog posts here https://app.mindsettlers.com/. Here is an example of what his author page would look like: https://app.mindsettlers.com/author/6rs0WXbbqwqsgEO0sWuIQU. I like that he would get the exposure however I am concerned about duplicate content with the feed. If he has a canonical tag on each blog post to itself, would that be sufficient for the search engines? Is there something else that could be done? Or should he decline? Would love your thoughts! Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cindyt-17038
Cindy T.0 -
Link cloaking in 2015\. Is it a bad idea now?
Hi everyone, I run a travel-related website and work with various affiliate partners. We have thousands of pages of well-written and helpful content, and many of these pages link off to one of our affiliates for booking purposes. Years ago I followed the prevailing wisdom and cloaked those links (bouncing them into a folder that was blocked in the robots.txt file, then redirecting them off to the affiliate). Basically, doing as Yoast has written: https://yoast.com/cloak-affiliate-links/ However, that seems kind of spammy and manipulative these days. Doesn't Google talk about not trying to manipulate links and redirect users? Could I just "nofollow" these links instead and drop the whole redirect charade? Could cloaking actually work against you? Thoughts? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomNYC0 -
Software to Analyse Bad Links
Is it possible to get a pretty good idea of my site's link profile by merging the link data from Google Webmaster Tools, MOZ and SEMRUSH (backlinks). I would think that combining the linking domains from these three packages would create a pretty good profile. Once I create a list of domains that link to my site is it possible to run them thru MOZ so as to evaluate their quality? Last year I paid a reputable SEO firm to run a link analysis, process link removal requests and finally a disavow, only to see my domain authority decline from 33 to 24. So I am leary of the process. That being said I have reviewed the disavow file that was submitted last year and still see about a third of the low quality domains still linking to our site. Alternatively is it worthwhile to run a link detox report. Maybe it is worth biting the bullet and spending the $175.00 dollars to run a report. Our site (www.nyc-officespace-leader.com) does not have too many links so maybe I can research this manually. Thoughts???
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
Does Disavowing Links Negate Anchor Text, or Just Negates Link Juice
I'm not so sure that disavowing links also discounts the anchor texts from those links. Because nofollow links absolutely still pass anchor text values. And disavowing links is supposed to be akin to nofollowing the links. I wonder because there's a potential client I'm working on an RFP for and they have tons of spammy directory links all using keyword rich anchor texts and they lost 98% of their traffic in Pengiun 1.0 and haven't recovered. I want to know what I'm getting into. And if I just disavow those links, I'm thinking that it won't help the anchor text ratio issues. Can anyone confirm?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MiguelSalcido0 -
SEO before Replatforming - Good Idea?
Hello, We are in the midst of a major replatforming of our current website, the process will take roughly six to nine more months to complete. We are completing revamping our site - the new site will be on the same domain, but almost everything is changing - from the category structure, hierarchy, architecture, different regions on separate URLs will not be on the same with a currency converter, URLs - you name it, we're changing it. There has been internal discussions for some time on whether we should hire an outside firm to help us with our SEO. I have a lot of experience in SEO but my role has changed recently and we have had trouble filling my previous role. We are not looking for help with the replatforming project, we have a great plan in place to preserve link equity, tags, etc. We are looking for general SEO help as if replatforming wasn't on the table. My question is, is this smart to do before replatforming? In my opinion, it's not. Our new site will have completely different URLs and will be so dramatically different. We could have someone do some keyword research, but we have already done the bulk of it. We have thought about and researched keywords for every new page we are creating. But from a technical SEO perspective, I don't see the point in getting someone. In addition, we just had a major SEO audit done last year and we completed the tasks from that audit on the current site; however, most of the changes were technical, not content based. Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Colbys0 -
Fastest Way To Remove Footer Link? (post-Panda)
Hello, I have a website with 1k+ links pointed directly to an inner page and home page from blogspot domains. There are 3 links in the footer that points to different locations. 1st anchor text points to the person who designed the page template and links to their website (this doesn't affect us) 2nd anchor text uses a direct keyword that I am trying to rank for and links to the inner page. 3rd anchor text uses my website name and links to the home page I know that these are not good links and the content inside the pages are irrelevant to my own website. The links are embedded into the template on the footer and is site wide.I have already contacted the designer and have the links removed but those that have downloaded the templates still have the footer link. What would be the best way to remove all these footer links? Trying to contact each individual person who is using the template is not working out as most have not responded and some of the websites have not seen an update in years! Any thoughts? If you need additional information feel free to send me a direct message so I can send you an exact link.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Shawn1240 -
How Bad is it to Not Have a Home Page?
The site I'm currently developing is far different than any other project I've every worked on in that search traffic is likely to represent only a very small percentage of the total traffic. Because of this, I want to make sure I optimize the site for the people clicking from Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc more so than the BIG G. I can't for the life of me think of a reason to have a home page other than for SEO purposes. I'd much rather throw the user directly into the experience than have him be distracted by a home page. At the same time, I'd like to salvage any search engine traffic that I can. My plan is to 301 redirect chucklebot.com/ to /funny-memes/SOME_RANDOM_IMAGE and then put the content of the current home page at /about. Does that kill any possibility of the site ranking well? Or can the subpages (eg /meme-generator) still rank well if they are properly optimized? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PatrickGriffith0 -
Sitewide blog link and Article links
Hi Guys I just wanted to give you all a heads up on something I adjusted recently that worked really well and wanted to ask for your own experiences on this. 1. We have a blog that adds regular content and within the blog we link from the keyword we are targeting. Standard stuff right ! We were struggling for movement on a keyword so I removed the links from the articles and added a link on the site wide blogroll. The link on the blogroll included the keyword but was a longer descriptive link. Low and behold we got a first page listing when the changed it.The change in ranking was made a few days later. I have always been given the impression that site wide isn't that great ? So explain this one . Of course there are many other factors etc 🙂 What are your experiences and thoughts on what happened here ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | onlinemediadirect0