Odd Link Removal Request
-
Unless I'm missing something, having gotten into trouble... the company in question is not doing a great job at link removal.
Here's an email my client received:
Hi Webmaster,
I work for xxxxxxxxxxx and our site has recently been penalized by Google for an unnatural link profile that violates Google's Quality Guidelines. As part of an effort to get back in their graces, we are removing all links to our website so we can start fresh.
We are making changes to our site to build better content for our audience. I am contacting people who have linked to us in the past to remove any doubt that Google views the link or anchor text as overoptimzed or unnatural.
Therefore, I am respectfully requesting that you remove all links to our site on xxxxxxxxxxx including:
xxxxxxx That says xxxxxxxxxx and goes to xxxxxxxx.
I appreciate your past efforts to link to our content, and I am excited to launch our improved content very soon. We understand that this request takes time and effort, but we would sincerely appreciate your help.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask. If you could be so kind as to respond that you have removed the link, it would really help out with my efforts. Thank you in advance!
Best Wishes,xxxxxx
All the details and URLS in the email were wrong. After much back and forth, we tracked down a single link from an infographic -- which I removed.
But is removing all links really the best strategy? Does it ever make sense?
-
We also lightly speculated it could be a competitor falsely claiming to be them and is trying to sabotage their link profile!
-
If they meant it - its probably due to them being frustrated with the reconsideration request. I went through the same thing before until i disavowed everything and the site was released from the penalty. So yeah, a lazy mistake on my part back then but i learned from it, and i wouldnt know any better if i didnt do it
-
I considered this possibility, but given the incompetence of the request (wrong URLs) and the some quick Google research on the person who sent the request (novelist/copywriter)....
...my guess is that sheer incompetence is a more likely explanation.
Looks like the company in question hired the wrong SEO....
...and then hired the wrong person to try to mitigate the damage.
-
Maybe they are telling the webmaster that they are removing "ALL" of their links instead of just the stinky links - like the one on his site.
I bet that is it.
-
Yeah they are absolutely confused, but good on you for taking time out of your busy schedule to try to help out somebody with a Google penalty! This person is clearly a bit misinformed, but it still makes me happy to know that webmasters like you exist!
That said, please don't let your friends send messed up link removal requests like these with incorrect URLs and such. That will just make it harder for all of us in the future. And that is my Public Service Announcement for the day.
-
Myself and Bill Slawski were having a conversation about this on Twitter just yesterday.
It strikes me as laziness - they don't want to navigate through the link profile to identify a good link or a bad link and have just gone "sod it - ask everyone to remove and then we'll disavow if they don't".
Yeah, will probably remove the penalty, but it would also put you so far behind SEO wise. Just laziness if you ask me.
I also don't see why they don't start on a fresh domain if they're doing this, unless they're really attached to their current domain and/or brand.
-
Removing all links is definitely not the way to go but many people are still unsure what constitutes to a good and bad link. That company have gone about it the wrong way though!
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
-
We're looking at providing SEO for a website that has the majority of its incoming links from websites created solely to provide links. Few have bad spam rankings. How worried should I be about those links?
The majority of incoming links to a prospect's website are from website pages apparently created solely to provide links to the website. Few have high spam scores. The sites linking to the main site have versions of blogs with linked text. They seem to be providing positive SEO value now, but I'm concerned they might get noticed and hurt the main site in the future.
Link Building | | PKI_Niles1 -
A website with a spam score of 5 is back linking to me. How important is to get that link removed?
There is a website that OSE has identified with a spam score of 5, it back links to me with a very specific key word. How important is it to have them remove those links?
Link Building | | absoauto0 -
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 -
Getting a sitewide links from one domain as oppsed to few links from certain pages, a good, bad or horrible idea?
Hello, I have a website that is performing really well in Google for country specific Real Estate Website. I have had this site for just about 2 years and I have 4600+ indexed pages, and about 50 of my main keywords appear in top 10 results on Google. I have now started a second site with a brand new domain, its only about 2 months old. This one is a Travel website and again its country specific (same country that real estate website is performing well in) and since its still building up the content and has barely a couple of backlinks, I am thinking of adding a linkback to it from my Real Estate Site. Is it a good idea to add a site wide link back from header section of the real estate website to my travel website? Both sites has same country and most of the keywords in both relate to this country. Or will I be better off adding a few text links from few pages with best Page Authority? Or - do you suggest that I do not link the two at all? Both sites are hosted on different servers, with different IP's and one is on windows server created in asp.net while another is a magento site. Any advidce / insight will be much appreciated and thank you in advance.
Link Building | | waituk_sanjeev0 -
Linking Etiquette
Hi Moz Community, Long time lurker, first time poster. I work for a real estate firm and have recently done some link analysis. I'm noticing that my company is not getting linked to as frequently as we should be. Several news outlets (including NYT & Bloomberg) have cited our reports, interviews with employees and other original content belonging to my company without linking back to our site (although they do mention us).Some publications are even linking back to our competitors for similar content but not ours. Is it appropriate to reach out and ask for links from these outlets after they've been published? Does anybody have tips on making others aware we want links shared for future articles? Thanks in advance!
Link Building | | rlaughlin0 -
Sidebar Links
If I have x number of posts with sidebar having popular posts. Will each post acts as a link to popular posts? or will be penalized for site wide links? Thanks, Venkee
Link Building | | Venkee0 -
Neighborhood links
Hi, If my company offers carpet cleaning services, what neighborhood links partner I need to find. Can anybody list down the neighborhood. Thanks.
Link Building | | younus0 -
Many competitor's backlinks are in content anchor links. Ho do I get these same links?
Hi I managed to open up OSE. I'm finding that much of the competition's backlinks are in content anchor text links. Am I supposed to get backlinks from these same pages using the same anchor text but linking back to my page or is that allowed? If so, how do I get these in content blog post links? Thanks. Sunil.
Link Building | | sunilmuse0