Advice on Link Removal Services

[Lukin]

Hello everyone,

Due to the Penguin update my site unfortunately took a bit of a hit.

A little while ago I submitted all of our questionable/bad links to the disavow tool, however I still wante to go back and delete any and all problematic links that are still out there.

Ive looked into many services, however I haven't been too impressed.

Removeem - The email addresses they provided weren't always valid, and their email tool didn't always deploy correctly - a lot of cross referencing and was not saving me any time.

Link Detox - Free trial was a bust. They show you 10 links on the free trial, however for me, 9 of the 10 were all the same. Couldn't get a good feel of their system.

Rmoov - Their tool is one where you upload your own links, and they help manage everything, however they DONT allow you to email through their system, so Im not sure how this helps my process if I have to do everthing manaully anyway.

A lot of sites I see are also a full service approach that charge you based on how many links they remove, and this can get quite costly.

I have also contacted:
Link Delete - No reponse from multiple email requests
Linkquidator - No response
Infatex - No response

My questions to all of you are:

Is there any company out there that you recommend that provide a self service tool [online or desktop driven]?

Is this even an avenue I should explore, or should I compile my own list [as 3rd party algorithms are not always accurate] and reach out to sites manually?

Is disavowing good enough and Im just spinning my wheeles trying to now get them all removed?

Thanks!

[Cyrus-Shepard]

HI Luken,

I would never completely trust a 3rd party service. You still have to check each link. Blindly removing or disavowing is not the way to go.

That said, I've used Link Detox and feel comfortable recommending them. That said, I still add a layer of manual review on top of their process.

Removeem and Rmoov are both fine services, IMO, but may not be right for everyone.

[Lukin]

Thanks guys.

I was hoping to get flooded with different companies that could help the process, however from everything Ive tried/read/seen, I unfortunately agree that the only way to really accomplish this is to do it manually in-house.

[CandymanKen]

Hi-

I can tell you from personal experience that Karl is giving you  good advice.We had a manual penalty imposed on us a little over a year ago and I found the best way to get rid if the links causing it was by contacting the site owners and asking. After repeated attempts, the ones that just would not disapper, i disavowed and in the end got rid of the manual penalty.

Good luck and happy (link) hunting!

Ken

[KarlBantleman]

Hi Lukin,

Firstly, sorry to hear your website got hit. You aren't the first and certainly not the last! The first thing to do in order to try and recover is to be completely honest with the links that were built. If you had an external agency build links then ask them for a full report (you should already have this but not all agencies do this as standard) on what has been done. This will allow you to understand the kinds of links that have been built.

In my opinion, no tool out there is good enough and whatever info they give you, you have to check it anyway. The process to recovery is a long one because the only way is to manually look at every link to your website and analyse whether Google thinks it is spammy or not. Depending on the size of your link profile, this may be considerably time consuming but, unfortunately, it has to be done.

We have managed to recover websites and whilst we used to try and get them manually deleted first then disavow, we have managed to recover websites without deleting a single link. Google WILL NOT open any external documents that are sent to them so sending them stuff probably won't help much. We are very stringent with the links we disavow and sometimes there will be links that you can't even find that are holding you back, however, Google should tell you the types of links that are harming you and you can look deeper into them.

I'd say use as many tools as you can to see as many links to your website as possible, so use WMT and OSE and any others you might have access to. Once you have a complete list of links, ask yourself "Would I show my profile to Matt Cutts?"

It can be a long process (from 4-6 weeks to 6-12 months) but if your website is worth keeping then it is worth the time and effort spent.

All the best,

Karl