Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Link Detox and Link Removal
-
I have a question about which links to remove after running a link detox from Link Research Tools.
First a little back story. I had had an SEO company link building for one of the websites I own. But I have recently stopped working with them.
In the last month my rankings have near dropped off the charts. I have just recently gotten access to Google webmaster tools and noticed an unnatural link warning from back in March.
So yesterday I ran link detox and it reported 19 toxic links, 120 suspicious links, and 24 healthy links.
It's rather obvious that I should remove all of the toxic links. They all from sites that have been deindexed by google.
But my question is a about the suspicious links. What should my criteria be for removing them? Am I better off removing them all and leaving my site with only 24 healthy links or should I personally comb through them and remove only the worst of the worst so that I leave my site with a few more links?
I'd really like to get the site ready to resubmit to google as soon as I can.
Thoughts?
-
Hi everyone,
I'm doing some bad link cleaning. And am following this nice guide: https://moz.com/blog/bad-backlink-analysis-using-moz-link-explorer
And there it says that "Because we aren't concerned with nofollow links, you will want to set the "follow" filter so that we only export followed links. "
So does it really mean that I don't have to worry about nofollow links, even though they would be spammy, or some weird stuff like drug perscription anchors which for sure won't help me? Or is it better to disavow those as well? (I would assume so).
-
You are totally correct, Adam
I simply use DA as a guide line for whether or not the website, as a whole, is 'OK' - not as a definitive rule. You certainly can get a spammy link from a high DA website but I haven't found that to happen very often at all. I suppose I use it in the way that I used to use toolbar PR - not as a rule, but a guide line. Thank you for your insight. Again, you are totally correct, I should not have been so vague.
Cheers, and thumbs up
-
Billy gave you some good advice, but I disagree with him on one point. Domain authority doesn't necessarily have anything to do with whether a link is dangerous or not. You can get a spammy link from a domain with high authority or a great link from a lower authority domain.
You want to get rid of links that Google will view as intended primarily to manipulate search rankings instead of providing value to the user.
Some factors to consider:
- Is the link from a page or site that is relevant to mine?
- Does the link make sense for / provide value to the user?
- Does the link use my target keyword(s) as anchor text? (Too many keyword anchor texts is a problem.)
- Is the link purchased?
- Is the link near or with spammy links?
- Is the link from a low quality directory, forum signature, blog comment,
- Is the link from a page of duplicate content?
Hope that helps!
-
I would suggest taking the time to go through them. Check the domain authority and the actual content on the exact page that links to your website. Suspicious does not necessarily mean that it is a bad link - although most of them probably will be. If the page that links to you has content that is relevant to what your website is about and if the linking website has decent domain authority, I would put that link in the 'keep' pile. Even if out of the 120 you only end up with 25 links that you keep, it could make a difference in the positive.
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
-
Disavowing Links
I need some advice... I've noticed our link profile has increased with many comments links --- something I certainly have not pursued manually. I'm new to disavowing links. However, before I go ahead and disavow them, I'd like to ask how harmful these links are and would you recommend this is something I can do myself (relatively novice SEO) or if you'd recommend someone who could do this for a reasonable cost. In one instance, the link from this comment thread is with the anchor text, "porn"... Certainly not something we want to rank for, haha! I look forward to your advice
Link Building | | LukeBTDT0 -
Xyz links
I have a lot of backlinks ending with .xyz, around 20%, and they look very suspicious. Should I disavow these? Here are a few: yourrelicsbargains.xyz fantasticsiteinfo.xyz yourvintagelifestyle.xyz usefuldiscount4u.xyz bestdealsaction.xyz bestmemorabilialifestyle.xyz 59177.net lovecollectorsbargains.xyz
Link Building | | moon-boots0 -
Asking a site to remove a "nofollow" on a link to our client
Hello, We created a good infographic for a client of ours and a large tech site (DA 86) picked up and ran a story on it. We didn't contact this company asking them to feature it, they have just picked it up through other shares around the Web. I understand that, at the end of the day, it's their prerogative whether to "nofollow" their links or not, but surely they should be giving our client some credit as they have clearly deemed the graphic newsworthy and felt that it would appeal to their readership. I've emailed said tech site, but to no avail. Does anyone have any advice on this? Or is it just a case of they can do what the heck they want? I know that our client will still benefit from the additional referral traffic, but a follow link would have been nicer! Cheers, Lewis
Link Building | | PeaSoupDigital1 -
Drop in Rankings After Removing Links
So I removed some links to a particular homepage for one of the sites we own, this page had A LOT of links pointing to it using exact match anchors. And for the most part the links were coming from low quality pages/content. After removing a good chunk of them I noticed are rankings went down from around 8-9th two weeks ago to 21 as of today. Has anyone else had a problem like this before? I'm thinking about restoring some of these links now to see if I can recover some of that. Any thoughts on doing this? Thanks
Link Building | | ThridHour0 -
What is a good ratio of total links to linking root domains?
Is 100 total links for every linking domain too high? I suppose I could also look at ratios of sites that are doing well in the rankings.
Link Building | | ProjectLabs0 -
Text Link vs image link?
Which passes most link juice a text link or an image with the correct 'alt' attribute? Do the pass the same amount or is one more valuable than the other?
Link Building | | SamCUK0 -
Inbound links from porn sites into a professional business services site - remove help?
The website in question was hacked four years ago and there was porn on the servers. It was used as a peer to peer torrent streamer. The images were deleted. We have just found inappropriate inward bound links (with great link juice!!) - how can we remove these links - or should we? any advice would be appreciated thanks
Link Building | | GardenBeet0 -
Porn link ...
I just ran https://www.majesticseo.com report for back links and showed me that I have one link at porn site ... not sure if it will be appropriate to post it here. The link was discovered on 03.05.11 and when I visited today link is not there... I dont know who put that link there. Can I get penalty for that from google? Can it be a mistake?
Link Building | | DiamondJewelryEmpire1