Worth changing existing link profile to make it more natural?

[eddiesteadygo]

Hi Guys,

I am picking up responbility for the SEO work for a company and I need some advice please.

The current link stratgy involves a lot of single backlinks from the home page of variious sites. There is also a very big proprtion of the anchor text which is for the exact keyword and also finally there is very little deep linking.

The result of this strategy is some 1st page ranking, but it has required a lot more links than some of the competitors with more natural link structure,

Question is this.... is it worth contacting the webmasters of the existing links and asking then to move some of the links onto subpages and ammending the link tex to be move natural.

Or alternaitvely, I could concenrate on adding some new article links, with a variety of keywords, which would be subdomain links.

The problem with the 2nd approuch is that I can't easily add enough article links to balance out fully the effect of thecurrent problem. However, I'm nto sure if changing the position and the anchor text of the current linking could affect the current main site ranking...

Can you see my problem? Any advice would be gratefully received.

Cheers, Ed.

[HiveDigitalInc]

1. If you do want to re-balance, switch the links to use some obscure long-tail anchor text and see if you move up for that term. This is an easy way to find out if they are actually passing juice. Drop the ones that aren't.

2. Build out and balance your link profile. If you can't beat your competitors with less than 20% exact anchor text, then you need to increase your overall link profile.

[eddiesteadygo]

Fair enough, I do appreciate your thoughts

[EGOL]

I think you are digging in po.

[eddiesteadygo]

Hi,

I understand the point you are making but, in fact, the current links do have a lot of value, even though they may a number of paid links. The reason I say this is the sites ranks on google 1st page for a number of competitive search terms.

This is why I am thinking of an approuch which tries to consolidate the value from those links rather than writing them off. I'm thinking if I can balance out the existing links with other deeper links etc, I might be able to secure more value from them.

If I can, it would be a good basis for gaining value from the new links I hope to obtain in the future.

Has anyone had this situation and tried a similar approach?

Cheers, Ed.

[EGOL]

...the question is what is the best course of action to try to retain as much value as possible from the existing links.

To me, those links would not have any value.  I would not feel better about them if they were moved from the homepage to a deeper page on the same site.

I know that you are not asking what to do for new links... but if this site was mine I would forget about the current links and look to what can be done in the future.

[eddiesteadygo]

I think that some of the links will have been devalued which is why more backlinks have been required than for some of the competitors. The question though isn't what do for new links; the question is what is the best course of action to try to retain as much value as possible from the existing links. I can look to adjust the position and type of the existing links to be more natural looking, or I can try to balance up the linking appearance with something like more deep link articles etc.

Any suggestions gratefully received

Ed.

[EGOL]

It sounds like a lot of the existing links are not natural and probably paid. My bet is that they have been devalued. If this was my site we would stop "building links" and start "earning" them.