How do I go about removing low authority, crappy, backlinks?
-
How do I go about getting rubbish backlinks on a clients websites removed? The links were created by a previous companies link building campaign, and I believe this (along with a few other things) could be the reason for their poor SERP's as they are an established website.
Can I alert Google and get them to discredit the links, or do I manually have to try to make contact with the owners/webmasters of the websites to get the links removed?
All help appreciated!
Thanks
-
Last time this happened, I identified the SEO agency, got some advice from a specialist lawyer, and then issued a take-down request in the strongest terms (though with bad backlinks being replaced with good backlinks). It worked.
-
Justin,
I'd also like to suggest that instead of trying to get the low quality links removed, it will be a better option to try and obtain higher quality links.
Manoj
-
Hi Justin, I take it that you've not had any other signs that you've been penalised. You've not received any warnings in your Google Webmaster Tools or had the clients pages vanish from the search results completely? They still have pages in the index?
You mention that you're trying to recover from a previous companies link-building activity. How much information do you have to work with?
Do you have any historic ranking reports? Do you know how the rankings have changed and when? Can you find out what the position was before they started their link building and how it's changed over time?
Can you establish how badly your client has been affected? Do you have access to the site's analytics? Can you see/quantify any sudden loss of search traffic etc?
Personally I'd start by taking a good look at the SERPS for the chosen keywords and seeing how strongly your clients pages are likely going to compete.
In your view, with a cynical SEO eye, do the pages deserve to rank higher than the competition?
How would your client react if you put their page and a competitors ranking page side by site and asked them to say honestly which one was best? (I don't recommend that you do this unless you know how they'll respond!!)
-
Hi Caroline. My guess would be that they're not being directly penalised, but are suffering because their inbound links are coming from what Google sees as low ranking, low-quality, low value-add sites such as, but not always, content farms etc.
If you suspect this to be the case it's really important to look beyond the headline "linking root domains" number and look at the domain/page authority of those linking domains.
If you were trying to differentiate good content from bad - would you look at the number of votes, or the number of votes from respected sources? (Espectially when you know that people are trying to game the system by building lots of "easy" low quality links.)
This is of course just my opinion. I'd love to know if there any evidence for actually "link penalties".
-
@doug
Thanks for the quick answer, I think that @caroline's point/question is also of main concern. I am happy to leave the links as long as I can dilute their (potentially negative) effects by gaining quality, authority links, but I would expect from the first Panda update, that backlinks from link farms/directories would carry no authority and therefore would have little to no effect on the website that they were linking to.
-
Doug could I ask you a question?
I've noticed that in the last few months people have attributed their decrease in the rankings to 'being penalised for bad links'.
It is the case that they were previously gaining benefits from those links and that with the recent changes these links go back to 0 influence, reducing their rankings to what they previously were, as opposed to the links having a negative impact on their sites?
-
You won't get Google to do anything about them, but Google have said that "crappy backlinks" won't hurt you, they just won't be worth much anything.
(Backlinks obtained in an underhand unethical manner might though...)
If you really want to get the links removed you'd need to contact the individual webmasters. This is likely to take lots of time/effort that you're almost certainly better off spending doing some high-quality link building or content creation.
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
-
Moz Rank Moz Trust and Authority higher than my competitor but still getting outranked
Hi There, I'm new to SeoMoz but ive been using it for the past month and I've been using the tools to try to optimize my site but for some reason even though my metrics are showing that my rank and authority are rising past my competitor they still rank higher in the searches. my website is the site on the far left with the domain authority @27. the competitor that keeps outranking me is the third from the left with a domain authority of 12. If anyone can advise as to why I'm being outranked that would be very helpful. I'm stumped here. Thanks guys! eYtMRr9.png
Competitive Research | | SamRaskin1 -
So What's Up With Those Crappy Search Results?
I used to rank for some keywords now I've been outranked by crappy websites. But what amazes me most is that among the top 10 results for a particular keyphrase, 3 of these results point to websites that are no longer online! Worst than that, these websites have to backlinks! So how come 404 pages / non-existing websites rank higher than I do? Is Google loosing it or are they trying to create so much confusion in the hope that website owners will turn to Adwords?
Competitive Research | | sbrault740 -
Why would a site with virtually no external links and low authority rank very high?
Hey there: I'm not sure anyone's going to be game to answer this but... I have designed, done on-page optimization for and done ongoing content marketing and linkbuilding for a local fitness site. The site is about nine months old and I am attempting to achieve rank for the keyword "personal trainers in philadelphia." We've made progress; having taken a new site from +100 to 19 in about four or five months worth of content creation and linkbuilding on a very modest budget. I'm not complaining. What has me confused though is that there are one or two sites that are ranking very high for this keyword string with considerably shoddier metrics than our site and I'm wondering how a stock WP theme site with very few inbound links can rank top five for a reasonably competitive keyword? Our site is http://vtrainersinc.com. The site I've noticed that ranks top five and seems to have an inferior SEOMoz profile is bodycrafters.net. Anybody got any ideas as to why these things seem to occur? I have this feeling this site has stumbled upon a magic SEO elixir which I'd like to get my hands on!
Competitive Research | | splatdude0 -
Why OSE cant show competitor backlinks , please could you help?
Today i am searching for backlinks in OSE but it cant go to result pages, can anyone help me why OSE cant work today.
Competitive Research | | conversiontactics0 -
How does TTH have only 220 Domain Backlinks?
Was looking at these guys today http://www.tentonhammer.com/ One of the orginal games websites, an authority in its niche and 7 years old (about as long as that niche has existed) Its all unique, high quality content but it has a only 220 linking domains, including BBC etc It doesnt make any sense to me that this website should have so few linking domains. Anyone have a thought as to whats going on here? S
Competitive Research | | firstconversion0 -
Site in top 3 with a 1-day old domain and no backlinks
Hi everyone, I'm trying to understand some searchresults, when searching in the netherlands for 'online casino':
Competitive Research | | iwebdevnl
http://www.google.nl/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=online+casino&pws=0 You'll see as position 3 result this website: http://bit.ly/qhRsUT, it's obviously that this site is there because of blackhat. But how did it come there such high for a keyword with high competition? I don't see anything wrong in the website? It's not like Google did something wrong, because it happened already a few times for this keyword with different domains from that owner. Regards, Yannick0 -
Isn't unfair that Keyword domain Exactly Match just overpowers every domain and page authority?
Im currently doing a research for a low-medium competitive keyword (SEO Moz Keyword difficult Tool it showed 36% competition, its a one word keyword) in my country. That keyword had a Google AdWords Broad Match of 368.000 searchs and a Google AdWords Exact Match of 33.100 searchs in April. The currently number one site for that keyword have an exactly match for that keyword, www.KEYWORD.com and nothing else. Then I ran and advanced report to that keyword and heres the initial result: This number one site has a domain authority of only 11 and a page authority of 25. The second site have the following domain name -> www.companynameKEYWORD.com.br (its in Brasil, so theorically and .br should worth more than a .com domain right?) Anyway the second site have a domain authority of 37 and a page rank authority of 45. So after this link all the others are like that, www.companynameKEYWORD.com and the domain and page authority is according to how it suposed to be (higher domain and page are ranked better). The exactly same thing happen when I search for a more long tail of this keyword (wich are 2 words) happen. The exactly match are ranked 1st with a very low page and domian authority while the others come first. Some more info about that number 1 ranked site- The layout is terrible and not user friendly. The site took more than 10 seconds to load Have not a single inpage SEO optimization. According to alexa the bounce rate is around 50% Now follows the data from Linkscape data between the 1st and 2nd ranked pages Overal Score - 19% x 38% Page mozRank - 2.04 x 3.95 Page mozTrust - 4.92 x 5.45 External mozRank - 2.04 x 3.95 Subdomain mozRank - 1.81 x 3.45 Domains Linkin - 4 x 163 External Links - 8 x 265 So, looks like that only two things should be 90% of the focus from a SEO perspective. Have an old exactly keyword match domain and youre good to go 😄 Edited 1: About the linkbacks to each page The 1st page in rank biggest page authority linking back (dofollow) have an authority of 36 from a domain authority of 49 The 2nd in the rank the highest dofollow linkback have a page authority of 40 and domain of 85 Edit 2: 1st in rank were created in 2000 2nd in rank were created in 2007
Competitive Research | | bemcapaz1 -
Researching Backlinks from Distinct C-Classes
I'm looking to do some competitive research on the top ranking sites in my niche. How can I get a list of the number of backlinks that come from distinct C-Class IP addresses? I don't see this anywhere in the OSE data. Thanks.
Competitive Research | | stevenmusumeche0