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.
How to remove backlinks?
-
Hey guys,
With all this anti over optimization movement going around with Google, I decided to do a link building profile audit. I see some pages with PR 0 and some pages that expired.
My websites are not penalized at this moment, however I do want to avoid this at all costs.
- What can I do?
- Could a backlink from an expired domain penalize my site?
-
Thanks for the replies! Sometimes its harder to create great content when you are an agency and don't have control of what your clients are doing all the time.
-
Like Anthony said - create great content, and you'll never have to worry about linking penalties. Here's another item to consider - links are always going to be pointed to your site, and not all are going to be of high quality sites today. But, you never know that one blog that stays online and in 5 years from now has grown into an authority site.
People are way over-reacting to this latest Google "penalty". If it was that easy to lose your rankings to just a few blog networks, why wouldn't I go out and get thousands of "bad" links pointed to my competitor to de-rank them?
Look deeper at what Google is trying to accomplish.
-
I would recommend you take action and remove poor back links wherever possible. Why run the risk of being penalised when these links are giving you next to no benefit?
There are a few things you can do
- Contact the sites that you are worried about and request that the link is removed
- Sit tight and hope for the best
- Change the URL of the pages that have poor links pointing to them and remove the original page without redirecting (this has obvious implications for users
I'd recommend you try and contact sites wherever possible, accepting that this is very difficult as I imagine many of the back links you may have will be automated.
If a domain is expired there is no back link in place so you should not be penalised for it as Google should identify that the link is no longer present.
Hope this helps.
-
I wouldn't worry about removing these backlinks, unless you know they are paid or part of a network.
Instead, focus on building some good strong natural links through creating amazing content. The stronger your overall backlink profile is, the less likely you will ever find yourself in trouble over a few bad links.
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
-
Backlinking Strategy
I am particularly new to the field of SEO and Backlinking and I have recently started my own blog feel free to have a look (https://thehorseradar.com/). What I wanted to find out is how can I achieve a DA of at least 30. What should be my link-building strategy? & what steps should I take first? With an abundance of overwhelming info available online I have gotten really confused about what would work and what would not. If someone would lay out the steps needed to be taken, I would be extremely grateful! Thank You
Link Building | | haris3131 -
How much time does it takes for a backlink to get registered in Google? My basketball anime website has been live since start of this week and Google has not registered any backlink.
So my website https://www.animedhfa.com/basketball-anime/ about basketball Anime has shown no changes in DA or backlinks. It has been 5 days perhaps since it went live.
Link Building | | ahmad74750 -
Backlinks from translated content
Hello, We have quite a few articles "out there" that give us backlinks. We were thinking of also translating the content and submitting it to local content websites, so it can provide us with more backlinks. The main questions here, will this content be recognized as the same content as the English version? Also, being in another language, some of the anchor text might not hit the English keyword. Not sure how Google sees it. Any advise on the matter? thx!!
Link Building | | PangeaLangs0 -
Backlinks embedded in posts or backlinks in sidebar?
What's better? A backlink to my site, embedded into a blog post/article? Or a hardlink in the sidebar? The problem with links embedded inside articles, is that when the blog linking to me, gets updated, the articles disappear from first page and I lose the link from home page. How do you deal with this? I also read this: "The best link you can get is from a site ranking #1 for the keyword you want to rank for. It would be great to have the #1 site for a desired keyword linking me even if they are a PR 0 site." Is this right? Thx in advance.
Link Building | | BloggerGuy0 -
Do backlinks which contain parameters pass value
For some of our partners, we use our own tracking string in the url i.e. www.mysite.com/landingpage.html?partner=123456 . This has caused backlinks to be created to our site containing the partner string. I was wondering if these links would pass value to www.mysite.com/landingpage.html and the tracking parameters would be ignored or would Google treat www.mysite.com/landingpage.html?partner=123456 as its own page. If it did treat it as a seperate page, could you reclaim some of it using the canoncial tag?
Link Building | | L_F0 -
Where I can find a backlink community exchange?
I know is difficult but it's worth to try. I am looking for a community eager to exchange links. I am in the venue rent for weeding and conferences in London and I would be delighted to find other people to exchange the links. At the moment my page is PR4 I have seen communities for games where they exchange anything, why don't link exchange!!!!
Link Building | | lnietob0 -
How do I remove bad web directory listings?
I am starting SEO for an E commerce website. I guess like 1 year or two ago they had another SEO company working for them. After looking in Site explorer I realized that they have like 2000 links (almost all from website directories) that have the correct anchor text but are all in the wrong categories, and most from countries like china and india. Many of the Titles are even in Chinese. This company sells packaging supplies and they are in categories like real estate, animals, and so on. I am changing the domain name, so I guess any links to internal pages will be lost, however I have to forward the main domain to my new domain, so any links to the home page will still be there. Does anyone know how I can remove these links??
Link Building | | DTOSI0 -
Press Release Sites for Backlinks
OK, I read a previous thread about whether people found press release sites useful (specifically I am considering a reputable pay for release service). I understand the knock on press releases in this digital age (namely that no one reads them and arguably never did . . . ), but I was interested in moving the discussion in a different direction . . . Do press releases services really help a sites performance based on increased backlinking? Is there a SEO benefit to PR services? My company is a local print company. I've done quite a bit of research on my local competitors, and specifically for a couple products we would like to dominate. The good news is that it looks like the hurdle would not be terribly high to really take over the web presence with a well planned and executed website/SEO campaign. My inclination is that for a relatively small company like mine (dealing with relatively small competitors) it WOULD benefit me to pay for the sheer number of backlinks a PR program would generate. The monthly cost is frankly about the same as the cost of this site, which OF COURSE I get value from (hey moderator, how about a couple extra MOZ points for that one!) Specifically, I am looking at this for myself, but feel free to expand the question to the broader topic.
Link Building | | damon12121