Best way to clean up a nasty backlink profile?
-
A new client of mine sadly has a TON of terrible links (3800 links from 1500 domains) which are pointing to landing pages that have been created specifically for manipulating engines. Besides contacting these sites and asking to have the links removed the only solution I can think of it to delete these pages and let them 404. Obviously I am not thrilled about that but I'm not sure what else to do. Does anyone have any other ideas for how to clean up this backlink profile? Thanks
-
Thank you everyone for the comments and confirmation. Now I just have to break the news to the client that we are going to have to delete those pages haha. Wish me luck
-
Definitely remove the pages from the server and 404 them, you are lucky they linked to internal pages and not the homepage or you would have many many hours of reaching out to webmasters on your hands.
This is a simple fix. and 404s are ok if the 404's are not a result of dead links pointing to no longer existing pages on your site. external sites 404ing to you is fine.
-
No, 404 errors are a natural part of the Internet.
-
If you have 404 errors when Google crawls your site does this not also impact your rankings?
-
Nakul,
Thank you for clarifying this question. We are also in the same situation. It is so good to have someone in the field to offer advice.
-
Honestly, I think you gut is telling you the right thing. And thankfully you answered the question yourself.
The fact that those pages were created to manipulate rankings (as in doorway pages?)
If that's the case, and there are external links to those pages, I would do exactly what you are thinking. Delete those pages and let them be a 404.
Did your client also receive the unnatural links google penalty notice ? If that's the case, then it's a no brainer to do this right away. You could also try to find if there are link networks involved and if there are certain webmasters who control multiple website specially when you say 3800 links from 1500 domains. I would atleast try to get "some" of them removed or atleast have some effort. If there's a way to send a blanket email to all of the 1500 domains, it's well worth the effort of atleast trying.
I hope this helps.
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
-
What's the best way to noindex pages but still keep backlinks equity?
Hello everyone, Maybe it is a stupid question, but I ask to the experts... What's the best way to noindex pages but still keep backlinks equity from those noindexed pages? For example, let's say I have many pages that look similar to a "main" page which I solely want to appear on Google, so I want to noindex all pages with the exception of that "main" page... but, what if I also want to transfer any possible link equity present on the noindexed pages to the main page? The only solution I have thought is to add a canonical tag pointing to the main page on those noindexed pages... but will that work or cause wreak havoc in some way?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau3 -
Bit.ly backlinks
Hi all, what experience do you have with Bit.ly links? Can I use it for backlinking management?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tormar3 -
Bad Backlink?
Hi I found this site whilst looking through WMT backlinks to our site: http://www.buildingarena.co.uk/companies/key-industrial-equipment Is this type of iFrame of our site a bad signal to Google? It's not something we've done, so I'd like to know before getting it removed. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
What would be best way to transition from mobile website to responsive
We have a mobile website (mobile.website.com) that mirror our desktop site (www.website.com) with +100 000 pages. We have an alternate tag on our desktop to our mobile site and a user agent detect that redirect mobile traffic to our mobile site Our mobile site is no index and has a canonical to our desktop. Everything works pretty well, the mobile website is not index and only show up in SERP when a user make a search from a mobile. Our main website is now responsive and we would like to kill our mobile site without compromising our traffic. We know that a slight speed change or content change can affect our traffic, what would be the best way to do that? Big bang: redirect all mobile URL to desktop, remove user agent detect and remove alternate tag on desktop Semi Big bang: remove user agent detect and remove alternate tag on desktop and see how the traffic react before redirecting Progressive: remove the user agent detect and the alternate tag on some section of the website to see how the traffic react Other ? Anyone has any experience with that? Thanks and let me know if anything is not clear.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Digitics0 -
Questions on Google Penguin Clean-up Strategy
Hello Moz Community! I was hit with a REAL bad penalty in May 2013, and the date corresponds to Penguin #4. Never received a manual spam action, but the 50% drop in traffic was very apparent. Since then, I've had a slow reduction in traffic, to where I am today... which is almost baseline. Increases in traffic have not occurred regardless of efforts. In researching a little more, I see that my old SEO companies built my links with exact keyterm matches, many of them repeated over and over, verbatim, on different sites. I've heard two pieces of advice that I don't like 1) scrap the site, or 2) disavow all the links. I would rather see if I can get the webmasters to change the link to something generic, or my brand name, before I do either of these. To scrap my site and start new will be damn near impossible because I'm in an extremely competitive niche, and my site has age (since 2007), so rather work with what I have. A couple of questions, for folks who are in the know about this penalty, if I may: This penguin update, #4, on May 22nd, was it ONLY because of the link text? Or was it also because of the link quality? None of the updates before it harmed me, and I believe those were because of the quality? Could it be for links linking from my blog to my site? My blog (ex. www.mysite.com/blog), has close to 1,000 blog posts, and back in the days I would write these really long, keyword stuffed links leading to www.mysite.com. I've been in the process of cleaning these up, and shortening them, and changing them to more generic (click here's), but it is a LONG and painstaking process. If I get webmasters to change text to just the url or brand name, that's better than disavowing, correct? As long the linking site has a decent spam score and PA/DA on OSE? Is having SOME exact anchor text okay on these links? Is it just the abuse that's the problem? If so, how many should I leave? (like 5 max per keyword?) Or should I just change to the url, or disavow altogether, any and all links that have exact keyword matches? I've downloaded my link profile from OSE and Majestic, and will do so from Ahrefs (I believe it is)? Does Webmaster Tools have any section that can help give me insights into the issue? If so, can you point me in the right direction? Can I get partial credit, for some work done? For instance, say a major update, or crawl, happens, and I've only fixed/disavowed 25% percent of the links by then, is there a possibility that I get a small boost in traffic? Or am I in the doghouse till they are all fixed? Say I clean/disavow everything up, will my improvement be seen in the next crawl? Or the next Penguin update? As there may be a substantial difference in time there. 😎 I see AHREFS, has some information on anchor text... any rules of thumb as to percentages of use of a certain anchor text, to see if I'm abusing or not, before I start undertaking all of this? Thanks! Could the penalty have "passed" altogether, and this is just where I rank? Thanks guys, but the last thing I want to do is ditch my site... I will work hard on this, but need some guidance. Much appreciated! David
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DavidC.0 -
Simple ways to boost Domain Authority
Hi, Any simple methods to boost Domain Authority? Thanks, Ben
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs20100 -
Keyword Targeting Best Practices??
What is the best way to target a specific keyword? I rank well for several of my keywords but want to do better on others. How do I go about doing this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bronxpad0 -
What is the best way to run a blog?
Hi, I was wondering what is the best way to run a blog? The options I thought of are: Completely separate domain with many links to my main site. blog.domain.com www.domain.com/blog Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet1