Should I ask third pages to erase their links pointing at my site?

[Tintanus]

Good Morning Seomoz Fans, let me explain what is going on:

A surfing site has included a link to my Site in their Footer. apparently, this could be good for my site, but as It has nothing to do with my site, I ask myself if I should tell them to erase it.

Site A (Surfing Site) is pointing at Site B (Marketing Site) on their Footer. So Site B is receiving backlinks from every single page on Site A. But Site B has nothing to do with Site A: Different Markets.

Should I ask them to erase the link on their footer as Surfing people will not find my Marketing Site interesting?

Thanks in advance.

[Webpresence]

A thumbs up for Martin! I'd do what he suggests Christian and get rid of the footer links and replace them with a link from a relevant page, preferably within the body content. There may already be a relevant page on the site that can pass a little authority, but if not follows Martin's advice again and get writing!

Enjoy the weekend guys! Lee.

[Nobody1560986989723]

My actual conclusion then would be to maybe do a guest post for your friend's site talking about how surf school could benefit from considering their marketing and get a valid in-context link rather than just a link in  a footer, which Lee above quite rightly points out could be seen as spammy.

That way you're contributing positively to the development of your friends site and the in-context link appears just on one page (not site-wide) and actually means the page is a relevant, but highly targeted/specialist page which validly links to your site.

Should get you a bit more targeted referrals, rather than you 100% bouncing ones too

[Tintanus]

Hi Martin and Lee, thanks for answering this question, I'll just answer your points Martin:

1.- Because the owner of the site is a friend of mine and he thought it would be a good idea.

2.- I think it does give my domain some value, because it is a link coming from a Non Spammy site that has a Page Authrotiy of 39 and a Domain authority of 28 according to Open Site Explorer, which I think is not bad at all. But the thing is that it is not relevant although the anchor text that he put might be relevant.

3.- I get some visitors but  very few. And they all have a Bounce Rate of 100%, so they really dont like or are not looking for any possible service that I offer.

Conclusion: I think that it is passing me some Link Juice, because the domain has a better Domain Authority than mine ! But, it has nothing to do with surfing, my site is about marketing online and translations..

But, his anchor text was "Marketing Online for your Surfschool" (In Spanish), so in that way, it does have some relevance, but it is not producing anything.

I hope I have answered your doubts so you can tell me your opinion. Thanks in advance. And Thanks Lee Jackson as well, I marked both your answers as Good Answers! Cheers.

[Webpresence]

Yes Christian, I would definitely request removal of the links.

The Google Penguin update on April 24th targeted sites that were using spammy backlink tactics, and site wide footer links came under that bracket, particularly those that didn't seem natural (i.e. non-relevant). Other backlinks that came under attack were site-wide blog roll links, and links from spammy networks.

No one knows for sure if the backlinks you mention will harm your site, but my guess is that they will.

Would love to hear other people’s opinions!

Lee

[Nobody1560986989723]

My first three questions would be

1. Why did they put the link there in the first place?
2. Does that link have any 'value' to your SEO campaign (maybe do a quick analysis of the URL in Open Site Explorer)
3. Are you getting any visitors through the link?

If the world was free of SEO's I think a 'natural web' would have links between unrelated resources as different people find things relevant or interesting. If the site linking is not generally spammy, and you get the odd visitor through then so long as you are checking it's not doing you any harm then leave it (especially as it seems to have occurred without you asking).

If the surfing site is poor quality then that could reflect badly on you - then get them to remove it.

If the surfing site has little link value and/or you're not getting any visitors through it and/or those that are do not stick around for long, then again get them to remove it.

So do a bit of digging on the page linking up first and see what you find and make your decision based on the data available