Should I get these links removed?

[CassisGroup]

Hi, I am trying to clean up the seo of my website. Recently stopped using a professional which might have been using grey hat tactics.

I am researching, researching , researching but having trouble pulling the trigger on what I am finding.

I have a couple old link exchanges going on. They are quite old. Some of them are on the footer of a website, and therefore bring in a lot of links (ie every time a new page is created). I am wondering if I should ask to get these links removed..

My link profile is pretty bad(at least according to me), nothing extremely bad, but lots of leftover of links coming from petitions, forums etc.. that I can't get removed.

I have recently gotten some mention on good website but they have a way around linking directly to any website so I dont get much help from that..

If you guys need my website I can share if need be.

thanks!

[dohertyjf]

If the links are exact anchors (which I assume they are if you were doing link exchanges) and are in the footer, I would get them removed. I have not heard of anyone linkbuilding their way out of Penguin; only by removing bad links have people recovere. So yes, I would remove these links if they are this way.

Branded links are usually fine, unless they are something like what WPMU dealt with and they were too close to exact anchors.

Penguin seems to mean that there are specific links that Google does not like. Go look at the posts that have been written for the different types they don't like, and look through your backlink profile to find the money terms where you might have too many exact anchors.

Good luck.

[tfbpa]

Normally it is not a good idea to remove bad links, as it is more fruitful to build new and better ones, but with sidewide links it could be a good idea, depending on how well related the website is to yours and what anchor text is used.

If the sidewide/footer links are on very related websites with your brand/url as anchor text, I would say do nothing.

If unrelated and keyword anchor, I would say delete them and anything in the middle, well up to you.

This all assumes that your rankings plummeted after Penguin, if they did not, then leave the links anyway and just try to get better new ones.

[SEOLocal92]

take a look at this old link you are getting the link exchange for , what is the DA of this site and the PA of the page(if you don't know what they are join Seomoz or download the free extension , also another very impotent factors:

is it relevant ???

how many links he have to others , is he web spamming ??

that's really the factors you need to look for when you get links , problem is sometimes we get great links and then after few months this site sold to many like us and the same site that was great now flag by Google.

so don't rush with removing this links , do inspect them.

hope that help you

Mike